Actual Versus Forecast Ridership on MetroLink is St.Clair County, Illinois

摘要

The St. Louis metropolitan area has been seeking to expand its successful light rail transit system known as MetroLink. The initial segment of MetroLink was opened in 1993 and ridership on this segment exceeded the forecasts. The first extension of MetroLink, which opened in May 2001, extends 17.4 mi east from East St. Louis to Southwestern Illinois College (SWIC). Multisystems prepared ridership forecasts for this extension during preliminary engineering in 1996, The existing St. Louis regional demand forecasting model, maintained by the metropolitan planning organization, was employed. Multisystems performed validation and re-calibration of the model to 1995-1996 conditions. Using the validated model, ridership forecasting was conducted for the project for the horizon year (2010) and the opening year (2001). In Fall 2001, Multisystems was asked to prepare forecasts for a second phase MetroLink extension to the east of SWIC. Since the extension to SWIC had already been open for several months and it was reported that MetroLink ridership was growing unexpectedly rapidly, a revalidation to 2001 conditions was incorporated in the new analysis. It was found that actual ridership in 2001 was very similar to the ridership forecast for the 2001 opening year prepared in 1996. The actual ridership on the new segment was merely 6% greater than the forecast. This paper compares the model's ridership projections with the actual ridership and attempts to identify the reasons behind any significant discrepancies. It will also identify how the revalidation improved the model's performance.