Enquirer Poll: Cincinnati Streetcar to Make $22,440,207 in Profit Per Year
According to a recent Enquirer poll, the Cincinnati Streetcar will generate $25,940,207 in farebox revenue per year. After operating costs of $3,500,000 million per year are subtracted, that results in a net profit of $22,440,207.
The poll asked-
If the streetcar ran every 10 to 20 minutes, and cost $1 to ride …. How often would you personally ride the streetcar? Almost every day? Once or twice a week? Once or twice a month? Or, less often that that?
The results are below.
This assumes, conservatively, that “once or twice a week” meant once a week and “less often than that” meant once a year. Even if “less often that than” means “never” then the streetcar will, according to this Enquirer Poll, still generate over $22 million in profit per year. Additionally, reducing “almost daily” to five rides per week would still result in $15 million in profit.
While Cincystreetcar.com feels these ridership projections are probably too optimistic, if this Enquirer poll is accurate, then all 52 neighborhoods will benefit from the millions of dollars of profit the streetcar will generate each year.
May 24, 2010 at 8:39 am
even if it makes a dollar, it will make more money than the $4 billion dollar bridge to no where.
May 24, 2010 at 8:57 am
What’s the net profit estimate for driving everywhere?
May 24, 2010 at 2:38 pm
So the Enquirer poll suggests that nearly half believe it’s a waste of money AND that it will generate over $20 million a year in operating profit. Either the poll is severely flawed or the half is severely mistaken.
May 24, 2010 at 2:56 pm
Hmmm.. The numbers don’t make sense. It is implying that EVERY resident (333,336) will ride the trolley – Thus 19% of 333,336 = 63,333 will ride everyday x 365 days for a total of $23mill and down the line. That number would have to be revised downward to take into effect several things – those who wont ride it on principle, those who it won’t benefit (if you’re outside the trolley corridor, why would I drive over to hop on the trolley), those who are not of age to ride it (I think the total 336K number is ALL of Cinci – young and old), and those who don’t want to give up their car. The “revenue” will start to come down dramatically.
May 24, 2010 at 3:26 pm
do we really want to base projections on this weak poll by the enquirer? 600 people polled via landline first of all, and do we have stats on whether these people even live in the city or hamilton county? i’d like to see a more widespread poll done to get a true picture of things
too many conflicting things are coming out of this vague poll and too few people were actually polled to get legitimate data
May 24, 2010 at 4:59 pm
Guys, I think the point of this article is that the Enquirer’s numbers are complete and total BS. They tried to smear the Streetcar by claiming that it doesn’t have widespread support, but in the process, they actually show that it would generate a huge profit.
May 24, 2010 at 8:50 pm
Um, Keith. CincyStreetcar is simply exrapolating the poll results, which is exactly how poll results are intended to be used. If a poll of 1000 people says that 500 will vote for you, then we would have to say that 50% of the city of cincinnati would vote for you.
It’s really that simple. 19% of the people polled said they would ride every day. Presumably those people who answered know better than you or I whether they will actually do that, or not, based on where they live and work, where they like to go for entertainment, etc.
May 25, 2010 at 10:34 am
But we have to be careful, because we all know that someone on the other side will pick the $22mill number and try to show our arguments as outlandish – therefore none of our numbers will ever make sense.
Also, if we have fringe supporters who are looking for a reason to support the streetcars and latch on to the number, they’ll be supporting for the wrong reason.
May 25, 2010 at 10:40 am
I realize this post is somewhat in jest of this ridiculous poll, I just think giving the enquirer and their poll more publicity (however it is spun) is a bad move. There are too many articles out re-interpreting this data – I think that time would be better spent conducting a more legitimate poll that actually encompasses the views of the 52 neighborhoods and asks straight forward questions instead of giving the enquirer more exposure on their anti-urban antics
May 26, 2010 at 8:20 am
Clearly, these numbers show that extrapolating the results of the poll into potential ridership numbers is just folly. Which brings the results of the poll into question, but i think we all realize that stats/polls can be interpreted anyway the reader would like.
If the steetcar can have a ridership that is 15% of these ridiculus numbers than I think it would be a success. That would put it on par with Portland for daily/annual ridership.
July 14, 2010 at 2:30 pm
[…] CincyStreetcar Blog doesn’t discuss the poll results themselves, but higlights the math on […]