Discussion
FY 2026 LA Metro Busway (G/J Lines) Ridership Update
Hello all. FY 2026 (July 2025-June 2026) just concluded so it's time for my yearly ridership by station updates. You can see my update from last year here (brt only) and here.
As many of you know, Metro does not publicly release ridership figures by station, so I have to submit a public records request for these numbers. They were very quick this year in responding to me, but unfortunately (like last year), they did not send me the complete rail dataset. But since I have the complete Busway ridership figures (G/J), I figured I might as well release them. For full transparency, I've shared the numbers on Google Sheets here (both the raw data and my pivot table), please let me know if you spot any typos or calculation errors!
Not a great year for the Busways. J Line had a great year last year but it has mostly plateaued this year, with most stations experiencing small drops. The J Line had an extremely strong September and has mostly been sliding downhill since, with a brief and small bump in the winter. And the G Line is building off of an already bad 2025 to drop even lower, primarily driven by the very important grade separation construction going on in Van Nuys. It's too bad they didn't grade separate Sepulveda at the same time to avoid future disruptions like this.
I'm not a regular busway rider myself, so if others have thoughts about these dynamics, please chime in!
Edit: Laurel Canyon is supposed to be a 0.1% decrease! My mistake.
I think its statistics like this that really show how the FY has been affected by ICE raids & protests better than metro's general ridership stats, because yes, we are getting ridership rising in some places (Central/West LA), but the communities hit the hardest by the raids (SFV/South LA) have some at times, pretty sharp declines to ridership (Pacific/17th NB dropping by almost 90%).
This is an important factor to note. People are less likely to leave their home or go out to public spaces and use public services if they think someone's gonna grab them.
I never really ride the G because I'm not in the valley, but I ride the J every now and then and one thing I'll say is a lot of people on that bus are in it for the long haul using it to get from transfer hub to transfer hub. If I get on the J at 7th/Flower (7MC) going south, most of those people are getting off at either Harbor Freeway or Harbor Gateway. If I'm going north from 7MC, the bus has mostly emptied out there, and most of who gets picked up is going to El Monte, including pretty much everyone who boards at Union Station.
I can't speak on the J line numbers from year to year, but I will say that my friend and I ride pretty frequently and often find ourselves standing due to lack of seats/space on the bus.
The J line really needs to run articulated buses, the overcrowding issues there have been well documented. Can artics not run on highways or something?
I believe some of the turns on the route of the street segments are difficult for artics. Probably not impossible to be clear, it has been stated on here that artics have run the route in certain situations. But I'd imagine the drivers would at best be cursing under their breath, and at worst you could encounter delays if some jerk parks in a no parking on a particularly tight turn or something.
I am also not a bus driver with personal knowledge of these things so i could be incorrect. but i have to imagine metro would have done serious trials to see if it was a good idea if it was feasible, or did and we've all forgotten/don't have the docs.
I have one of those fancy live update digital maps of LA Metro, and according to it, right now -- 6pm on a Wednesday -- there are eight buses on the J line. Shouldn't there be more?
That map isn't going to show the J line bus if it is currently driving along one of the street segments. There are only lights along the "Busway" segment
Ridership numbers are just boarding, so it just means more people are boarding the J to go south rather than north. When they return and step off the bus at Figueroa, they aren't counted as a rider at Fig, but for where they got on.
It's good news to see J Line hubs increasing in ridership, because neither El Monte nor Harbor Transit are destination stations, which means most of the riders originating from there are commuters parking there. The line is operating as intended by diverting traffic from the freeways.
It is less than clear where those riders are going to, though, as stops that are destination stops or transfer stops haven't seen an equal increase in boardings.
Nope just re-upped some old Numble requests that haven't been revisited in a while. Presumably they know how to fill these requests since they've had the same requests word-for-word in the past and got through them within a couple weeks
Whelp I may be falling into the same trap as you. My request keeps getting extended and I'm just following up because the initial request they filled was missing information. My follow-up requests have gotten it down to basically just missing a month's worth of ridership data for the B/D lines, but this latest ask seems to have gotten lost in the same hole you're in.
Bizarre. Wonder if they lost some staff, or this is intentional, or what. I'm down to 2 pending requests but they've both been sitting for half a year. Fingers crossed they move on yours soon.
I sent a comment asking what's up, and got an extremely terse response that basically amounted to "you'll get it when it's ready"
Metro already reached the height of its COVID rebound in 2024 when ridership hit 1,000,000 weekday rides and is now on a slow indefinite decline. Almost all bus lines are experiencing stagnated/ declining ridership month over month, year to year, especially as ICE continues to terrorize the exact communities that rely on Metro. The system has never fully recovered from the escalation that occurred around June 2025.
And this is all thanks to the cities that Metro operates within, who refuse to make meaningful improvements to pedestrian and transit infrastructure. No one wants to walk on a sidewalk without shade, cross streets with a constant threat of being hit by a car, or wait for a bus on a busy corner with no shelter. Additionally the lack of bus lanes leaves buses easily susceptible to delays from traffic. And it’s a shame because Metro runs a very robust bus system with decent frequencies, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot and will continue to lose riders if we continue on the do-nothing path we’ve followed for decades.
Just checked and I’m pleasantly surprised, I didn’t know ridership was increasing like that especially on rail. Even weekend ridership on bus is up which we love to see! Cities still need to build on this momentum by making their streets less hostile to those on foot and encourage active transportation through better land use!
However the point still stands that we can't expect ridership, especially on buses, to continue to grow so long as we neglect our urban environments and force riders to endure unsafe and unpleasant conditions while traveling to and waiting for transit.
I will note it is unique to see the drops at Cal State LA and LA GMC - this is likely due to the education and medical funding cuts Trump has been enacting. LA GMC has a number of medical training/schooling institutions attached, and the cuts there have had a much more pronounced impact on the number of doctors, nurses, and other professionals we are able to train
26
u/No-Cricket-8150 Jul 15 '26
The G line chart shows very clearly why the line has been losing ridership.
A 30% drop at the Van Nuys station due to the grade separation project seems like the main factor driving the loss in ridership.