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I couldn't get the O/D data, I tried to find it for Atlanta. Didn't find it, gave up, and posted the graph with numbers that I had. Note the ridership numbers are for different years, so the only reliable matching number I could get was total passengers. It's true that will punish hubs, but I think think as a back-of-the-envelope calculation it's okay. The focus isn't on Atlanta, it's on Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, New York, Boston - and that's where I see the comparison. Even if Atlanta was three times 'better', it would still be on the right of the graph. The cost is not 'annual', it's the capital cost expressed in 2003 dollars, that is, adjusted for inflation. I would've never guessed crazytony's issue was with that, because it was just a flat attack without any substance. Giving cost in M, ridership in K, and cost/rider in $ seems fine to me. The numbers are meant to be compared across different projects, and are easily verified to be calculated correctly. You can't just divide annual ridership numbers by numbers of days in a year, because ridership numbers are given for weekdays, and weekends have wildly different numbers. The ratio can be anywhere from 260 to 365, depending on the actual line... or airport. I left the annual airport passengers compared to the daily ridership intentionally, because those are not numbers that can be directly compared for various reasons. I intentionally wanted to create an obscure ratio because I wanted to compare across different airports, not give any estimatable number for any particular airport. In any case, this particular graph is not the overall point of the article, I'm merely trying to get an idea whether they are being crazy with their predictions. |