Safety perceived or real is an issue, it is one of the "costs" and one of the components that factors into the reason "wait times" create so much "disutility" compared to in-vehicle time. It is perceived to be much more unsafe waiting on a street corner for a bus that may come (on which much of this disutility function is based).

Actual crime statistics for those on-board transit or at transit stations tells a much different story, as you are likely much safer on the bus, or the train, or at a station, covered by 6-8 surveillance cameras, or with an operator on board, and communications to law enforcement readily available, than one may be, actually living or working in some of the neighborhoods the train or bus goes through.

Guaranteed ride home programs do work in providing "back up" security to transit users, carpools, and vanpools, but only where such programs are in place at work places (remember that in most large urban areas work trips are only about 40% of total transit trips), they don't help students, tourists, shoppers, or others "stranded" by infrequent or disrupted transit service.

These guaranteed ride programs are helpful in marketing transit use with large employers, making folks feel less "stranded", in an emergency. However, these programs can be very costly on a per ride basis, although the good news is that most evidence shows there is little abuse of these programs by users. These are what I like to call "feel good" programs, popular with employees, scoring high in the "focus group" or on surveys. Unfortunately, at the "macro" level of regional transit use, guaranteed ride home is not an effective long term service substitute, if you are running your transit services in a manner that fails to effectively meet the consumers travel needs.

The fact is that guaranteed ride home programs are also only effective at the margins in contributing significantly to overall transit use, as they only are usually only available through large employers or employment sites, and not generally available to most transit users. This is also an inconvenient alternative to use, as many guaranteed rides home apply in the case of an "emergency", and they also entail additional delays in arranging the rides, getting picked up, and these guaranteed ride home programs often include distance limits, as well.

From the answer Dave supplied to my question, it would appear that SMART is not yet able to run the level of service on which the forecasted ridership estimates were based. So 1850 might just be right on target, or even may be better than what would have been expected, based on this "actual" level of service being offered.

Building an expensive rail system, and then running only very limited, or infrequent service, with large gaps during the day or early evening (and, did I get that right, even the peaks with SMART?) in service coverage, is a very poor way to encourage the kind of strong ridership you need to justify the investment. Just ask RCTC....

You don't need to operate all rail every two minutes, but a 90 minute service gap at rush hour on SMART..wow? It's another one of those things that makes one wonder if some of the folks making these decisions really do get some of the more basic concepts of how these things are supposed to work?