2021 Transit Data

Transit agencies carried 45 percent as many riders in 2021 as in 2019. To do so, they operated vehicles 81 percent as many miles as in 2019. However, they managed to spend 98.5 percent as much money on operating costs, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration.

Nearly empty transit buses and trains don’t save energy or reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Photo by Jim Fischer.

The annual National Transit Database reports are based on the fiscal years of the transit agencies, which can end anywhere from March 31 to December 31. This means the 2021 data are the first full year since the pandemic began. By mid-2022, transit ridership had recovered to about 60 percent of pre-pandemic numbers, but it is likely that transit agencies are still spending as if they were getting 100 percent of riders.

I’ll do a more thorough analysis of the new numbers in the next few days. In the meantime, here are a few highlights:

• Operating costs per passenger-mile rose from 94¢ in 2019 to $1.57 in 2020 and $2.23 in 2021.
• Fares, meanwhile, hovered around 29¢ per passenger-mile in all three years, meaning operating subsidies grew from 64¢ per passenger-mile in 2019 to $1.95 in 2021.
• Capital spending, like operating expenses, were around 99 percent of 2019 levels as transit agencies saw no reason to curtail their expensive projects just because few people were riding transit.
• Total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in 2021 had declined from 2019, but not by as much as the number of transit revenue-miles, so transit’s energy efficiency would have declined even if ridership had remained the same.

As usual, I have posted a single spreadsheet summarizing the most important data in the more than two dozen spreadsheets that make up the database. These include trips, passenger miles, vehicle revenue-miles and revenue-hours, average weekday trips, fares, operating costs, capital costs, vehicle numbers and sizes, and energy consumption. Using standard factors, I’ve calculated total British thermal units and grams of greenhouse gases per passenger-mile.

All of these data are presented by transit agency and mode in rows 1 through 4353. Rows 4355 through 4357 have 2021 totals and for comparison totals for 2020 and 2019 as well. Rows 4360 through 4382 have totals by mode such as light rail and conventional buses (which the FTA calls motor buses). For calculating energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions per passenger mile, rows 4384 through 4405 show totals by mode for only those transit systems that reported energy consumption. (The FTA doesn’t require smaller transit agencies to report energy usage.) Finally, rows 4410 through 4897 show totals by urban area in descending order of size (as of the 2010 census).

I’ve included a few items that aren’t in my previous years’ summary spreadsheets. First, in 2018 the FTA began reporting fares in two categories: fares paid by passengers and fares paid by organizations. For example, some transit agencies have contracted with universities which pay the agencies a fixed annual sum to allow their students to ride transit at no additional charge. A case could be made that organization-paid fares aren’t really representative of what people are willing to pay to ride transit, so I included the breakdown here.

Second, my previous summaries have broken down capital costs into “expansions,” meaning new transit systems, and “existing,” meaning rehabilitation of older systems. But smaller transit agencies aren’t required to break this down, so I’ve added a third column showing unspecified capital spending.

I hope you find this information useful.