The Referent in the Report
A regional transit report reads: "Ridership on the Blue Line fell 8% after the fare increase, while the Green Line rose 3%. This surprised planners, who had expected the opposite. They had assumed that the Blue Line's shorter trips made riders less sensitive to price. The data suggest otherwise, and the agency now faces a choice: roll back the Blue Line fare or extend the increase to the Green Line to test whether the pattern holds."
1. Identify what "This" in the second sentence refers to, and explain how you know.
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"This" refers to the divergent result: Blue Line down 8% while Green Line up 3%. The next sentence confirms it, since planners expected "the opposite" of that split. A careless reader might attach "This" to the fare increase alone, but the surprise is the contrast between lines, not the increase itself.
2. What does "They" refer to, and what does "the data suggest otherwise" contradict?
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"They" refers to planners. "Otherwise" contradicts the planners' assumption that shorter trips make Blue Line riders less price-sensitive. If that were true, the Blue Line should have held up better than the Green Line; instead it fell while the Green Line rose. The pronoun chain and the contrast word "otherwise" carry the argument.