Monthly NTD Ridership by RTPA#
Provide CalSTA with NTD Monthly Ridership by each RTPA.
Per the SB125 Final Guildelines
Caltrans will provide all RTPAs with a summary report each month that meets the requirements of this statutory provision, drawn from the data reported to the National Transit Database. The data will be drawn from the NTD at: Complete Monthly Ridership (with adjustments and estimates) | FTA (dot.gov). RTPAs are required to post a link to this report and data in a manner easily accessed by the public, so that ridership trends within their region can be easily reviewed.
This report shows general ridership trends by Monthly NTD Reporter, mode, and type of service for California RTPAs from 2018 to present. Unlinked passenger trips are reported, as well as the change from the prior year. For example, July 2023’s change would be the change in July 2023’s reported values against July 2022’s reported values.
Definitions#
FTA: Federal Transit Admisistration.
MODE: A system for carrying transit passengers described by specific right-of-way (ROW), technology and operational features. Examples: Bus, Cable Car, Light Rail.
Monthly NTD Reporter: Full Reporters that submit Monthly Ridership (MR) and monthly Safety and Security reports to NTD.
NTD: National Transit Database. A reporting system that collects public transportation financial and operating information.
RTPA: Regional Transportation Planning Authority.
TOS: Type of Service. Describes how public transportation services are provided by the transit agency: directly operated (DO) or purchased transportation (PT) services.
UZA: Urbanized Areas. An urbanized area is an incorporated area with a population of 50,000 or more that is designated as such by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.
Methodology#
Ridership data is ingested via the FTA Complete Monthly Ridership report, per the SB125 guidelines. Then filtered for Reporters residing in California UZAs. These California Reporters are grouped by RTPAs, then aggregated mode and TOS. The processed data for each RTPA is saved to a public respository, see datasets below.
Frequently Asked Questions#
Q: Which Monthly NTD Reporters are in this report? Why are some Reporters missing from an RTPA?
Per the NTD Complete Monthly Ridership Report webpage:
File Summary: Contains monthly-updated service information reported by urban Full Reporters.
Transit operators/agencies that are Urban full reporters, that submit monthly ridership data to NTD from 2018 to present, are included in this report. Reporters that were previously Urban full reporters, but are currently not, may appear. This may result in Reporters showing zero or partial ridership data in the report.
If a Reporter is not a monthly reporter, or has not reported data since 2018, they will not appear in the report.
Examples:
Reporter A is an urban full reporter from 2019-2022, then became a reduced reporter for 2023. Reporter A’s ridership data will be displayed for 2019-2022 only.
Reporter B is an urban full reporter from 2000-2017, then became a reduced reporter for 2018. Reporter B will be named in the report, but will not display ridership data.
Reporter C was a reduced reporter form 2015-2020, then became an urban full reporter and began submitting monthly ridership data to NTD for 2021. Reporter C’s ridership data will be displayed for 2021-present.
Q: Where can I download my RTPA’s data?
Data from this report can be downloaded from the Cal-ITP public data repository, see Fully Processed Data Download below. A Google Account is required to access the repoisitory. Once logged in, navigate to ntd_monthly_ridership, click the year-month you want to download, then click download.
The data is a zipped folder of all RTPA data for the year-month.
Q: How can my RTPA/Agency meet the requirements of the SB125 Guidelines regarding how “to make publicly available a summary of ridership data”
Per the SB125 Final Guildelines:
RTPAs are required to post a link to this report and data in a manner easily accessed by the public, so that ridership trends within their region can be easily reviewed
Hyperlinking this report on your RTPA’s/Agency’s webpage is a common method to meeting this requirement.
Datasets / Data Sources#
Who We Are#
This website was created by the California Department of Transportation’s Division of Data and Digital Services. We are a group of data analysts and scientists who analyze transportation data, such as General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) data, or data from funding programs such as the Active Transportation Program. Our goal is to transform messy and indecipherable original datasets into usable, customer-friendly products to better the transportation landscape. For more of our work, visit our portfolio.
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