Information Items:
Council members are asked to assemble in Room 267 at the Government Center on Monday, December 3 by 6:30 pm to review the order of the evening's program. The Ceremony starts at 7:00 pm with a reception immediately following.
CATS opened the LYNX Blue Line as promised this past weekend and experienced an outstanding start to light rail service in the South Corridor. Shown below are the ridership counts for the first four days of service starting with the free introductory service on Saturday and Sunday:
Saturday Nov. 24th - 64,000 (est.)
Sunday Nov. 25th - 42,000 (est.)
Monday Nov. 26th - 6,691 final official
Tuesday Nov. 27th - 7,450 preliminary
The Saturday and Sunday numbers are estimates based upon sample counts made manually along the Line throughout each day. Staff estimates that between 1,200 and 1,500 people rode LYNX to and from the Bobcats - Celtics game Saturday evening and that between 4,000 and 5,000 people rode light rail to and from the Panthers game on Sunday.
The Monday and Tuesday numbers are actual manual counts made from 6:00 am to 7:00 pm with estimates of evening ridership based upon observations added to the total. The Tuesday number will be finalized Wednesday.
Ridership for the South Corridor light rail line was projected to average 9,100 daily passengers over the first 12 months of operation. Some in the media have misreported this estimate saying that we had projected first day ridership to be 9,100 passengers. That was not the case. We expected ridership to start lower than the 9,100 number and then rise during the following 12 months with the average being 9,100 daily riders for the year or a total first year ridership of 3.6 million passengers. The Monday and Tuesday numbers are an excellent start toward achieving and hopefully exceeding the first year ridership estimate. Henceforth, ridership for the LYNX Blue Line will be reported on a monthly basis along with regular CATS' ridership report.
