Monorail Ridership Question

[Pghdrumr]

My opinion, the Monorail provides me with a convenience that I value when I stay at a Monorail resort. Getting to EPCOT is a simple transfer at TTC. Much less aggravating than getting on a bus that stops at other resorts. Plus, its efficient MASS transportation. At most times of the day, those trains are full. Plus, who can argue with the view. This is the only way everyone should enter EPCOT.

 

[Twirlnhurl]

Thanks again for the help determining a semi-reasonable ridership number to use. I modeled the distribution of trips using estimates from Touring Plans hourly park crowd estimates to model the daily distribution of trips on the system:

The hourly trip distribution looks like this:

I am not sure about the trips on the Resort line between the Grand Floridian and Magic Kingdom. I think the trip distribution for people who drive to MK is different from people staying on site.

If you want to read more about my monorail modeling project, I have more information here. Once again, thanks for helping me with this.

 

[Pghdrumr]

With the many MK parking lot closures this week and guests being required to park at Epcot, the Epcot monorail was much busier than normal

 

[Twirlnhurl]

I know it has been a long time since I've posted in this thread. But on the off chance that anyone who helped me with my questions about monorail ridership are still around, I thought they might be interested to see how I used that information.

If a monorail network connected most of the resorts, it would result in daily ridership greater than most rapid transit systems in the United States. Depending on the specific combination of stations and routes, I estimated that there would be between 178,000 and 329,000 trips per day. But none of my estimates take into consideration the Skyliner. I would be interested to hear if anyone has any thoughts on these numbers.

If you want to see more, my full writeup is here: http://armchairparkstuff.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-monorail-projectbuild-out-monorail.html?m=1

 

[s8film40]

If a monorail network connected most of the resorts, it would result in daily ridership greater than most rapid transit systems in the United States. Depending on the specific combination of stations and routes, I estimated that there would be between 178,000 and 329,000 trips per day.

Really interesting! The current is 120,000 to 200,000, on the low end that doesn't seem like much of an increase and on the high end it isn't even doubling it.

 

[Twirlnhurl]

The current is 120,000 to 200,000, on the low end that doesn't seem like much of an increase and on the high end it isn't even doubling it.

If those numbers are for total ridership of all WDW Transit, that would make sense. My research had indicated that the total ridership of the existing system was around 50,000 per day. So I wouldn't expect the expanded monorail to have a greater number of total origin-destination pair trips than the total number of trips for all WDW transit. But I would expect a greater number of reported trips due to the way trips are counted.

The 178,000 to 329,000 trips are calculated like other transit statistics are calculated--treating each time a passenger boards a vehicle as a new trip. The existing WDW transit network is point-to-point, so there are very few transfers where one trip is counted as two because passengers rarely need to switch vehicles. But my monorail networks were made so that to get from any resort to any theme park would require up to one transfer.

 

[s8film40]

If those numbers are for total ridership of all WDW Transit, that would make sense. My research had indicated that the total ridership of the existing system was around 50,000 per day. So I wouldn't expect the expanded monorail to have a greater number of total origin-destination pair trips than the total number of trips for all WDW transit. But I would expect a greater number of reported trips due to the way trips are counted.

The total average for the monorail system is 120,000 per day. The maximum is around 200,000.

 

[Twirlnhurl]

That's what I get for responding in the morning. I went back and checked, and I had used a baseline of 50,000 riders on the existing monorail system. When you consider that about half of the riders are not staying at a Disney hotel, that number seems awfully low, considering that MK along has more guests than that in an average day. I will dig into that more and let you know what I find.

 

[Twirlnhurl]

The total average for the monorail system is 120,000 per day.View attachment 225598

Where is that chart from? I got my 50,000 number from the RCID 2020 Comprehensive Plan.

 

[s8film40]

Where is that chart from? I got my 50,000 number from the RCID 2020 Comprehensive Plan.

It was an older one, just the first one I opened. I see now where the 2020 one says 50,000. It says average daily riders, so not trips. Obviously anyone going in is also coming out and maybe some of them make a connection so I can see how that would match up to around 120,000. This also matches up to what I knew from talking to people who worked there when they still used the turnstiles and had daily counts. That's where I got the 200,000 number, I always heard they would reach that on big holidays.