Been wondering about this for awhile, had to go to David Hartgen for the actual data. The trend is clear. Despite repeated and recent claims of average daily ridership of 16,000 for the $521m. South line, the train has not hit that number since October 2008. In fact ridership is off 20 percent from the all-time highs of July 2008.

The January ridership number of 13,469 is the lowest recorded since April 2008 and is down 7.3 percent compared to last January.

Dr. Hartgen adds that overall CATS ridership is down about 20 percent as well, to about 75,000 riders a day from highs of 95,000 in 2008. The interesting thing is that the percentage of train rides in that transit usage total holds steady, at around 18 percent. This tells me that the South Blvd. line is subject to exactly the same usage patterns as the bus system, which contradicts claims that rail would be a wholly transformative mode of transportation for Charlotte.

But it also makes me wonder about the causal relation between bus rides and train rides, given that CATS gives away a train ride with every bus ride via the paper transfer system. It could be that fewer bus riders means fewer transfers to the train and hence lower ridership numbers for the South line. I’ll have to look at that one further.

kk