Ridership on Charlottesville Area Transit up five percent in FY2025

The number of trips served up by Charlottesville Area Transit has been dropping steadily for many years but the agency now shows signs of recovery.

The Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation reports that ridership in FY2025 increased to 1,552,117, up 5.10 percent from the year before. The information was obtained from the DRPT’s Transit Performance Data Dashboard.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to service reduction that took some time to begin to restore. Even now there are still no routes on Sunday. In July, Williams told City Council that a minimum of 90 drivers are needed to get to that point based on a system utilization plan.

Ridership in FY2013 was 2,405,151 according to a report made available in the National Transit Database The number dropped under 2 million in FY2019 with 1,871,952. The COVID-19 shutdown began in March 2020, dragging down that year’s ridership to 1,323,176.

In FY2021, the number of rides served was 617,010. Since then the number has been increasing with a 28.76 percent jump between 2023 and 2024.

Charlottesville Area Transit officials did not respond to a request for comment.

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