In the wake of COVID-19 and its impact on public transit nationwide, a new metric is emerging to help gauge the efficiency with which bus systems operate.
Ridership per capita.
Stated simply, you take the number of unlinked passenger trips in a year and divide it by the metro area population.
Based on that metric, and most others, Mountain Line Transit Authority runs a pretty tight ship along with all those buses.
The Community Transportation Association of America recently ran the ridership per capita numbers on every public transit system in America — some 509 of them — big and small.
Mountain Line is far and away the most efficient system in West Virginia and ranks 46th nationally.
The next West Virginia system on the list is in Charleston, the Kanawha Valley Regional Transportation Authority, at 137.
If you include only systems of comparable size operating in areas of similar population density, Mountain Line is 20th nationally.
Mountain Line General Manager Maria Smith said the ridership per capita equation is essentially another way of determining the cost per hour to operate a system.
Looking at the 2023 numbers from the National Transportation Database, Mountain Line provided 1,592,984 unlinked trips in an urban area of 77,620 for an average of 20.52 trips per person.
“The more riders we have on board, the higher our efficiency and the more we are making the best use of every dollar of funding,” she said. “I am aware we run an efficient system; however, it is good to see the numbers against other systems across the state and country.”
Smith explained per capita ridership as a measuring stick has arisen post pandemic as public transit ridership is down everywhere, meaning raw rider numbers don’t paint the full picture.
Mountain Line’s ridership number in 2020 and 2021 were less than half of what the system averaged the five years prior. The annual data since has shown a slow but steady rebound, but still remains well below pre-COVID totals.
“Post pandemic, it’s just kind of a whole new world, and we’re trying to look at different analysis because the ridership numbers haven’t come back as strong. Whether they will or not …” Smith recently told the transit board.
As for other West Virginia transit systems, Ohio Valley/Eastern Ohio Regional Transportation Authority (Wheeling) came in at 185; Mid-Ohio Valley Transit Authority (Parkersburg) was 265 and the New River Transit Authority (Beckley) ranked 430.
Pittsburgh Regional Transit came in at number 38. Port Authority NY/NJ ranked number one, providing more than 3.2 billion rides in a population center of just over 19.4 million people.
Interestingly, the transit system that ranked 45th — directly ahead of Mountain Line — is Mountain Line out of Flagstaff, Ariz. Yet another Mountain Line, this one in Missoula, Mont., ranked 66th.
