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I'm struggling with this average vs potential. If I stand on a 3.5m wide sidewalk on average I'm going to see 15,000 people pass me by? And there is no room for potential improvement as the sidewalks are completely full on average? And how are we figuring cars can potentially be improved by 33%? Are all cars 3/4ths full already?
I'm very pro public transit, I'm just unclear what is being shown in this chart.
They're showing capacity, i.e., a 3.5m sidewalk can move about 15k people per direction per hour. I'm guessing there's leeway for cars depending on intersection types/design, speed, etc., whereas there is much less variation in average speed for pedestrians.
Average should be a measured real world quantity. A max theoretical value should never be average unless it's literally always at the max... on average.
The wording on the chart isn't the best, but I'm presuming they mean average capacity, not average ridership, because every city and every system will have its own factors that can impact the specific capacity of their transit modes. E.g., one system may have double-decker suburban rail vs another's single-decker, or one system may have articulated buses vs another's non-articulated. These differences would result in differing capacities, but the purpose of the chart is to show a ballpark number for what the typical capacity of a 3.5m corridor of each type would be, based on averaging system capacities in presumably many different cities.