Central Ohio Transit Authority
Central Ohio Transit Authority carried 12,349,881 boardings in FY2024 at $17.12 per ride and $15.95 in subsidy per ride. Ten years of NTD data, by mode.
What those two numbers mean
Passengers aboard is passenger miles divided by vehicle miles: how many people are on board on average, at any moment. It is the missing term in cost per ride. A service carrying twenty people per vehicle mile and one carrying half a person can spend the same on fuel and wages and arrive at wildly different costs per passenger.
Average speed is vehicle miles divided by vehicle hours, including every stop and every red light. It is the hidden term in cost per mile, because cost per mile is cost per hour divided by speed. A bus network slowing from 13 mph to 11 becomes a fifth more expensive per mile with no change in wages and no change in service.
Profile
Agency profile
As filed with the National Transit Database.
Contact
- Legal name
- Central Ohio Transit Authority
- Address
-
33 N High St
Columbus, OH 43215-3076 - Website
- http://www.cota.com/
Organization
- Organization type
- Independent Public Agency or Authority of Transit Service
- Reporter type
- Full Reporter
- Fiscal year ends
- December 31, 2024
- Reporting since
- FY2015
Service area
- Population served
- 1,413,698 over 336 sq mi
- Density
- 4,207 people per sq mi
- Urbanized area
- Columbus, OH · 1.57M people
- Vehicles at maximum service
- 289 · 64 contracted
Services operated
Each mode has its own page, with its own ridership, cost and safety.
Ridership
Ridership
Monthly data through July 2026.
This year against the last five
Same months, stacked on one axis, so seasonality does not read as a trend
Annual boardings
Ten-year series
Every month since 2014
The whole series, unsmoothed
Recovery against 2019
Each month against the same month before the pandemic
Latest month at 64.6% of 2019.
Cost
Cost and subsidy
Dollar figures are shown as reported and again in current dollars.
Cost and subsidy per ride
As reported
In 2024 dollars
The same series with inflation removed
Why cost per ride moved
Indexed to FY2015 = 100
Cost per ride is the cost of an hour of service divided by the riders carried in that hour. It can only rise for two reasons: service got dearer to produce, or fewer people rode it.
Since FY2015 an hour of service costs +87.7% more to run, while carrying -36.2% as many riders. Most of the rise in cost per ride is the service itself getting dearer.
Where the money goes
Operating cost by function
Who pays for it
Federal, state and local funding, 1991 to 2024
Operating and capital money together, in the dollars of each year. Fares are not in this file — FTA took them out of the funding series in 2022 — so "directly generated" here means advertising, concessions, park and ride and taxes the agency levies itself. The farebox is charted above.
Capital
Capital spending
What was spent on building, rebuilding and replacing, shown beside the cost of running the service rather than folded into it.
Cost per ride including the vehicles
An estimate, and the only part of capital this data can honestly support.
How this is worked out. FTA publishes what every agency spent on rolling stock each year since 1992. Restate all 33 years in today's money and average them over 14 years, the working life of this agency's vehicles, and the result is what the fleet costs to keep going each year. That is straight-line depreciation, and the series covers more than two full replacement cycles.
How much to trust it here. Fleet spending is spread fairly evenly across the window, which is the condition this estimate assumes.
What it leaves out. Every tunnel, track mile, bridge and station. Those last forty to a hundred years and the data goes back 33, so averaging it would measure recent investment policy rather than what the infrastructure costs. The honest ceiling on this data is operating cost plus vehicles, and this is it.
Capital spending since 1992
In 2024 dollars, so the years can be compared. This is the series the estimate above is built from.
Operating and capital, per ride
Stacked, but counted separately. The two are different kinds of number.
Building, or keeping what exists
FY2024. NTD records which of the two every dollar was reported under.
Who pays for what
FY2024. Running the service and building it are funded by different governments.
| Total | Federal | State | Local | Fares and own revenue | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| operating | $216.5M | 18% | 2.4% | 0.5% | 13.8% |
| capital | $171.2M | 32.5% | 1% | 0% | 0% |
Fares offset the cost of running the service. They do not meaningfully offset capital, which is why subsidy per ride on this site is an operating figure and stays one.
What these capital figures are not
- Spending is not the same as cost
- NTD reports what an agency spent on capital in a year, not what its capital cost it that year. Those differ: a system opened in 1904 spends almost nothing on tunnels while consuming an enormous inherited asset every day, and an agency that bought a fleet last year spent a fortune once and will spend nothing for a decade.
- Vehicles can be depreciated. Everything else cannot.
- FTA's capital series runs from 1992, which covers a bus fleet's working life more than twice over, so averaging rolling-stock spending across one replacement cycle gives a defensible figure for what the fleet costs each year. Track, tunnels, bridges and stations last forty to a hundred years or more. Thirty-three years of spending on those measures recent investment policy, not consumption, so no figure is published for them.
- The vehicle figure is an estimate
- Cost per ride including vehicles is arithmetic on published spending rather than a published number, and it assumes the agency has been replacing vehicles at roughly the rate it wears them out. Each agency's page says how far that assumption holds for it. It covers vehicles only: no track, no tunnels, no stations.
- Year-by-year capital is lumpy
- Capital arrives in bursts. A single year of it says more about where an agency sits in its replacement cycle than about the cost of carrying a passenger, which is why the per-ride averages here run across every year available.
- Fares do not pay for it
- Fare revenue offsets operating cost. It does not meaningfully offset capital, which is funded almost entirely by government. Subsidy per ride on this site is an operating figure and stays that way.
Capital spending by year and use
| Year | Guideway | Stations | Vehicles | Maintenance buildings | Fare collection | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | $32.9M | $13.2M | $46M | $77M | $0 | $1.07M | $171.2M |
| 2023 | $6.56M | $5.41M | $27.6M | $25M | $166.3K | $1.4M | $72.6M |
| 2022 | $7.63M | $4.47M | $12.2M | $44M | $1.26M | $973.9K | $91.6M |
Peers
Compared with similar systems
38 agencies serve an urbanized area of similar size, carry a similar number of riders, and run bus as their main service.
Cost per ride against peers
This agency in blue, peer median dashed
Rides per resident against peers
How much the place uses what it has
Peer detail
| Agency | Urbanized area | Population | Boardings | Rides / resident | Cost / ride | Subsidy / ride | Fare recovery |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Ohio Transit Authority this agency | Columbus, OH | 1.57M | 12.3M | 8.74 | $17.12 | $15.95 | 6.8% |
| Kansas City, MO--KS | 1.67M | 12.6M | 20.24 | $9.87 | $9.76 | 1.2% | |
| Cincinnati, OH--KY | 1.69M | 13.6M | 18.23 | $11.68 | $10.34 | 11.5% | |
| Providence, RI--MA | 1.29M | 13.1M | 12.49 | $10.14 | $8.78 | 13.5% | |
| Charlotte, NC--SC | 1.38M | 14.9M | 11.21 | $15.03 | $14.06 | 6.5% | |
| Virginia Beach--Norfolk, VA | 1.45M | 8.62M | 7.49 | $14.93 | $13.84 | 7.3% | |
| Hartford, CT | 977.2K | 12.7M | 14.87 | $8.49 | $7.53 | 11.3% | |
| Sacramento, CA | 1.95M | 16.4M | 11.99 | $15.53 | $14.40 | 7.2% | |
| Richmond, VA | 1.06M | 11M | 17.28 | $6.98 | $6.78 | 2.9% | |
| Tampa--St. Petersburg, FL | 2.78M | 12.9M | 11.44 | $8.43 | $7.68 | 8.9% | |
| New Orleans, LA | 963.2K | 14.1M | 28.93 | $9.94 | $9.15 | 8% | |
| Peer median (38 agencies) | 12.54 | $11.92 | $10.96 | 7.8% | |||
By mode
By mode
Each service this agency runs, for FY2024. Directly operated and purchased service are summed.
Boardings by mode
Annual, stacked
Cost per ride by mode
FY2024
Mode detail, FY2024
| Mode | Service | Boardings | Passenger miles | Revenue hours | Operating cost | Cost / ride | Subsidy / ride | Fare recovery | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | Directly operated | 11,853,423 | 54,542,418 | 909,197 | $190,644,471 | $16.08 | $14.91 | 7.3% | Detail → |
| Demand Response | Purchased transportation | 261,537 | 2,953,339 | 173,767 | $16,836,916 | $64.38 | $62.67 | 2.7% | Detail → |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | 234,921 | 552,701 | 52,083 | $3,934,113 | $16.75 | $16.54 | 1.2% | Detail → |
Safety
Safety
Collisions, fires, derailments and security events reported to NTD. Only complete years are shown.
Events by year
All event types, all modes
Events per 100 million revenue miles
This agency against the national rate, on the same axis
Miles rather than boardings, because this series covers 2020: service kept running when riders stopped coming, and a rate per boarding would read that as a collapse in safety. Sitting above the national line is as likely to mean careful reporting as dangerous operation — and rail systems report events on their own right of way that a bus operator never encounters.
The longer record, 2008 to 2024
FTA's threshold-adjusted time series, which reaches back further than the incident file and is built to be compared across years
NTD's reporting threshold changed in 2010, 2015 and 2023. FTA publishes this series adjusted for those changes so the years can be read against each other; the unadjusted counts jump by a third in 2015 on the rule change alone.
Individual incidents
NTD publishes every major event on its own, with a time and usually a place. 616 of them for this agency since 2014, including 5 assaults on transit workers.
Where incidents were reported
The most recent 1,500 events carrying a location
Points are where the agency reported the event, which for a moving vehicle is approximate.
By hour of day
Every reported major event since 2014
More service runs in the afternoon than at dawn, so the shape follows the timetable as much as anything else.
Where
Reported location type
Most serious recent incidents
Events that killed or seriously injured someone, newest first
| Date | Event | Mode | Location | Conditions | Injured | Killed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January 5, 2026 4:35 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| August 29, 2024 6:23 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Demand Response | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Daylight | 1 | 1 |
| April 2, 2024 11:08 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: not a grade crossing or intersection | Clear, Dark | 1 | 1 |
| March 11, 2024 8:01 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Bus Stop | Clear, Dark | 0 | 1 |
| October 3, 2023 10:36 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Dark | 0 | 1 |
| July 18, 2023 4:46 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Demand Response | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| April 14, 2020 7:15 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: not a grade crossing or intersection | Cloudy, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| September 21, 2018 3:40 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Other | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| May 13, 2016 4:37 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Bus Stop | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| March 18, 2016 6:25 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Bus Stop | Clear, Dark | 3 | 1 |
| December 18, 2014 12:40 PM | Non-Rail Collision | Demand Response | Roadway: not a grade crossing or intersection | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| October 18, 2014 7:02 PM | Other | Bus | Revenue facility: other | 0 | 1 | |
| August 6, 2014 6:50 AM | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Bus Stop | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
Fleet
Fleet, workforce and reliability
How old the vehicles are, how many people run them, and how far they get between breakdowns. NTD publishes all three from 2022 onward.
Workforce by mode
| Mode | Service | Hours | Operators | Vehicle maintenance | Administration | All staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | Directly operated | Full Time | 882 | 189 | 209 | 1,311 |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | Full Time | 67 | 0 | 0 | 67 |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | Part Time | 15 | 0 | 0 | 15 |
| Bus | Directly operated | Part Time | 2 | 0 | 9 | 11 |
How the fleet has aged, 1992 to 2024
Average vehicle age, weighted across every mode the agency runs
A rising line is not automatically bad and a falling one is not automatically good: a fleet gets younger the year an agency takes delivery, and older every year it does not. What the shape shows is whether replacement is steady or comes in bursts. The table below says how many vehicles are actually past the life FTA expects of them.
Vehicles, and how many are accessible
Active revenue vehicles against those meeting the ADA standard
Fleet age
FTA's default useful life benchmark for each class, from the Transit Asset Management rule
| Vehicle type | Count | Average age | FTA benchmark | Past FTA benchmark | Past own benchmark |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | 307 | 6.52 yrs | 14 yrs |
|
|
| Van | 87 | 3.94 yrs | 8 yrs |
|
|
| Cutaway | 20 | 1 yrs | 10 yrs |
|
|
| Minivan | 10 | 2 yrs | 8 yrs |
|
Miles between failures
Revenue miles divided by mechanical failures. Higher is better.
NTD counts a failure as major when it stops the vehicle finishing its trip.
Reliability by mode
| Mode | Service | Revenue miles | Major failures | All failures | Miles between failures |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | Directly operated | 11,089,087 | 1,304 | 1,912 | 5,800 |
| Demand Response | Purchased transportation | 3,358,344 | 25 | 34 | 98,775 |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | 716,333 | 23 | 28 | 25,583 |
Fuel and energy
What the fleet burned in FY2024.
Miles by fuel
Comparing miles avoids any energy-equivalence assumption
Fuel by mode
| Mode | Diesel (gal) | Gasoline (gal) | CNG (gal eq.) | Electric (kWh) | Diesel mpg | Zero-emission |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus | 128,383 | — | 3,009,650 | 781,316 | 2.88 | 3% |
| Demand Response | 67,033 | 151,336 | — | 0 | 10.96 | 0% |
| Demand Response | — | 60,998 | — | 0 | — | 0% |
All years
Full annual series
Every year this agency reported, as published.
| Year | Boardings | Passenger miles | Revenue miles | Revenue hours | Operating cost | Fares | Cost / ride | Subsidy / ride | Fare recovery |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 12,349,881 | 58,048,458 | 15,163,764 | 1,135,047 | $211,415,500 | $14,393,682 | $17.12 | $15.95 | 6.8% |
| 2023 | 11,526,490 | 51,281,571 | 13,409,784 | 1,006,536 | $186,976,500 | $13,161,571 | $16.22 | $15.08 | 7% |
| 2022 | 10,275,316 | 43,010,945 | 13,660,827 | 1,009,154 | $143,288,146 | $11,638,010 | $13.94 | $12.81 | 8.1% |
| 2021 | 9,142,214 | 38,517,929 | 14,728,355 | 1,125,250 | $159,756,604 | $10,833,820 | $17.47 | $16.29 | 6.8% |
| 2020 | 10,492,348 | 42,092,671 | 12,935,541 | 993,840 | $181,840,083 | $4,366,499 | $17.33 | $16.91 | 2.4% |
| 2019 | 19,430,144 | 77,369,005 | 17,715,977 | 1,347,473 | $169,304,679 | $19,031,797 | $8.71 | $7.73 | 11.2% |
| 2018 | 19,205,244 | 76,648,824 | 17,171,769 | 1,325,959 | $154,083,232 | $19,421,298 | $8.02 | $7.01 | 12.6% |
| 2017 | 18,688,788 | 71,370,748 | 16,579,397 | 1,252,521 | $144,045,834 | $19,688,255 | $7.71 | $6.65 | 13.7% |
| 2016 | 18,827,815 | 74,089,676 | 15,778,943 | 1,193,011 | $124,638,660 | $19,525,395 | $6.62 | $5.58 | 15.7% |
| 2015 | 19,202,529 | 74,653,088 | 14,939,669 | 1,126,337 | $111,763,375 | $20,033,741 | $5.82 | $4.78 | 17.9% |