Midwest Transit Monitor

Create a Peer Report

Pick an agency. We'll auto-identify peers by ridership scale, operating budget, and mode mix. Edit the peer set if you want a different cut. Export the report as a branded PNG.

Compare

Target agency

Mode focus — click to toggle, combine multiple, or leave empty for agency totals

Add a peer manually

Agency Directory

Sort by any column. Hover any column header for the metric definition. Click an agency for the data summary. The directory has its own filters and is independent of the regional view above.

Midwest Transit Monitor — Agency Directory

All Midwest agencies

Scroll inside the table to see more rows, or narrow the list with the filters above.

Regional Summary

Zoom out: state-by-state totals and the regional map. Filters here are independent of the directory above.

By State

Sortable. Click By tier or By mode in any row to expand the breakdown for that state.

Regional Map

Each circle is one urbanized area, sized by trailing 12-month ridership. Click to find it in the directory.

Trips (TTM, urbanized area total)

One dot per urbanized area. Click to flash matching directory rows.

Methodology & data sources

Data sources

Agency identity, fleet, governance: 2024 NTD Agency Information.
Operating expenses (FY-detail): 2024 NTD Operating Expenses.
Multi-year service & expense by mode: 2024 TS2.1 Time Series.
Monthly UPT/VRM/VRH: latest NTD Raw Monthly Ridership module (per-mode + agency-level, no NTD adjustments).
Funding sources: NTD FY2024 Funding Sources (data.gov 4tmr-gwuu).
Geographic boundaries: Census urbanized area population from the NTD master file. State outlines from public US states GeoJSON.

Time periods

12mo (TTM): the most recent 12 reported months. Slides forward as data refreshes.
YoY % Change: 12mo total ÷ prior 12mo total. Same calendar lengths shifted exactly 12 months back.
Recovery vs. Pre-COVID: current 12-month total ÷ same 12-month period at the most recent fully pre-COVID anchor. Rolling — the anchor moves forward as the TTM rolls forward, but stays pinned strictly before March 2020.
FY2024: the agency's fiscal year ending in 2024. End month varies by agency (Jun, Sep, Oct, or Dec).

Key metric definitions

UPT (Unlinked Passenger Trips): NTD's count of boardings — every passenger boarding counts as one trip; transfers count separately.
VRM (Vehicle Revenue Miles): miles vehicles operated in revenue service.
VRH (Vehicle Revenue Hours): hours vehicles operated in revenue service.
UPT / VRH: productivity — passengers per hour of service. Higher = denser ridership.
UPT / VRM: productivity — passengers per mile of service.
Cost per UPT: Annual Op Cost (FY) ÷ UPT (FY). Both sides FY-matched.
Farebox Recovery: Fare Revenue (FY) ÷ Annual Op Cost (FY).
Funding mix: percent split of operations dollars across federal, state, local, taxes levied by transit, and fares & directly generated revenue.

Aggregation rules

Agency rollups: sum across modes and types of service (Directly Operated, Purchased, Taxi, TNC) for the agency.
State rollups: sum or weighted-average across agencies HQ'd in the state. Recovery is weighted by current trips.
Urbanized area rollups: sum across agencies whose primary UZA matches. Service area pop uses the max of member agencies' reported footprints, capped at 2× UZA population to exclude statewide-DOT outliers. UZA population is the Census value, fixed.
Mode focus (peer report): ridership, service supply, recovery, YoY, cost are summed for the selected mode(s) only. Funding mix and operations cost remain agency-wide (NTD does not report by mode).

Peer matching

Default suggestions: weighted score combining ridership scale (40%), operating budget (40%), and mode-mix overlap (20%).
With mode focus: mode-mix overlap drops out; matching uses only the focused mode's ridership and budget.
Sibling exclusion: dual NTD records for the same agency (e.g., Pace and Pace Paratransit) are not suggested as peers of each other.
User-editable: readers can add or remove any of the in-scope agencies (or UZAs in UZA mode).

Annual-only reporters (rural agencies)

Why they look different: Rural Reporters (5311-funded systems) file abbreviated annual reports rather than monthly ridership. Their rows show FY2024 totals where Full Reporters show trailing-12-month windows.
Peer reports never mix the two: if you select a rural target, only other annual-only agencies are suggested as peers. The row labels switch to "FY2024" and "FY2024 vs FY2023" so comparisons stay apples-to-apples.
UZA Population is left blank: NTD often populates this field for rural agencies with a state-wide rural-pool aggregate that isn't the agency's actual service area. We don't display misleading aggregates.

Known limitations

Late reporting: the raw monthly file does not impute missing reports, so a few agencies will have the most recent month under-counted until they file. Symmetric across agencies.
VRM sheet corruption recovery: the latest raw file's VRM sheet has malformed XML in ~50 rows. A permissive parser recovers ~94% of rows; affected cells fall back to the FY series.
Service area population is self-reported: agencies use different definitions. The "% of UZA" is a rough indicator, not a precise access metric.
Recovery vs. Pre-COVID for mode-focused views: per-mode monthly history is partial in some sheets, so mode-focused recovery falls back to FY2024 ÷ FY2019 from TS2.1.

Generated by the Midwest Transit Monitor at midwestlandtransport.com. Data refreshed monthly from federal sources. Questions, corrections, or methodology suggestions: alex@midwestlandtransport.com.