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The Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) released the first annual Regional Transit Pulse: 2025 Report, which provides insights into public transit performance trends in the Sacramento region across four key metrics: ridership, service, cost effectiveness, and state of good repair. Highlights from the report include:

• Overall transit ridership in 2024 recovered to 79 percent of 2019 levels, although more recent preliminary data shows a full recovery for local bus ridership on some transit systems, including Sacramento Regional Transit (SacRT) and Unitrans in Davis.
• Local buses are the backbone of the region’s transit ridership, making up roughly 65 percent of all trips on transit in 2024. While demand response services, including ADA paratransit and microtransit, made up only 5 percent of all trips on transit in 2024, ridership on these services has grown 63 percent over the past two decades – with more growth expected as the region’s population continues to age.
• In 2024, the region’s transit operators recovered service to 98 percent of 2019 levels, although this is still more than 10 percent below the region’s mid-2000's peak.
• Regional transit cost effectiveness, or the cost of operating transit service per boarding, is improving after pandemic-related growth. Local buses and light rail continue to be the most cost-effective transit modes in 2024.
• The region’s transit operators made progress on replacing aging transit vehicles over the past 10 years. The state’s zero-emission transition mandates will make it significantly more challenging to continue this progress.

The report is available to review online at www.sacog.org/transitpulse.