AARON SMITH
For this specific trip, the constraints are as follows: Weekday Peak time From Target Field (West end of CBD) To Terminal 1 (first stop of the airport) Using these constraints, the trip would cost $2.25 which is the most expensive a ride can be at any time. The trip would also take approximately 26 minutes. Using the same constraints, Google Maps showed that the trip would take approximately 47 minutes. Compare that with the automobile route which Google says will take about 30 minutes. Conclusions To put in plainly, the METRO Blue Line is a system that works. It is not the most aesthetically pleasing system, nor does it have the most amenities. It is a system without controversy and one major issue that has been solved (ice in the airport tunnels). It was over-budget but completed early. METRO Transit has a user-friendly web page with helpful information, a Facebook page, Twitter, Istagram, Flickr, and even a YouTube page that has videos that allow you to ride a line from one end to the other looking out the front and side of the cars. It is a diverse system that connects customers with multi-modal transportation. The city of Columbus has a lot that it can take from this system, but it should look elsewhere if it is looking for problems.
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With the original construction of 12 miles of track, the cost per mile of track (including costs such as infrastructure improvements and station construction) comes out to be $59.6 million per mile. Ridership Having a new light rail system is nice and everything, but what about ridership? When the plans were approved in 2000, the expected average daily ridership was 24,800 rides by the year 2020. That number was exceeded by 65%. According to the American Public Transportation Association, ridership peaked in 2012 with an average of 35,000 daily rides, and the latest reports show an average of 24,600 daily rides. Although still above the projections for the original plans, ridership has not steadily increased, instead following a bell shaped curve. The Blue line accounts for 13% of the total ridership of the entire METRO system. The line also services the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that had 33,897,335 passengers and 431,418 flights. Numbers are neat to look at, but it doesn’t help the average rider on an average day. The purpose of looking at the METRO is to relate it to Columbus and linking the central business district (CBD) with the airport. In this case the Blue Line does exactly that, and more. On the METRO webpage, there is an interactive map and a trip planner that allows customers to plan out their trip ahead of time to estimate arrival and departure times, travel times, and cost.