Skip to Content
Streetsblog San Francisco home
Streetsblog San Francisco home
Log In
Buses

Fewer People Are Riding the Bus Because There Are Fewer Buses to Ride

Source: The Century Foundation
In most big American cities, bus service shrank between 2006 and 2012. No wonder bus ridership is dropping too. Graphic: The Century Foundation
false

Remember when the Great Recession decimated transit agency budgets, but the White House and Congress refused to step in and fund bus service while spending billions of dollars to subsidize car purchases? Well, the hangover continues to this day, leaving bus riders in the lurch.

Last year, bus ridership in America shrank 1 percent. While rail ridership grew 4 percent, enough to lift total ridership slightly, buses are still the workhorse of U.S. transit systems, accounting for most trips. If bus ridership is shrinking, something is wrong.

Jacob Anbinder at the Century Foundation has been poring over the data. He notes that in most of the nation's biggest cities, bus ridership was on the upswing until the recession. Since then there's been a noticeable falling off. His chart below shows bus ridership in America's ten largest urban regions:

New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Washington DC, Atlanta, Boston

It's not surprising that bus ridership fell when a lot of people were out of work, Anbinder says. What's disturbing is that bus ridership is still slumping even as the economy has picked back up.

But the explanation is simple enough. As Anbinder shows in the chart at the top of this post, a lot of transit agencies cut bus service during the recession, and for the most part it's still not back to pre-recession levels.

Stay in touch

Sign up for our free newsletter

More from Streetsblog San Francisco

Caltrain Needs Help with Bike Stuff

Interested in helping guide future bike and pedestrian features on the Caltrain system? Time to step up... or ride up, as the case may be

November 4, 2024

Alameda Advocates Celebrate Clement Bike Heaven

The tiny island city-state keeps hitting it out of the park with new, concrete, pretty-darned-quick-build infrastructure

November 1, 2024
See all posts