I get quoted in the Strib by Eric Roper: Ridership projections reveal tricky calculus for transit planners (though I wish he would clean up my conversational speech so it looked better on paper. This is why interviews should be by email). Also he used “calculus” in an article.
Prof. David Levinson, a transportation expert at the University of Minnesota, said there is a valid reason for the conservative projections.
“All the forecasts that were done in the 70s, and 80s and 90s…most of them overestimated transit ridership,” Levinson said. “The forecasts that have been done since the new rules have been implemented have gotten much closer to expected ridership numbers.”
That helps federal funders, he said, but also creates some confusion about what exactly the forecasts represent.
“To call that the forecast means that everything will exceed forecast if there’s any economic development affects whatsoever, because you’re not accounting for any of them [economic development effects] or very little of them when you’re doing this,” Levinson said.
It stands in contrast to the city’s projections for a Nicollet-Central streetcar line, Levinson said, which has been sold as an economic development tool.
“I would claim that the streetcar forecasts are more in the line of advocacy forecasting. They were trying to get people to buy into the idea of this,” Levinson said, noting that they would likely have to be adjusted if the project advances in a quest for federal funding.
The forecasts may be about to change, however. John Welbes, a spokesman for the Southwest project, said new ridership estimates will be released between mid-August and early September.
David Levinson, Transportist 