Just before miami's metrorail opened, ridership projections for the system indicated that (depending on pricing assumptions) as manyas 202, 000 riders might use the system daily. With this in mind, the university of maryland (um) planned to undertake expensive improvements next to university station. In 1983, a pretransit survey was undertaken on the um main campus to discern the probability that the campus community would use metrorail. The overall conclusion was that 5, 796 persons expressed an intention to access the campus using metrorail "at least one time per month or less." Applying a rule from the transportation planning literature suggested that 427 persons would take metrorail to campus on a randomly selected weekday. In 1987, a posttransit survey was conducted at the um metrorail station. All persons disembarking metrorail and entering um property were counted. Approximately 313 interviews were completed. The results indicate that about 350 persons were riding metrorail to um each day in 1987, a number within an acceptable level of error of the 427 persons predicted from the behavioral intent questions on the 1983 survey. Animportant point is that the student body changed almost completely in the 4-year span. The principal implication is that the rule of dividing by a number between 3 and 5 (4 was used in this study) is an accurate guide even when considering populations that change betweenthe time of a pretransit survey and the institution of the transit service, such as is true with students, the elderly, employees, and other groups. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1297, Public transit research: management and planning 1991.
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