Moovit App Reveals Local and National Transit Stats from Worldwide User Data

Moovit recently announced it has surpassed 50 million users globally while unveiling its annual Global Transit Usage Report, the first significant Big Data analysis of its kind that has tracked tens of millions of trip requests in cities across the world in an unprecedented effort to map global travel trends.

The data portray a colorful picture of how people commute in cities around the world. Surprisingly, the numbers show public transit in the U.S., where the car has long been king, holds close to the worldwide averages for most metrics. For the U.S., data was analyzed in the Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas.

Moovit VP of Products and Marketing, Yovav Meydad, said, “No other transit app or service has as much rich and relevant data about the world’s mass transit riders as Moovit, and we’re proud to share some of it in our annual Global Transit Usage Report. We derived the data from our Moovit community of more than 120,000 local editors and contributors, and a user base of more than 50 million mass transit riders. Moovit enables people to travel smarter in their cities, making journeys more reliable with the provision of highly accurate real time information.”

The Moovit report is concurrent with the company’s surpassing 50 million users worldwide, continuing the company’s meteoric growth. Moovit closed its first year of operation, 2013, with 3.0 million users. Users quadrupled to 12.5 million in 2014, and surpassed 32 million last year. Moovit predicts it will end 2016 with 52 million users as 2 million people now download the free transit app each month.

By most of the measures tracked in the report – wait time, total trip time, percentage of riders that spend more than two hours on their commute and numbers of transfers — riders in the San Francisco Bay Area beat the averages and came up with the best numbers in the U.S. Boston ranks next overall and even wins with the shortest commute distance category.

Daily wait time at stops:

• Riders in the San Francisco Bay Area have on average the lowest wait time for their transit per day, just 13 minutes
• In San Francisco and New York, 52 percent wait less than 10 minutes per day
• Chicago is right behind with 51 percent with less than a 10 minute wait per day
• Chicago also takes the lead with 20 percent of riders having a wait of under five minutes per day, trailed by 19 percent of Bostonians
• Boston, Chicago and New York tied for second with 15 minute average wait times per day
• Philadelphia (16 minutes) is right behind
• Los Angeles’ 20 minute wait time per trip is the worst in North America and ties for fourth worst in the world with Bogota, Colombia and Rome, Italy. Brasilia, Brazil, Napoli and Palermo, Italy take the top three worst spots in that order
• 66 percent of LA riders wait 10 minutes or longer
• 38 percent of LA riders wait more than 20 minutes
• 16 percent of LA riders wait 30 minutes or longer

Total daily commute time:

• San Franciscans spend about 91 minutes per day on public transit
• 52 percent spend an hour or less per day commuting
• All other cities have over 50 percent of riders facing hour-or-longer daily commute times
• Boston riders average 96 minutes of “T” time per day
• 24 percent of Bostonians spend 30 minutes a day or less
• Philadelphians top the amount of ride time in North America with 93 minutes per day, but that’s still not as long as the world title holder Bogota, Columbia and its 97 minutes
• 35 percent of Philly riders say they spend more than two hours per day on transit

Number of lines used per trip:

• In the Bay Area, 38 percent don’t need to transfer and can get where they’re going using one line
• New York has the biggest percentage of riders (49 percent) needing only one transfer
• Philadelphia and LA are tied for number of lines taken with 71 percent taking two or more, 30 percent taking three or more
• LA wins the terrible transfer title with 11 percent of riders having to take four or more lines
• An average of just over five percent of respondents walk their daily commutes – this was true in every city in the US
• Spain takes the walking trophy with a country-wide average of 12.4 percent of Spaniards reporting that their commute is walking only

Total trip distance:

• Los Angelenos have the longest distance to travel with an average trip of 6.9 miles
• Thirty percent of LA riders travel more than 7.5 miles each trip
• Chicago is second by that score with 28 percent traveling more than 7.5 miles per trip
• Philadelphians travel 6.4 miles, coming in behind LA and Chicago
• Bostonians have the shortest commute at 4.3 miles per trip on average
• Boston also has the smallest percentage of riders – 12 percent – traveling more than 7.5 miles

Total average walking distance per trip:

• In Philadelphia, walking more than two-thirds of a mile during a commute is common
• Both Los Angeles and Washington D.C. riders walk more than half a mile on average per trip at 0.58 miles and 0.53 miles, respectively
• New Yorkers have to do the least amount of walking, coming in well under half a mile (0.43)
• A third of Philly and LA riders are long walkers. Thirty seven percent of Philly commuters and 36% of LA commuters walk distances of over half a mile
• Boston has the largest percentage of riders — 23% — with the shortest total walking distance of under 0.15 miles or 820 feet.

Meydad said the data was collected over three months (August-October 2016) from among tens of million trip plans logged by Moovit’s 50 million users in more than 47 cities globally.

“Our Public Transit Usage Report from the Big Data analysed daily has revealed some fascinating insights about how we are traveling on local transit around the world,” Meydad said. “From the potential wait times between transfers to how long it takes for us to get to a stop, data extracted from the journeys of our users paint a colourful and hugely valuable picture of the infrastructure supporting the day-to-day commuting and traveling habits of residents and visitors.”

In addition to surpassing the 50 million user milestone, Moovit also was recently named by Google as one of the top five Best Local Apps of 2016.

The detailed report and infographics can be downloaded from: http://moovit.me/moovit_global_report_2016