An old talking point, concieved by rail opponents,, torturing the data. It only works because it excludes the the San Francisco Metropolitan Area. Each city comprising the individual rail lines is the same size as Honolulu, San Francisco, Oakland and Santa Cruz. The Oakland line is identical to Honolulu, same legnth, same population. The model used to estimate is called the "standard transportation model", a population concentrated around the line of 600,000 gets that ridership. It is used throughout the country to estimate public transportation ridership. When confronted with the actual model rail opponent Popoudopolis said he "disagreed with it". Without explaining why. As a professor he should have been able to do that.