The Public Transportation Ridership Report is a quarterly report of transit passenger ridership for U.S. and Canadian transit agencies.  The report includes quarterly and year-to-date estimated unlinked transit passenger trips for the current and previous year by transit mode.  In addition, agency specific ridership is provided for participating transit agencies.  Reports are published approximately 60-75 days after the end of the quarter.

Latest Report: Fourth Quarter 2023 Ridership

Ridership information in Excel format

Methodology

The data in this report pertain to public transportation agency services operating directly operated (DO) and/or purchased transportation (PT) modes. There are four data items which are reported by public transportation agency participants — average weekday for the current calendar year, monthly totals for the current and past two calendar years. The data items are reported as the number of unlinked passenger trips. Unlinked passenger trips are defined as the number of passengers who board public transportation vehicles. Passengers are counted each time they board vehicles no matter how many vehicles they use to travel from their origin to their destination. Details for each system are only shown if there is data for some or all months in the current year (up to and including the current quarter) and the previous year.

For the rail systems (heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail and trolleybus) that do not report data for the current quarter, it is assumed that the percentage growth for a missing agency or agencies is equal to the percentage growth for the entire category. The national percentage increase for the category is applied to stored data values for any missing agencies in that category and the total estimated count is reflected in the “Projected Total” line on each category page. Responding rail agencies represent 99.9% of ridership in those categories.

Bus agencies are sorted into population groups based on the population of the urbanized area (UZA) that they serve. The ridership numbers for the quarter for these population groups are calculated by taking ridership data from the National Transit Database (NTD) and extrapolating it for the entire population group using the percentage change in ridership experienced by agencies in the population group that reported data to APTA as a base.

Data for Canadian agencies is not projected – only the total for agencies that reported to APTA for the quarter is shown on the summary page.

For more information, contact Matthew Dickens, Director, Policy Development and Research.​​​​​​

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