How many people ride trains each day?
First we need to define trains.
Are we talking about federally regulated commuter railroads? Do we include long-distance Amtrak trains in that? Subways? Light-rail? Trolleys? And are we talking about people in the whole world, or the United States, or Uzbekistan?
New York City Transit (which includes the Subway, Staten Island Rapid Transit and the publicly operated buses) serves approximately seven million people per day. The New York State MTA also operates the Long Island Railroad, which carries about 274,000 people per day on average, and Metro North Railroad, which carries about 250,000, making the MTA the operator of the two largest commuter railroads on the continent. I’ll let other people answer for other cities.
I would include all of those except trolleys for the whole world.
According to this chart, around 2 billion people worldwide rode trains in 2002.
Actually, on closer inspection, that is a chart of passenger-kilometers (total km. ridden by rail passengers). I’ll just slink away now.
In Bombay alone, on the intra-city network:
[ul]
[li]6 million people commute daily on this network[/li][li]average peak hour load being 4500 – 5000 commuters per train[/li][li]14-16 standing passengers per square metre of floor space![/li][li]The average frequency of trains arriving at Churchgate in the morning peak hours is 1.8 minutes and trains leaving Churchgate during the evening peak hour is 2.0 minutes[/li][/ul]
http://members.rediff.com/localtrain/current.html
http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Mumbai_suburban_railway
http://www.wr.railnet.gov.in/bctweb/mumbai_suburrban_general.htm