Grading Metro Frequencies

In light of Metro Cuts, how does Miami’s estimated rail frequencies compare to other cities?

Miami’s SMART Plan proposes adding 6 mass-transit corridors to a city with only 1. These fan out across the county, and extend the current Metrorail lines. Despite this plan, Miami-Dade’s 2018 County budget cut $17 million from transit operations, forcing reductions in bus and rail service. Some of those cuts have already been implemented, including reducing the overall service hours and number of buses. In comparing this service to 7 other lines across the world, Miami ranks 6th at peak service, and ties with 4 others for 2nd place at off-peak hours. To illustrate this, I have created the chart below.

Note: These are estimated times given by each municipality, and do not reflect times when the train is running late or some trains are out of service.

While Miami’s ridership has been steadily decreasing over the last 5 years, the answer is not to cut service, but to treat Metro like a competitive option. In creating more unreliable service, Miami-Dade County is making public transit less desirable than other options. A market force approach would cause them to react to the lowered ridership through an increase in service and reliability. This would make public transit more desirable and increase overall ridership, getting people out of their cars and helping the city as a whole.

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Please see RAW Data and Weekend graph below.

RAIL FREQUENCY COMPARISONS (MIN)

	Weekday Peak	Weekday Base	Weekend Peak	Weekend Base
Kyoto Karasuma Line	4	10	6	12
Washington Metro	4	15	12	20
Houston Metrorail	6	15	12	15
Seattle Lightrail	6	15	10	15
LA Expo Line	6	20	12	20
Miami Metrorail	7.5	15	15	15
San Juan Tren Urbano	8	16	16	16
Atlanta MARTA	10	15	20	20