Understanding why ridership is rising in some places but not in others is critical to formulating effective transit policy. That's why we've created Transit Insights, a new tool that combines information from the National Transit Database, the U.S. Census, and the route maps at Transit.Land.

While many factors influence transit ridership, a study from McGill University highlights the most important one: cities must properly fund their public transit operations, especially bus services, to ensure a steady increase in ridership.

Where the MTA and Cuomo administration may decline to tread, graduate students have stepped in to fill the void.

Open transit data makes using transit easy. It creates transparency and an informed public, facilitates citizen engagement, enables new research, helps transit agencies make better-informed decisions.

The 2016 national transit ridership data was just released, so we created a video to help you figure out how to access and use the data:

TransitCenter sat down with Chris Whong, one of the leading advocates for open data in transit and a keynote speaker at our recent Staten Island Bus Hackathon, to talk about his views on the topic.

The era of open data in public transportation has just begun.