

The Slow and Glorious Death of America's Worst School System - JackFr
http://reason.com/archives/2014/06/10/the-slow-and-glorious-death-of-americas

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fancyketchup
I sort of gave up on Reason.com after their article on the LA Expo Line:
[http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/05/new-light-rail-
ridersh...](http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/05/new-light-rail-ridership-
falls-short-by)

The short version is that they surveyed ridership on the new line a couple
months after it opened, and claimed that actual ridership fell short of the
transit agency's estimates. The article also complains about long delays. This
is, of course, very silly because two months is not very long to work out all
the bugs in a large system, nor is it enough time for people to adjust their
commute patterns to the new option. I used to commute on this train a few
times per week, and service delays were more or less eliminated by September
2012.

Now, two years after the line opened, actual ridership in 2014 (30k people per
weekday)[1] is well on track to hit the projected ridership estimates for 2030
(36k people per weekday)[2].

This sort of shoddy (and, dare I say ideologically-motivated?) reporting makes
me tend to doubt the veracity of everything else they publish, especially
after Reason doubled-down in a rebuttal[3].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Line_%28Los_Angeles_Metro%...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Line_%28Los_Angeles_Metro%29)

[2]
[http://backup.buildexpo.org/phase2/Phase%202%20FEIR%20Docume...](http://backup.buildexpo.org/phase2/Phase%202%20FEIR%20Documents/TBR%27s/TBR%20Expo%20Phase%202%20Ridership%20Results%20Final_Dec09.pdf)

[3] [http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/08/trainspotters-deriving-
num...](http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/08/trainspotters-deriving-numbers-by-
counti)

