Interesting that Eglinton's avg weekday ridership is so high in comparison. Really shows how well used the Crosstown is going to be offpeak, which is believable considering day-time bus ridership on Eglinton.
Yeah, that definitely jumps out. I wonder if grade-separating some of the western portion and heading to Sauga as per SmartTrack will increase that number, and by how much. Decreased stops for increased speed/reliability.
I would think that the very low ridership in Stouffville corridor, as opposed to Lakeshore, Kitchener, Milton, and even Richmond Hill, is due to the fact that in 2008 Metrolinx had no intention to prioritize that corridor. If Stouffville only gets hourly trains, will other corridors are given priority and get an every 15-min service, then naturally the Stouffville ridership will be lower.
But if Stouffville is treated as one of priority corridors, then there is no reason it will trail RH, Kitchener, or Milton (might still trail Lakeshore, but not so dramatically).
I think Markham upped their growth and mode share numbers for the Unionville area since 08, which obviously would increase ridership (not to mention the project's political viability). So that might be a reason for it being bumped up in priority. But even without that, there may be a reason the numbers are so low. When looking at the recent YRNS report, it notes that a DRL Long and Surface Subway proposal (up to Sheppard/Don Mills) would slash Stouffville's ridership by almost 2k peak. This is somewhat surprising, seeing that the distance from the Stouffville line is fairly large. This leads me to believe that with Richmond Hill RER in place (which roughly follows the DRL Long/Surface shape), it would draw from Stouffville's potential. So perhaps at the time, Mlinx's computation concluded that RH would be a better bet for bringing in riders from Markham and NE TO.
But there are problems with the RH line, which could also explain why Stouffville was bumped up and RH dropped:
a) It needs realignment through Leaside. This would decrease length, increase speed, offer new station opportunities, and reduce flooding potential. Although this is necessary, it's costly and would be politically problematic seeing that it requires tunneling or a rail-trail reactivation.
b) Excluding the RH line from investment/upgrade improves the business case and ridership #s for the Yonge North subway extension.
c) It and the Don Valley corridor in general is being analyzed as part of the Yonge Relief Network Study.
Though one thing we don't know (or do we?) is how much a Scarborough Subway Extension would decrease Stouffville's ridership. It's gotta be somewhat substantial. With a DRL Long and SSE in place (not to mention Lakeshore East RER), I really see little need to make Stouffville GO such a high priority.
Edit:
Another reason why I think that 2008 Modelling report is worth its weight in gold is that it shows us holistic ridership data which has seemingly never been presented together since. Further to point b) I made above; in the 2008 model we're shown what effect we'd see if we built Richmond Hill RER
and the Yonge North extension to RHC. In the 2013 Yonge North BCA this was never included. All we were greeted with were projections for either/or -
not both. Seems odd that in BCA for a $700M/km subway extension we aren't given the opportunity to see to what effect a parallel service would reduce the business case for this subway. With the 08 model we know that its potential to divert is significant.
This, Stoffville's #s, and a few other points re: different lines are why I think that report comes in handy.
