In public transportation, patronage or ridership is a type of forecasting

Forecasting

Forecasting is the process of making statements about events whose actual outcomes have not yet been observed. A commonplace example might be estimation for some variable of interest at some specified future date. Prediction is a similar, but more general term...

 or statistic

Statistic

A statistic is a single measure of some attribute of a sample . It is calculated by applying a function to the values of the items comprising the sample which are known together as a set of data.More formally, statistical theory defines a statistic as a function of a sample where the function...

 for studying the average quantity of passengers ("patrons") carried per certain time in a mode of public

Public transport

Public transport is a shared passenger transportation service which is available for use by the general public, as distinct from modes such as taxicab, car pooling or hired buses which are not shared by strangers without private arrangement.Public transport modes include buses, trolleybuses, trams...

transit system. The concept should not be confused with the maximum loading capacity of one particular vehicle or the whole transit system. The gathered or predicted ridership data is usually referred by transport planner to align the route and decide what kind of vehicle will be employed.