Microproduct data guideintermediate

FTA NTD Monthly Ridership

Agency- and mode-level public transit service and unlinked passenger-trip reports for building ridership recovery and system comparison tools.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Intermediate — some data preparation helps
Size
Medium · 0.001–1 GB
Formats
XLSX
Access
Download
API key
Not required
Provider
Federal Transit Administration
Updates
Monthly
Data terms
U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

The NTD monthly release reports service and unlinked passenger trips by transit agency and mode. Start with the adjusted monthly file and a few agencies. Values can be revised, reporting practices differ, and unlinked passenger trips count boardings rather than unique people.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • The current Monthly Module Adjusted Data Release downloaded from FTA
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Open NTD Data and download the current Complete Monthly Ridership workbook.
  2. 2.Save it as complete_monthly_ridership.xlsx and record the release date in the notebook.
  3. 3.Select a small agency set and compare like-for-like modes and metrics.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas openpyxl

import pandas as pd

ridership = pd.read_excel(
    "complete_monthly_ridership.xlsx",
    sheet_name="UPT",
)
agencies = ridership[ridership["Agency"].isin([
    "New York City Transit",
    "Chicago Transit Authority",
])].copy()
print(agencies.head(20))
4

Test a useful signal

Compare monthly transit ridership recovery

Compare reported passenger trips for two agencies with the same mode against the prior year.

  1. 01Record the file release and filter to two agencies and one common transit mode.
  2. 02Calculate year-over-year change for matched months and inspect missing or revised values.
  3. 03Explain why unlinked trips, reporting differences, revisions, and service changes limit comparisons.

Dataset details

Federal Transit Administration is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-13. Temporal coverage: monthly reporting from 2002-present.

Theme

Geospatial & Infrastructure

Domains

Public TransitTransportation

Data types

Time SeriesTabular

Tasks

Transit RidershipTrend AnalysisBenchmarkingOperational Monitoring

Geography

United States

Formats

XLSX

Provider

Federal Transit Administration

Data terms

U.S. Government public data / federal copyright guidance