2014 “Metrobus Survey” Complete

August 5th, 2015

Metro is pleased to announce that the 2014 “Metrobus Survey” is officially complete. Stay tuned for results.

30s buses 081514

In Spring 2014, we announced that the 2014 Metrobus survey was commencing. If you remember, the Metrobus “survey” is not a customer opinion survey but rather a focused survey on ridership and travel characteristics, more like a census.  It has a specific legal purpose related to our compliance with Federal regulations as well as informs our own understanding of customer demand.  Just like the last time we did this in 2008, this survey’s purpose was to:

  • Update ridership by jurisdiction of resident for use in Metrobus’ operating subsidy allocation
  • Collect demographic, travel, and access data for Title VI compliance, system planning, and operation analyses

We are happy to announce that it was completed this past spring.  The final operation report from the survey company was given to the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments in March 2015 for data cleansing.  The final datasets were delivered to Metro in May 2015 and the primary users of the data at Metro are satisfied with the initial results.  The data sets are extensive, and cover all Metrobus routes, times of day, and directions to a statistically significant level.  Weekends and weekdays are included as well.

The biggest change in terms of the management of this survey, compared to the last survey (2008) was that this was a two season survey, which covered all time periods and routes.

  • Spring 2014 – bus trips between 3pm-5am were surveyed.
  • Fall 2014 – bus trips between 5am-3pm were surveyed.

The comprehensiveness of the 2014 survey will be more useful in the future as the 2008 survey was a weekday only survey, so currently only weekday comparisons are possible.  There were also a few new questions on this survey. It asked the riders about their English proficiency, if they were using transit benefits, and if they were federal government employees.  Some of the questions were also worded slightly differently. As a result, comparing the results between 2008 and 2014 is not exactly an apples to apples comparison.

So far the results of the survey have been used for the Public Participation Plan (PPP) for Metrobus changes.  Also Bus Planning is using it for fleet planning purposes. There will be more blog posts in the future about projects that are using the survey data. Stay tuned!

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