Urban Grand Rapids

The Rapid

Ridership

Continuing the tradition of predictions and evaluation, here are the predictions for the year 2025. Before anyone takes these too seriously remember how the 2024 predictions turned out.

1. ) Venues continue to expand; especially of the eatertainment variety. Between downtown, Bridge St, and Creston six new eatertainment venues will open or be under development.

The municipal agenda for the Planning Commission meeting on 2025-01-23 is 👉here👈

2411 Burton St SE

This is an application to sell beer and wine out of an existing fueling station and convenience store. The sale of alcohol is already an established aspect of this area's "Neighborhood Character"; being available at 1810 (D&W Fueling Station), 1814 (D&W), 1874 (Condado Tacos), 1962 (Stan's Taco), 1978 (Cafe De Miro), 2410 (Rite-Aid), and 2470 Burton St (Fresh Thyme).

The year 2024 has concluded, so now is the season for reflection and prognostication. How do you feel about the prospects of 2025? This image captures my current feelings about my city going into 2025:

Over on the ancient forum site UrbanPlanet.org there is 👉a thread where regular participants make predictions👈 at the new year for the upcoming year, and review their predictions from the previous year. Each year proves that predictions are a perilous business. It is all for fun. With 2024 now in the bag I will tally my score to lend credence to the notion that prediction making is a fool's errand.

The Rapids' ridership is showing steady "recovery"; it is deemed "recovery" as, post-COVID, everything must now be bench-marked against 2019, the last year of the before times. By the raw numbers the Rapid closed October at ~65% of 2019 ridership. That is 703,844 rides, deemed UPT or Unpaired Trips by the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA), in October 2024 compared to 1,088,772 in 2019. So far (Jan - Oct) ridership in 2024 is ~63% of comparative 2019 ridership.

The municipal agenda for the Planning Commission meeting on 2024-12-12 is 👉here👈