On Bus Ridership Numbers in Madison, WI 2019-2025
Seven years ago before the pandemic, Madison’s mayor wrote in her introduction to the 2020 capital budget that she wanted to see annual bus ridership reach 18,000,000, from what was then under 13,000,000. She wrote about being “ ... committed to doing this work through the dual lenses of equity and sustainability. ... and to doing it in a fiscally responsible way." Then the pandemic happened.
Source: https://www.cityofmadison.cominews/2025-01-29/early-ridership-numbers as of June 22, 2026
This piece limits itself to issues of ridership numbers between 2019 through 2025 because that is complicated enough for one essay. The other issues will be addressed in future pieces. And although we’ll probably never really know the true situation, we can at least help clarify the situation now. Because matters at the time got extremely muddled. Differences and misinformation abounded. Several major impacts happened around the same time. But now, dust has settled and more information has come in. Scientists have the dubious luxury of sitting back and waiting for a hot topic to cool before making an appraisal.
We look at four features: 1) the COVID-19 pandemic; 2) the network redesign; 3) the addition of Automatic Passenger Counters; and 4) the start of a Bus Rapid Transit line. Together, they help us understand the basis for the efficiency part of an “efficiency/equity” tradeoff in public programming.
COVID-19 Ridership dropped by an estimated 63% in 2020 compared to in 2019. As people adjusted to a new reality, the public was exhorted to avoid riding the bus if they could. If they had to ride the bus, they were asked to enter though a backdoor instead of passing by the driver in the front if they could. Regular 40' buses were limited to 15 passengers and ran on a reduced Saturday schedule during the week.
FIGURE 1
Source: March 2026 Complete Monthly Ridership data from National Transit Database (https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd)
If Madison had mirrored the national average, bus ridership by the first quarter of 2025 would have returned to about 85% of its pre-pandemic level. Metro-specific figures from the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Data Base (FTA’s NTDB) for the whole year of 2025 (not just the first quarter) suggest that the rebound in the Madison Area was closer to 100%. See Figure 1.
The blue line in Figure 1 shows the actual number of rides (unlinked trips) on Metro as reported by the FTA. The yellow line shows what an 85% recovery by 2025 might look like. The red line reflects a full recovery trajectory.
The steepest rebound – 53% – appears to have occurred between 2021 and 2022. The rebound between 2022 and 2023, though still on a full recovery trajectory (depicted by the red line) was a much lower 13.5%. Metro’s 2023 Annual Report described the latter increase as “steep,” coyly suggesting that the steepness was due to the network redesign discussed more in the next section. rather than comparing 13.5% to the earlier 53%. An example of self-serving misinterpretation?
Network Redesign Madison’s transit system underwent a radical redesign even as the pandemic raged. Launched in June of 2023, service hours had reverted back to the pre-COVID era. The new system would leave about 72% of Madison residents within about the same distance from a regular bus as before but about 20% would live farther away and 8% would be closer. Outside of a handful of core routes, most lines would have 30 minute intervals between service with reductions to 60-minutes on weekends and late evenings.
In an online oral presentation of the proposed scheme in early 2022, a city transportation planner suggested that the cost of operating the new BRT line would be equivalent to about 20-25% of Metro’s operating budget then going to the operation of local mainline buses. He also opined that the new system would be more equitable.
There was special difficulty in having adequate public participation among the bus riding population during the pandemic however. There was also an unanticipated difficulty in obtaining the additionally required local funds for operating the BRT line This caused some people to favor waiting. Instead, the Mayor took already inadequate operational funds from the local bus system that often serviced vulnerable and underrepresented populations to finance the new BRT line – in the name of equity no less.
Technically, a BRT system is supposed to add to a local bus system since the two bus systems are very different, complement one another and cannot replace one another. And interestingly enough, original plans on Metro’s website seemed to acknowledge this: The proposed BRT ... will complement, not replace, Metro’s current service. But such remarks were scrubbed from Metro’s later website. It was necessary to go to the Wayback archive to find the remarks quoted here. Could the reason be that in the new system, BRT would indeed replace, not complement, Metro’s current service? If so, it could be best for those in charge not to remind the public of that fact.
Proof Positive? Soon after the redesign launch, the Mayor issued a blog claiming that the transit network redesign proves positive ... and that preliminary numbers show us that ridership this June when compared to June of 2022 increased by 5%. That is a great initial indicator that better service encourages greater ridership, ... . However, without any change in route design, one could expect ridership in June of 2023 to be more than in June 2022 just due to recovery from the pandemic.
And indeed, the June 2021-June 2022 ridership change before any network redesign was a full 65% while the 2022-2023 increase of 5% was much less than what one might expect for a full recovery in ridership by 2025 (the blue vs. red lines in Figure 2).
The Mayor argued that the 2023 number could be deceptively low since the redesign had “ ... greatly reduced the number of transfers that riders need to make to complete a trip. ...” Some people have suggested that a ride in June of 2023 should be counted as 1.3 June 2022 rides. Probably. We just do not know but Figure 2 shows what that hypothetical 1.3 might look like.
FIGURE 2
source: June 2026 Complete Monthly Ridership data from National Transit Database (https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd)
That is, Figure 2 pictures what normal and above-normal levels of recovery might be and what a hypothetical equivalence of 1.3 to the 2023 ridership figure also might look like. As in Figure 1, the blue line shows actual (or reported) June ridership (only on mainline buses this time) relative to a range of 85-100% recovery between 2019 and 2024 (yellow and red), using FTA-certified mainline unlinked passenger trip data. Using a range is supposed to help convey the idea that we are dealing with estimates and approximations, nothing definite or specific. (The “actual” data stop in 2024 because ridership reporting changed after August 2024. We would discount 2024 numbers anyway, for reasons explained more below.)
Automatic Passenger Counters In a major upgrade, Metro installed a new Automatic Passenger Counter (APC) system in the summer of 2024. It had been trying unsuccessfully to add to its older farebox counting method with such devices as weight sensors under the mats of a bus’s front door (an early type of APC). Before, fareboxes would count rides when someone slid a pass through the box or tapped it with a magnetic card. Separately, bills and coins would be identified properly or improperly.
There were obvious problems with these counting methods, especially if someone did not pay or enter the bus in a conventional way. Bus drivers were supposed to hit a button on the farebox to count each rider not counted another way. One could always expect a little imprecision with that system due to human error or distraction. But having to hit the button each time or sense a separate weight each time were serious limitations when what was supposed to be unconventional was in fact conventional.
Consider UW-Madison’s contracted service for example, service that accounted for a significant number of Metro rides. For a set fee, Metro provided students and staff an unlimited number of no-fare rides around campus. Crowds would board a bus through both the front and rear doors after a class or event, overwhelming both the driver’s and sensor’s abilities to count accurately.
Apparently, the farebox counting mechanism was failing in 2024 even for more conventional rides. There were reports of buses having zero passengers according to farebox counts even when those buses were known to have passengers. The official data that had to be reported despite this shortcoming are consistent with this claim. Just look at Figure 1 or Figure 2 for instance. Reported figures for 2024 were lower than expected.
FIGURE 3 - The Irma Matrix
IRMA MATRIX Automatic Passenger Counter
https://www.iris-sensing.com/products/irma-matrix/
The new passenger counter system is called the IRMA MATRIX by a company called iris. The sensor can be mounted over a door (see Figure 3) or on a surface. Only one sensor per door is necessary because it senses whether the passenger is entering or alighting (regardless of crowd size). It uses its own infrared light so does not depend on external lighting. And it transmits data via a PoE or Power over Ethernet system.
Although nobody appeared to contest the APC-derived counts, they had to go through a rather rigorous verification procedure before being certified by the Federal Transit Administration. That included checking and re-checking IRMA MATRIX counts with manual counts. In the meantime, the FTA database had to report the distorted 2024 figures. In recently showing a chart of annual ridership figures for Metro from 2003 to 2025, the Greater Madison Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) had to make it clear that the 2025 numbers were not yet official. It appears that they finally are a few months later.
Bus Rapid Transit Soon after installing the new counting system, Metro launched its starter Bus Rapid Transit Line on Sept. 22, 2024. It appears that the city was so intent on claiming the new BRT system a success however that it compared 2024 counts from the new counting system with 2023 counts from the old counting system. Is that a valid way to compare?
FIGURE 4
As there were different numbers floating around and my own appraisal was yet again different (I used certified numbers available at the time), I had the luxury of waiting until the dust could settle and we could get better sanctioned numbers. But it was disappointing that such numerically-knowledgeable people as the engineers heading the city’s Department of Transportation and Metro Transit were willing to compare uncomparable figures because it fit their narrative. And it was disappointing that the media would uncritically parrot those numbers.
Rapid Route A Route A did not exist before 2023 and did not become a BRT line until 2024. Thus the time span in Figure 5 of only a couple of years is not ideal but at least better than using figures for only one year. Figure 5 refers to December only because the figures for November (in Figure 4) were similar. The red line reflects the official counts provided by a public records request (now presumably required by Metro for any information). That includes the undercount in 2024 and the APC count in 2025. The blue line reflects the more accurate but still unofficial APC counts (also shown in Figure 4) and the green dotted line shows the hypothetical extension of the blue line to the finally certified 2025 APC counts. That green dotted line depicts an increase of over 19% while Route A ridership in December accounted for close to one sixth of the system rides. Although Route #80 on the UW-Madison campus had more passengers in 2024, Route A had become the most used by 2025.
FIGURE 5
Unofficial figures from Figure 4, Official figures from Metro Transit Sept. 11, 2026
and hypothetical figures based on simple rate of change calculation for rides 2023-2025.
It is way too early to assess what this means, but the numbers are going in a good direction.
Concluding Remarks
The purpose of this essay has been to clarify the ridership numbers of Madison’s bus system during the tumultuous years of 2019 through 2025. Given all the alternative facts swirling around at the time, it was necessary to wait until the dust could settle a bit and more information came available before trying to get to the real story. We could then deal with four major ridership-related events: 1) the pandemic, 2) a “revenue neutral” network redesign aimed at installing Bus Rapid Transit, 3) the addition of a sophisticated automatic passenger counter system, and 4) the launch of an east-west Bus Rapid Transit starter line. Together, these ridership issues form the basis of an efficiency part of a public transportation’s system’s efficiency/equity construct.
The story is mixed and may have inadvertently left out critical pieces of information. It includes the story of a robust system bouncing back vigorously from severe strain. It describes the misinterpretation of numerical figures from people who most certainly knew better but found support for what they wanted you to see. It is the story of a well thought-out Plan A thrown in the loop by a pandemic, by a hostile state legislature and Supreme Court and by the lack of a Plan B. It addresses the efficiency part of an efficiency/equity public program construct.
In the end, it leaves me recommending something that I recommended years ago: We need to put more flesh on a sound skeleton. Madison, Dane County and the state of Wisconsin need to re-prioritize their transportation budgets so more funds go to transit in a transparent manner. Redesigning the bus system using a pre-2019 “revenue neutral” cap that cut local bus service was NOT the way to go. Especially when the city of Madison’s Mayor had just finished giving Dane County $1.9 million to widen – without transit – the road from Cottage Grove into Madison. We need a system that at once includes Bus Rapid Transit, truly embraces the democratic idea of community engagement, and applies true notions of access, equity and frequency.
Comments
Post a Comment