Bay Area riders want more out of transit services according to Passenger Snapshot Survey

Bay Area riders were given a chance to have their voices heard in a 2023-2024 Regional Transit Passenger Snapshot Survey. The results of the survey were presented to the Regional Network Management Committee and revealed shifts in transit ridership in a post-pandemic era. The survey collected high-level demographic and trip pattern data from 23 of the Bay Area’s 25 federally funded transit operators. Golden Gate Transit and ACE Rail conducted separate surveys.  

This information will be used to develop comparisons of pre- and post-pandemic travel and create interactive dashboards for data collection. The Snapshot Survey was offered in English, Spanish and Chinese to 16,500 passengers.  
Notable survey findings include:  

• Fifty-eight percent of riders feel safe or very safe riding transit. 
• About 50 percent of passengers use transit to travel to and from work, down from 60 percent pre-pandemic. 
• Nearly 3/5 of riders use transit five or more days per week and 91 percent expect to ride transit the same or more next year. 
• Transit frequency, lower fares and reliability are among the most requested transit improvements.  

According to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the one-year Snapshot Survey is a simplified version of its ongoing Transit Passenger Survey program. Conducted from 2013 through 2019, the ongoing Transit Survey Program provided a thorough regional dataset but required five to seven years to complete a full cycle of data collection. MTC paused the transit survey program in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic but relaunched the program in 2023 while pursuing the Snapshot Survey in parallel.  

MTC says it’s considering other data collection options – such as transit customer experience surveys – to help inform the work that MTC and transit agency partners are doing to make the transit ridership experience better as part of Regional Network Management.