APTA Q3 stats are out

[Crawford]

I know transit in NYC has a spring and fall surge, and summer and winter decline. Fall has the biggest surge. Fall is peak visitor season in NYC, everyone is back to work and school, and tons of major events, so not shocking. In the summer, much of the city clears out, especially wealthy areas, and January-February have the worst weather, the fewest tourists and lots of people leaving town on vacation.

[38 Geary]

- 180,000 for BART +9.68% YTD (can add another 4,900 for eBART +11.30% YTD)
- N/A for Muni Metro +16.58% YTD
- 8,100 for Muni Cable Car -8.31% YTD
- 14,500 for VTA Light Rail -10.89% YTD
- 37,100 for Caltrain +55.69% YTD
- 4,300 for SMART +35.26% YTD
- N/A for Muni Trolleybus -0.02% YTD
- 156,300 for AC Transit bus -0.13% YTD
- N/A for Muni bus +1.04% YTD
- 77,100 for VTA bus -4.95% YTD
- 35,400 for SamTrans bus +3.69% YTD
- 5,000 for Golden Gate Transit bus +7.65% YTD
- 4,000 for Golden Gate Transit ferry +8.64% YTD
- 8,800 for San Francisco Bay ferry +16.08% YTD

[mhays]

Muni's numbers are screwed up again.

They counted Muni's motor buses as around 6,800,000 per month but only 5,300 per weekday. Most agencies are around 1/25 of the monthly total each weekday, so it should be 272,000 or so. Light rail would be 114,000 or so (+/- several percent). The agency should be about 550,000 per day.

[Crawford]

I get the sense APTA is a clown car. There are always obvious errors, like no one ever read the PDF.

[mhays]

And now Q1 is out!

https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/2026-Q1-Ridership-APTA.pdf

[mhays]

Atlanta showed a 51.89% increase in heavy rail passengers. This is essentially all due to changing counting methodology.

The old method used fare gates, but some were broken or bypassed. The new method was human counts in person and by video with sampling and extrapolations. Next they'll switch to new fare gates and count the old way.

A 52% increase based on methodology?! This highlights how far off the APTA numbers can be, even when the agencies fill out the forms correctly. (When they don't, the numbers can be off far more.)

This is why ACS commute stats are a key data point. While they only count commutes, at least they used the same methods so everything is parallel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHIhxdd9BwA

[mhays]

Let me blather on a bit more: Seattle.

Sound Transit plus the three county systems totaled 502,100 rides per day. That's up 2.3% (King County Metro, the biggest agency), 21.72% (Sound Transit), 12.6% (Snohomish), and 5.97% (Pierce).

If you add the Monorail (7,000) and the walk-on portion from Washington State Ferries (call it 8,000) that's about 517,000 rides per day for the metro area. Still well short of the 600,000 we got pre-WFH but getting better.

For rail we totaled 136,600, including 117,200 for Link Light Rail (I'm counting 7,000 for the Monorail though it's not listed); the rest is commuter rail and streetcars. There was a small jump due to a doubling of frequency on much of the existing Link (Downtown to Lynnwood), followed by two weekdays of the new 2 Line connection to the Eastside at the end of the quarter. The real jump will be apparent in Q2.

[38 Geary]

Some Bay Area stats, for average weekday ridership. Still a long ways to go, especially for BART which was in the 410s pre-pandemic and Caltrain was in the 65s.

Rail (Total 501,900)
- 286,200 for BART +16.1% (can add another 4,900 for eBART +7.30%)
- 113,600 for Muni Metro +18.63%
- 53,800 for VTA Light Rail +42.14%
- 39,000 for Caltrain +28.92%
- 4,400 for SMART +25.42%

Bus (Total 633,400)
- 118,900 for Muni Trolleybus -16.72%
- 167,800 for AC Transit bus +4.10%
- 270,600 for Muni bus +13.24%
- 76,100 for VTA bus +27.09%

Totals: 1,135,300

[llamaorama]

That seems like a huge jump for VTA light rail and bus. What changed?

[38 Geary]

Originally Posted by llamaorama

That seems like a huge jump for VTA light rail and bus. What changed?

Might be errors in the reporting. The raw and % numbers are likely off for VTA light rail. The raw numbers seem more likely for the VTA bus, but not sure about the % increase.

[mhays]

The whole report is typically packed with errors. They seem to let agencies fill the forms out and do no QC or coaching along the way.

[mhays]

Sound Transit's April numbers are in, showing the effect of the new Link connection between Seattle and the Eastside that opened in late March. The three total light rail lines (one is a streetcar in Tacoma) totaled 155,000 per weekday in April vs. 117,200 in Q1. May was similar.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-new...ght-rail-ridership-jumps-to-no-1-in-u-s/

Link always hits its peak in Q2 and especially Q3 due to tourism and baseball. Apparently these factors overcome the UW being out of session and locals going on vacation. I'll guess 160,000 in Q2 and 170,000 in Q3.