Through press releases and ads, Metro is pimping out the new Gold Line Eastside Extension as a way for Downtowners and Eastsiders to get to the Rose Bowl festivities in Pasadena.
The line is guaranteed to see good numbers for the Rose Parade on New Year's Day, but how's the new six-mile extension doing on normal days?
"Metro is averaging about 10,000 average weekday boardings on the Eastside extension but we’ve also seen a 5-10 percent increase in ridership on the original Gold Line segment between downtown Los Angeles and Pasadena," writes Metro's Jose Ubaldo in an e-mail.
"After just one month and during the holidays, it’s really too soon to get a good handle on ridership. It will take several months to see a trend. We predicted 13,000 average weekday boardings by the end of one year of operation of the new segment.
Also, the Metro Blue Line started out with about 19,000 average weekday boardings when it opened in 1990 and ridership has quadrupled over the years."
A Los Angeles Times piece that followed the line's opening in November noted the ridership was low, but they were going on the 13,000 number that Metro has long touted as its projection (and was seen as a low-ball estimate).
