natronics.org

2019 septa Ridership Data

Published in September 2021

Philadelphia's transit agency septa Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. publishes yearly line-by-line breakdowns of ridership and revenue stats Full statistics for each route were previously published at http://septa.org/strategic-plan/reports.html though that page has since been removed. It's still avaliable on archive.org. which we can take and get a sense of how septa operates.

For every bus, trolley, and train, septa has the following operating statistics for fiscal year 2019:

What Are The Most Popular Lines

Using this data we can look at all routes with at least 10,000 weekday average riders:

RankRouteVehicle TypeAverage Weekday Riders% Change from 2018Β 
1Market Frankford LineSubway
178,975
-0.9%
πŸ –
2Broad Street LineSubway
112,252
0.6%
πŸ –
3Paoli/ThorndaleRail
20,962
6.9%
πŸ –
447Bus 40'
16,530
8.6%
πŸ –
518Bus 60'
16,049
-5.2%
πŸ –
6Lansdale/DoylestownRail
16,016
4.6%
πŸ –
7GBus 40'
14,103
-7.5%
πŸ –
823Bus 40'
14,005
-2.2%
πŸ –
952Bus 40'
13,245
-6.2%
πŸ –
1013Trolley
13,201
2.6%
πŸ –
1111Trolley
13,026
0.6%
πŸ –
1234Trolley
12,580
0.1%
πŸ –
1336Trolley
12,107
-5.8%
πŸ –
1433Bus 60'
11,979
-6.2%
πŸ –
1510Trolley
11,328
1.5%
πŸ –
16Media/ElwynRail
11,098
0.2%
πŸ –
17TrentonRail
11,087
-6.5%
πŸ –
18RBus 40'
11,037
15.3%
πŸ –
19NHSLRail
10,893
3.5%
πŸ –
2056Bus 60'
10,882
-7.0%
πŸ –
21West TrentonRail
10,807
-5.5%
πŸ –
2226Bus 40'
10,612
-5.2%
πŸ –
2321Bus 40'
10,358
32.1%
πŸ –
2460Bus 60'
10,333
-12.3%
πŸ –
2517Bus 60'
10,199
-8.2%
πŸ –
2666Trackless Trolley
10,063
-2.9%
πŸ –

One thing that really strikes me is just how many more people the two subway I'm just going to say "subway" to refer to both the MFL and BSL for convienence lines carry compared to anything else in the system!

Median Ridership By Vehicle Type

Vehicle TypeMedian Weekday Riders% Change from 2018
Subway145,613-0.1%
Trolley11,7170.4%
Rail9,917-2.6%
Trackless Trolley4,425-4.2%
Bus2,503-5.3%

A typical single bus line in the septa system moves about 2,500 people a day, while a subway line can move over 100,000 daily.

Though there are a lot of buses, and only two subway lines. Comparing the totals instead:

Total Ridership By Vehicle Type

Vehicle TypeTotal Weekday RidersNumber Of Routes
Bus473,494125
Subway291,2272
Rail131,11514
Trolley79,0378
Trackless Trolley17,8283
Total:992,701152

Out of the almost one million riders a day, nearly half are moved by a Bus.

Ridership Change

Most of the lines seemed to have a small decrease in ridership, though a couple had massive gains. If we take the total ridership numbers between 2019 and 2018 we can make a histogram of the changes

Biggest Ridership Loss

RouteVehicle TypeChange since 2018 [count][%]
42Bus-2,245-31.6 %
14Bus-2,010-20.5 %
Market Frankford LineSubway-1,610-0.9 %
60Bus-1,270-12.3 %
GBus-1,057-7.5 %
17Bus-836-8.2 %
18Bus-834-5.2 %
LBus-823-12.0 %
52Bus-821-6.2 %
56Bus-761-7.0 %

Biggest Ridership Gains

RouteVehicle TypeChange since 2018 [count][%]
15Trolley+4,06549.8 %
21Bus+3,32432.1 %
RBus+1,68815.3 %
Paoli/ThorndaleRail+1,4466.9 %
47Bus+1,4218.6 %
113Bus+1,01513.6 %
XHBus+95019.6 %
Lansdale/DoylestownRail+7364.6 %
Broad Street LineSubway+6730.6 %
107Bus+59843.9 %

Costs

There is also some interesting data around both revenue and total expenses per route, so we can look at the cost to run a route compared to how much money it makes from fares.

On the whole, septa only makes about a third of its expenses from passenger revenue (fares) From septa's FY 2019 Operating Budget:

Passenger Revenue: $470.5 Million
Total Expenses: $1,453 Million
Overall Operating Ratio: 32.4%
Operating Deficit (before subsity): $942.6 Million
. But some lines are more profitable than others.

In general both costs and revenue scale with how many people ride a route. The busier it is, the more vehicles have to be deployed, with more operators, and more maintenance needed. Here we can see how it scales up.

But notice that mode matters. Here the regional rail (blue) costs are sigificantly higher than the bus (red) baseline.

However in 2019 septa had a entierly different fare structure for regional rail than for busses or trollies. The rail system was zoned so longer trips cost more. If instead we look at the operating ratioβ€”i.e., how much money a line makes compared to its costβ€”we see that the mode split goes away, and that there is much less of a correlation with ridership.

Maps

With ridership data we can make a map of the system, but drawn with line widths and colors scaled to the ridership numbers.

Zooming into just the core of Philadelphia

We can also see if there is a geographic component to the change in ridership numbers.

It's hard to see any one particular region that gains riders more than another. West Philly might be a touch more green, but the most popular lines are the ones that we might expect (lines that connect with center city or with major transportation centers).

Raw Data

Download a csv of the 2019 data used in the post:

Or browse some of the numbers as a table.