Talk:List of North American rapid transit systems

Canadian Ridership Figures Issue
The figures on the ridership-per-capita list are incorrect for Canadian cities. Metropolitan area populations listed for Canadian cities (Montréal, Toronto, and Vancouver) are inconsistent with Statistics Canada CMA population estimates of approximately 3.7 million, 5.6 million, and 2.3 million respectively for 2010. The ridership per capita figures seem to be more-or-less in accord with the official CMA population estimates, however. Thom.boivin (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Calgary and Edmonton
I think that the Calgary LRT should be on the list in this article. The qualification in the first sentence says: "heavy rail rapid transit systems". But most of those systems on the list are really just LRTs; they may claim to be 'heavy rail' but if you actually check them out (just go to their websites), they're really the same LRT systems that Calgary has.

And, I've ridden on some of them; they're the same as Calgary's.

So if you're including the systems from, say, 12-20 on the list, you should include Calgary's.

At 259,600 daily ridership, that puts Calgary's system at around #12 on the list, ahead of Atlanta. Perhaps higher, since 259,600 is a 2009 number, and Calgary's ridership in 2010 was undoubtedly higher (2010 seems to be the benchmark year for the list).

Edmonton is another rail transit system I would put on the list and it definitely qualifies, since much of it is underground. At 95,000 daily riders, it would be at #15, ahead of Miami.

But Calgary for sure.


 * C-Train
 * Edmonton Light Rail Transit

Thank you.

Atikokan (talk) 05:03, 29 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Just for clarification, both of the above systems have at-grade crossings (i.e. are not fully grade separated) which explicitly rule them out as "heavy rail" systems, which is why they are included in the Light rail ridership list and not here. --IJBall (talk) 19:44, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

Table Format Issues
The way this table is set up is... odd, and substantially different from other such Wiki pages (e.g. List of metro systems, List of tram and light rail transit systems, even the ridership table on the Light rail in North America page).

The biggest issue here is use of the 'flagicon' templates in with the System (column), rather than use of the 'flag' templates of each nation in the Country column's cells.

In fact, it would probably be better if this table and its columns were re-ordered in the order: Rank, City, Country, System, Weekday Ridership, Route Mile, and Riders Per Mile (more like the other Wiki columns listed above...). Or, alternatively, the column order could be more similar to the current order: Rank, System, Country (with possibly the use of just 'flagicon' templates, rather than 'flag' templates), City, Weekday Ridership, Route Mile, and Riders Per Mile.

The references should then be put into the cells of the above columns, and these odd little "reference columns" should be eliminated. Doing this would then allow for the "Route Mile" to be converted to "Route Length" allowing for both miles and kilometers (using the 'convert' template) to be listed in that column. Cutting those odd "reference columns" may also allow enough extra room for an Annual Ridership column to be added just before the Weekday Ridership column.

Does anyone strenuously object to these kinds of changes to this table's format?... --IJBall (talk) 02:11, 17 August 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, I've started work on reformatting this table. The next steps should be to:
 * Update ridership figures to Q1 2013, wherever possible (and it should be possible for the US, Canada & Mexico).
 * Add a new column for Annual Ridership (2012) (this data is available from both APTA and INEGI).
 * Move the referencing within the cells (or, for Ridership Stats, mostly referencing at the top of the 'Ridership' columns); then the odd 'Reference' columns in the current version of the table can be eliminated.
 * Lastly, I'd advise adding columns for # of Stations and # of Lines (see, for example, List of United States rapid transit systems by ridership), but this last step is optional.
 * NOTE: The Monterrey, Mexico & Guadalajara, Mexico systems are actually considered light rail. (See, for example, List of tram and light rail transit systems and List of North American light rail systems by ridership pages). As such, they should actually be deleted from this table.
 * Again, if anyone has questions, concerns, comments, or suggestions, post them here! --IJBall (talk) 03:11, 19 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The main steps to reformat and renovate this table are now complete - ridership figures have been updated to Q1 2013, the References have been integrated with the stats inside the table and the odd little "Reference columns" have been eliminated, and the Annual Ridership figures for 2012 have now been added (except for the Santo Domingo Metro - hopefully, someone else can find those figures...).
 * I may come back and add new columns for # of Stations and # of Lines to this table later, but it's a very low priority for me right now.
 * Anyway, hopefully people can enjoy the reformatted table here!... --IJBall (talk) 22:22, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

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Panama Metro - Ridership issue
The Panama ridership numbers appear to be inconsistent.


 * Average weekday ridership: 180,000
 * Length: 22.9 miles
 * Average ridership per mile: 21,176

Dividing the first number by the second only gives 7,860.

Most likely, my hunch is that the first number above may be wrong. The line was quite crowded each time I rode the metro. We would need to check the stats.

Also note: There is quite a bit of incorrect data about the Panama Metro's current stats online, since there are quite a few new lines in the planning stages, with many different map versions published. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rianoj (talk • contribs) 04:13, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
 * It looks like the 'Ridership per mile' number is wrong, no matter what. It would be better if we could get an updated ridership source for Panama (the current source is from 2015). But using the 2015 source, the system was 13.7 km at the time (from the same source), and 180,000 divided by 13.7 is 13,140. So "21,176" is wrong, no matter what – it's likely a "cut-and-paste" error... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:32, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

So I found this: https://www.elmetrodepanama.com/demanda-mensual/ on the Panama Metro website Avyk37 (talk) 19:11, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Validity of APTA as a source
The source for American and Canadian systems is the American Public Transportation Association but they are not a publicly accountable government agency. Though their members are transport agencies the APTA is not. Their motivation is to lobby for more funding so exaggerating data is in their best interests. I am bringing this up because I’ve been looking at some individual agencies own data for 2019 ridership (TTC, WMATA) and it vastly less than APTA figures e.g. Toronto itself reports subway ridership of 231mil while APTA says 474mil, Washington itself reports 185mil while APTA says 237mil. DuckweedJones (talk) 00:02, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

I’m working on collecting data from each agency to change the numbers all at once to avoid inconsistencies from a gradual change. Will change when done. Unless anyone can explain why the APTA data seems so inconsistent? DuckweedJones (talk) 00:53, 7 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Yes, the change would absolutely be undone, as grabbing figures from every agency 1) leads to apples-to-oranges comparisons, and 2) is unnecessarily complex when we've got one source that contains nearly all of the figures needed, with an apples-to-apples comparison. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 03:35, 7 November 2022 (UTC)


 * Apologies I’ve realised while APTA is unlinked trips, I’ve been looking at each agencies ridership which is linked trips. So APTA is accurate for unlinked trips BUT I stink there is an issue with APTA as ridership and unlinked trips are different things altogether. Considering this article is about RIDERSHIP should APTAs unlinked trips really be used? For reference transit agencies use linked trips as ridership and US DoT Bureau of Transportation Statistics states “unlinked trips are total boardings on an individual vehicle. Linked trips refers to the total number of riders”. I know this article states that the data is unlinked trips but I feel that is like having the title Ducks and then saying this article is about chickens. I personally expected that the table would be comparing linked trips based on the title.


 * In summary shouldn’t an article about ridership use linked trips rather than unlinked trips? DuckweedJones (talk) 13:05, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Q4 2022 figures
APTA's Q4 2022 figures are apparently out now, if anyone wants to update this article. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:10, 18 March 2023 (UTC)