Brief
Transit trips on bus and heavy rail: 84.4% in 2025
American Factbook
Published
Data retrieved
Transit agencies reported 8,050,799,881 trips to the National Transit Database for 2025. Buses carried 3,792,481,870 of them, 47.1%, and heavy rail carried 3,002,695,019, 37.3%. Together the two modes carried 6,795,176,889 trips, 84.4% of the year's total. The other 15 modes in the file carried 15.6% between them.
Bus and heavy rail carried 84.4% of transit trips in 2025
Each mode's share of the unlinked passenger trips agencies reported against a mode to the National Transit Database for 2025, most first. A trip is one boarding of one vehicle.
Source: The Federal Transit Administration
About this chart
The figures
| Mode | Share of trips | Trips | Reporting records |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | 47.1% | 3,792,481,870 | 1,157 |
| Heavy rail | 37.3% | 3,002,695,019 | 16 |
| Commuter rail | 4.8% | 388,900,599 | 27 |
| Light rail | 4.6% | 369,085,501 | 22 |
| Demand response | 1.8% | 148,012,678 | 1,944 |
| Bus rapid transit | 0.9% | 74,817,645 | 20 |
| Ferryboat | 0.9% | 72,473,169 | 41 |
| Trolleybus | 0.8% | 64,443,552 | 4 |
| Commuter bus | 0.6% | 46,567,734 | 153 |
| Streetcar rail | 0.5% | 39,959,188 | 25 |
| Vanpool | 0.3% | 24,248,504 | 112 |
| Monorail/automated guideway | 0.2% | 12,872,223 | 6 |
| Hybrid rail | 0.1% | 5,898,013 | 6 |
| Aerial tramway | 0.1% | 4,289,915 | 2 |
| Cable car | 0.0% | 3,311,757 | 1 |
| Inclined plane | 0.0% | 515,166 | 3 |
| Alaska Railroad | 0.0% | 227,348 | 1 |
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The two modes come from very different numbers of reports. Heavy rail's trips come from 16 reporting records; bus trips come from 1,157.
Demand response, service dispatched on request rather than on a fixed route, is the reverse case. 1,944 of the 2,243 records that reported a mode reported it, and it carried 148,012,678 trips, 1.8% of the total.
What the figures count
A trip is an unlinked passenger trip, the database's measure: one boarding of one vehicle, so a ride that changes from a bus to a train is two trips. Each share is a mode's trips out of the trips agencies reported against a mode. A further 3,267,140 trips were reported with no mode, by 96 records, and are in no mode's figure and no share.
A reporting record is one agency's report, an NTD ID under one state parent. One record can run several modes, so the records on each mode do not add up to the records that reported a mode.
What it cannot show
The file holds one report year, so this brief shows no change over time. A trip count weighs a short bus ride the same as a long commuter rail journey: it measures boardings, not distance. The database does not say why riders use one mode rather than another.
What this cannot show
- A state, an agency or a city is not in this brief: each share is of the nation's trips, by mode, and a mode's trips are the sum of every record that reported it.
Sources
- Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database — transit service by agency and mode, 2025 report year, Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database. U.S. Government work. Retrieved November 5, 2026.
- Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database — every reporting transit agency, 2025 report year, Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database. U.S. Government work. Retrieved November 5, 2026.
Every figure above is the recorded result of a query checked into the repository alongside this text. Continuous integration re-runs those queries and refuses the change if a number here and a number there disagree. Read the methodology, or the datasets behind it.
Published by the American Factbook. An independent publication.
How to cite this page
Cite the page’s address and the date printed on it, and name Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database as the source of the figures.
American Factbook. “Transit trips on bus and heavy rail: 84.4% in 2025.” Updated November 9, 2026. https://americanfactbook.org/transit/analysis/transit-two-modes-carry-most-trips. Source: Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database — transit service by agency and mode, 2025 report year, https://data.transportation.gov/d/74ek-quhs.