HP/Cypress Park & Ride Survey Results
Tuesday, March 13, 2007 11:59 AM
Those of you who ride our new service from HP/Cypress Park & Ride may remember filling out a survey last month.
Julie Fernandez, manager of strategic analysis at METRO, has evaluated the results. Here's what she found:
- 27% of riders are completely satisfied with the service.
- 53% are mostly satisfied.
- 33% said they wanted more frequent service.
- 61% want the High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane extended or created into a diamond lane.
- 13% wanted more downtown stops.
There were 237 respondents to our survey, which was an 80 percent response rate, higher than our typical Park & Ride surveys, which average a 65 percent response rate.
"We wanted to get an idea of who was riding the route. We expected to get some new riders, but we also expected riders from the 214 Northwest Station to transfer," said Fernandez. "Operations wanted to know if we needed to add another morning trip. Marketing wanted to find out: How did riders hear about this route?"
When asked which morning trip they preferred, 70 percent said things were fine the way they are. But 24 percent - 55 respondents - said they wanted a 5:15 a.m. trip.
There was such a pent-up demand for this service that we added another morning bus run two weeks after launching service. That was unprecedented. We also had the highest average customer boardings for the first month of operating a Park & Ride.
The overwhelming majority - 96 percent - were previous METRO customers. Forty percent of the respondents have ridden METRO more than five years. Only 7 percent - eight riders - had ridden less than a month. And only eight riders said they had never ridden any other METRO bus route.
"Eighty-six percent of the 217 route riders had ridden the 214 previously," said Fernandez. "It does alleviate congestion and provides more convenience to the 217 riders.
Where are your fellow passengers going? On the morning of the survey, distributed two and a half weeks after service began on Jan. 22, 90 percent said they were going downtown - where the bus has four scheduled stops.
Seven percent were headed to the Texas Medical Center. And the rest of you were headed to the Galleria, Uptown and Greenway.
Once METRO signed the lease with HP to use this temporary lot, we had two days - Thursday and Friday - to educate the public before service started on the following Monday. Thirty-nine percent found out about the service via flyers distributed by our staff; 36 percent found out from our bus posters; 33 percent from our Web site and 20 percent from the electronic sign on the HOV lane.
"We got phenomenal ridership without a lot of publicity - granted, this is reaching current riders," said Fernandez.
Good news: Only 2 percent of those surveyed said they were dissatisfied with the HP/Cypress Park & Ride service.
The results will go to operations planning which will consider the information as it tweaks routes during the year. It will also go to marketing to help shape future strategy.
"Our question was mainly: How did people hear about it? We'll keep that in mind when we promote future service. We would have done more newspaper advertising if we had had time, but the time between when it was authorized and when it started was very short," explained Fernandez.