Transit Carries 77% of Pre-Covid Riders in October

The nation’s public transit systems carried 77.3 percent as many riders in October 2024 as in the same month of 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is the highest level transit has achieved since the beginning of the pandemic.

The increase is likely due to more people returning to downtown jobs instead of working remotely. While President Biden seems content to let many federal employees work at home, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to order them to return to work, which will create an interesting situation as the new administration takes office in January. Musk and Ramaswamy have hinted that their real goal is to get many federal employees to quit, thus relieving the president of the necessity of firing them to achieve the goal of reducing the federal budget by $2 trillion.

Whatever the reason, transit in Washington DC is now carrying 81 percent of pre-pandemic numbers. This above-average rate is a turnaround from several months ago when DC transit was well below average. Other above-average regions include Houston (88%), Los Angeles (85%), Dallas (81%), Miami (80%), New York (79%), and Seattle (79%). Below-average regions include Phoenix (52%), Atlanta (58%), Detroit (60%), Minneapolis (61%), Chicago (70%), San Francisco (71%), and Philadelphia (72%).

As usual, you can download my enhanced spreadsheet that includes totals by year, mode, transit agency, and urban area. On the trips (UPT) and service (VRM) worksheets, the raw FTA data are in cells A1 through JX2302, with annual totals for 2002 through 2024 (to date) in columns JY through KU, mode totals in rows 2310 through 2331, transit agency totals in rows 2340 through 3339, and urban area totals in rows 3341 through 3831. Columns KV through KX compare October 2024 with October 2019, the years to date, and October 2024 with October 2023.