I believe your underestimating how much more appealing this will make the service. Personally I know a lot of people who are more inclined to drive instead of using the train because they have to plan their schedule around the trains schedule. A hour is a ridiculously long time to wait if you missed your train but 30 minutes is bearable and the average wait time goes from 30 mins to 15 for those not following a schedule. I know they'll be far more inclined to use the service now.
I have no doubt there are some people like that. I don't think I am underestimating it...I think I am applying some reasonibility tests to it.
To meet their projections of a 50% increase in ridership on the line (7.5 milliion new riders) "immediately" that would mean there would have to be a huge amount of them. If we assume it is really just 3.75 million return trips ...it means there are 10,302 return,
off peak trips each day the year that are being turned away because of the hourly schedule. Does that seem reasonable?
The extra 7.5 million riders means that the 263 new trains are going to, on average, bring 548.41 (off peak) passengers to the system? At the presser they stated the current average is 350 per train (off peak) so there are enough transit friendly (because the car crowd will still exist) shunning GO that the new service will attract an average of 156% above the current?
This doubling off off peak to achieve that projection of 7.5 million new riders would bring the weighted average off peak ridership from 350 to 450?
I am not sure how many off peak trains there are today (and don't care to count) but the new 263 trains are called a doubling of off peak...so if they are averaging 350...that means there are 92,050 off peak riders per week now....or 4,786,000 off peak riders per year out of the 26,668,400 riders (2010) on the line....so, roughly, 22 million riders use this line during peak times (ie. people going to and from work...GO's core constituency on all its lines)....yet we are told that "immediately" this increase in off peak is going to attract 7.5 million new off peak riders? So new off peak riders will be a little over 1/3 of peak ridership? Combined with existing off peak riders the off peak ridership will climb to 56% of the peak ridership? Does that seem reasonable?
What seems reasonable to me is that this will bump ridership a bit....but not by anything close to 7.5million people per year "immediately" (and not for some time) and i stand by my "guess" that the average number of people per train will decline in the short and mid term. If the 526 (est) off peak trains per week get, now, an average of 250 people per train that means there will be 6,838,000 off peak riders. That will be a stunning (IMO) 43% increase in off peak ridership.....a boost to the overall ridership of about 8%.....now that seems reasonable to me.
What it means, though, is to the extent that the $7.7 million of increased operating cost is somehow tied to the estimate of a 50% boost in the ridership on the line....that $7.7 million is questionable....no?