Update: AC Transit just put out a press release via email making the following clear. My minor scoop only lasted for a day.
Turning the Corner: District Begins to Expand Service
During the worst of the Great Recession, the District went through painful budget cutting and our customers lost service on the street. But over the last several years, the combination of the District’s efforts to reduce costs and operate more efficiently (including purchasing newer buses), the growing economy, and an increasing ridership has enabled us to begin adding service again.
The first round of enhancements total $2.7 million in annual service. Half of these were implemented in December and the remainder will launch on March 15
Among the exciting enhancements are the introduction of weekend service on the San Pablo Rapid from Richmond to downtown Oakland…
My previous post uncovered something very interesting about upcoming March 15 service changes on AC Transit, and as that was a post on the technology behind analysis, I buried the lede about what I uncovered– the weekend changes are actually serious increases that I believe have been under-represented.
Here are the raw numbers of scheduled service in those routes that have changed:
Km of service, Saturday Schedule
| Route | Pre-Mar 2015 | Mar/15/2015 |
| Grand Total | 6281 | 9577 |
| 72R | 2192 | |
| 72 | 2060 | 2060 |
| 72M | 1858 | 1858 |
| 200 | 1257 | 1629 |
| 212 | 510 | 661 |
| 339 | 393 | |
| 46 | 152 | |
| 31 | 597 | 633 |
What kind of impact will this have? The elasticity of ridership with respect to service (i.e. the amount of change in ridership with a corresponding change in service) in North America is estimated to be between 0.5-0.7 in the short term, and 0.7-1.1 in the long term, or for every 1{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628} increase in service, a 0.5{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628} to 1.1{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628} increase in ridership is expected. As an example, taking the 72/San Pablo Corridor with a 56{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628} service increase, could translate into somewhere between a (0.5 * 56{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628}) = 28{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628} and a (1.1 * 56{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628}) =62{8472c33f139a04d7902a1525cca677786370fef6b48c8e38f5cec86fa878d628} increase in ridership.
AC Transit’s reality has changed from prior years, at least for now. Are they afraid to play this up?