How is ridership counted?



The KC Streetcar Authority monitors and tracks daily ridership on board the KC Streetcar. Streetcar ridership, otherwise known as “Unlinked Passenger Trips,” is the national standard used by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) for calculating usage on public transportation systems across the county.

 

FTA Definition of “Unlinked Passenger Trips” (UPT): The number of passengers who board public transportation vehicles. Passengers are counted each time they board vehicles no matter how many vehicles they use to travel from their origin to their destination.

 

KC Streetcar ridership, or UPTs, is calculated by Automated Passenger Counters (APC) located over each door of each streetcar vehicle. Passengers are counted as they board and exit the streetcars, and the data collected shows which stops are the most used and which hours of the day are the busiest.

 
The ridership data is downloaded daily and reviewed by a third-party for accuracy. During July 2016, members from the Ride KC team performed thirty additional manual passenger counts in order to check the APC system for accuracy. The conclusion of that activity was that the APC counts were 98.6% accurate, and were undercounting 1.4% of actual counts.