Are outbound commuter rail boardings by station seriously not included in this thing for the second time in a row?
I found outbound ridership per line, but per station doesn't appear to be in here. Again.
Maybe I'm just the only person in the whole world who thinks that might be useful information to have. I don't know.
They don't have detailed outbound data by station (except in the MPO report). The MPO report summarizes the different sources of commuter rail ridership that are available:
(quote from the MPO report)
Limitations of Other Commuter Rail Ridership Information Sources, and are summarized below:
Unlike rapid transit and bus services that are operated directly by the MBTA, the commuter rail system has never had faregates or fareboxes that can count passengers. Conductors on board each train must collect fares and inspect passes, but they do not record each transaction. Monthly ticket and pass sales figures can be used to estimate ridership, but they do not show the distribution of trips by day or by station.
-Conductors are required to file headcount reports showing the total number of passengers on each trip each day, but these are usually rough estimates rather than actual counts and are inconsistent with figures obtained by other means.
-MBCR Train Audits are performed a few times each year by conductors, who count the number of riders by fare-payment type boarding each inbound train at each station on one weekday, one Saturday, and one Sunday. The Train Audits usually portray much higher ridership than indicated by platform boarding and alighting counts, onboard peak load counts, or daily totals derived from monthly ticket and pass sales figures.
-Peak-period passenger counts, which are taken twice each year by consultants to MBCR, include inbound AM peak alightings and outbound PM peak boardings at North Station, South Station, Back Bay, and seven other stations in fare Zone 1A or with direct rapid transit system connections. These are reasonably accurate but do not provide any information about off-peak ridership or ridership at any stations that are not included in the counts.
