Charlotte Area Transit System
Charlotte Area Transit System carried 16,601,166 boardings in FY2025 at $14.39 per ride and $13.56 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.
By the numbers
By the numbers
FY2025 unless noted. Each figure is computed from what the agency filed with NTD, and set against something to read it by.
Running 79% of its 2019 service for 62% of its 2019 riders. Riders have fallen further than service.
The same twelve months of 2019. Through August 2026.
Operating cost less fares, per person in the service area the agency reports. Agencies draw those areas very differently, so this is set against peers.
Median of similar agencies: $167
Batteries, overhead wires or hydrogen. Buses only: a subway is electric by nature, and counting it would measure how much rail an agency runs.
U.S. buses: 3% (FY2025)
Revenue hours bought from a private operator or another agency rather than run in-house. Nationally, much of this is paratransit.
U.S. transit: 27% of service hours
For 1% of rides: $120.04 a ride, against $12.88 on the rest of its service. Door-to-door trips carry one or two people at a time. It includes paratransit, which federal law requires for riders whose disability keeps them off the fixed routes; where a separate agency runs the region's paratransit, its cost is not here.
Similar agencies: 15% of operating cost. U.S. demand response: $52.35 a ride.
A journey with a transfer counts as two rides, because NTD counts each boarding.
The year's boardings divided by 365. Weekdays run higher, weekends lower.
Pay and benefits
Pay and benefits
FY2024. NTD reports totals, not salaries: each figure divides what the agency spent on its own staff by the hours they worked. Service bought from contractors is left out, because a contractor's staff are in neither number.
A year, per full-time-equivalent employee, overtime and paid leave included, benefits not. Part-time hours are counted as a fraction of a job, so they do not pull the average down.
Similar agencies: $74,531. U.S. transit: $88,387.
What one full-time job costs the agency in a year, with pensions, health coverage and payroll taxes. $58 for every hour worked.
Similar agencies: $101,298. U.S. transit: $135,698.
The people driving the agency's vehicles, overtime included, benefits not.
Similar agencies: $68,610. U.S. transit: $78,723.
Hours actually worked, so vacation and sick leave are already out, and overtime is in.
A 40-hour week every week of the year, with no leave at all, is 2,080.
Pensions, health coverage, payroll taxes, and vacation and sick pay, for every dollar of wages. NTD reports pensions and health care as one figure, so they cannot be separated here.
U.S. transit: 79¢. 2015: 50¢.
Liability insurance, claims and settlements, per mile of service. It moves with local law and a few large cases as much as with how safely the agency runs.
U.S. transit: $0.71
Every agency's pay, side by side →
Average pay over time
Per full-time equivalent, restated in 2024 dollars so the years compare
From 2018, the first year NTD reported paid leave on its own line. Before that, vacation and sick pay were counted inside benefits, so pay alone cannot be compared across that year.
A falling line after years of rising ones usually means new hiring at starting rates rather than pay cuts: an agency rebuilding its workforce brings on many people at the bottom of the scale at once. NTD reports totals, so the data cannot tell those two apart; the agency's labor contracts can.
Profile
Agency profile
As filed with the National Transit Database.
Contact
- Legal name
- City of Charlotte North Carolina
- Doing business as
- Charlotte Area Transit System
- Address
-
600 E 4th ST
Charlotte, NC 28202-2816 - Website
- http://www.ridetransit.org
Organization
- Organization type
- City, County or Local Government Unit or Department of Transportation
- Reporter type
- Full Reporter
- Fiscal year ends
- June 30, 2025
- Reporting since
- FY2015
Service area
- Population served
- 1,329,749 over 675 sq mi
- Density
- 1,970 people per sq mi
- Urbanized area
- Charlotte, NC--SC · 1.38M people
- Vehicles at maximum service
- 296 · 183 contracted
Services operated
Each mode has its own page, with its own ridership, cost and safety.
Ridership
Ridership
Monthly data through August 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 60.6% of 2019.
Cost
Cost and subsidy
Dollar figures are shown as reported and again in 2024 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, in constant dollars
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, in constant dollars, an hour of service costs 76% more to run and carries 31% fewer riders. Most of the rise in cost per ride is the service itself getting dearer.
Across all U.S. bus service over the same years, an hour costs 14% more to run and carries 26% fewer riders.
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, 1992 to 2024
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
FY2025. NTD records which of the two every dollar was reported under.
Who pays for what
FY2025. Running the service and building it are funded by different governments.
| Spending | Total | Federal | State | Local | Fares and own revenue |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| operating | $238.6M | 15.1% | 4% | 70.3% | 10.6% |
| capital | $89.8M | 67.4% | 3.8% | 28.7% | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $4.77M | $4.52M | $75.4M | $324.5K | $413.7K | $1.18M | $89.8M |
| 2024 | $12.9M | $1.4M | $22.6M | $1.36M | $0 | $2.17M | $44.2M |
| 2023 | $27.7M | $588.2K | $7.63M | $106.2K | $0 | $6.09M | $44.7M |
| 2022 | $28.5M | $348K | $23.2M | $0 | $0 | $198.3K | $53.2M |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlotte Area Transit System this agency | Charlotte, NC--SC | 1.38M | 16.6M | 12.48 | $14.39 | $13.56 | 5.8% |
| Providence, RI--MA | 1.29M | 12.9M | 12.29 | $10.68 | $9.43 | 11.7% | |
| Columbus, OH | 1.57M | 12.9M | 9.12 | $18.78 | $17.76 | 5.4% | |
| Sacramento, CA | 1.95M | 17.6M | 12.84 | $14.94 | $13.85 | 7.3% | |
| Cincinnati, OH--KY | 1.69M | 13.5M | 18.11 | $12.78 | $11.41 | 10.8% | |
| Buffalo, NY | 948.9K | 16M | 19.81 | $10.33 | $8.52 | 17.5% | |
| New Orleans, LA | 963.2K | 15.4M | 31.65 | $9.32 | $8.58 | 8% | |
| Milwaukee, WI | 1.31M | 25.4M | 27.48 | $7.00 | $6.04 | 13.7% | |
| Kansas City, MO--KS | 1.67M | 11.9M | 19.08 | $9.86 | $9.72 | 1.4% | |
| Orlando, FL | 1.85M | 21.5M | 8.74 | $9.92 | $8.93 | 10% | |
| Richmond, VA | 1.06M | 12.3M | 19.66 | $7.47 | $7.27 | 2.7% | |
| Peer median (38 agencies) | 14.59 | $12.14 | $11.25 | 7.5% | |||
By mode
By mode
Each service this agency runs, for FY2025. Directly operated and purchased service are summed.
Boardings by mode
Annual, stacked
Cost per ride by mode
FY2025
Mode detail, FY2025
| Mode | Service | Boardings | Passenger miles | Revenue hours | Operating cost | Cost / ride | Subsidy / ride | Fare recovery | Link |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commuter Bus | Directly operated | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Detail → |
| Bus | Directly operated | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Detail → |
| Bus | Purchased transportation | 9,099,810 | 40,924,664 | 649,280 | $138,236,919 | $15.19 | $14.31 | 5.8% | Detail → |
| Light Rail | Directly operated | 6,225,751 | 31,104,757 | 108,478 | $52,947,562 | $8.50 | $7.85 | 7.7% | Detail → |
| Streetcar | Directly operated | 725,103 | 793,267 | 22,276 | $7,957,360 | $10.97 | — | — | Detail → |
| Commuter Bus | Purchased transportation | 275,372 | 4,165,078 | 24,586 | $8,964,570 | $32.55 | $29.19 | 10.3% | Detail → |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | 221,898 | 2,515,031 | 123,539 | $26,784,322 | $120.71 | $118.15 | 2.1% | Detail → |
| Vanpool | Directly operated | 40,148 | 1,858,147 | 9,247 | $2,616,953 | $65.18 | $60.09 | 7.8% | Detail → |
| Demand Response | Purchased transportation | 13,084 | 60,130 | 7,729 | $1,423,885 | $108.83 | $108.43 | 0.4% | 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
Against the U.S. rate for the same mix of service
The dashed line is not the national average. It is what the national rate would be for this agency's own service: each mode it runs, charged at that mode's U.S. rate for the year, in proportion to its miles. Rates differ tenfold between modes, so a railway read against a national figure made mostly of buses and vans would look dangerous for running rail.
Miles rather than boardings, because this series covers 2020, when service kept running and riders did not come. And sitting above the line is as likely to mean careful reporting as dangerous operation.
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
From 2008 to 2024, 28 people died: 18 people in other vehicles, 6 pedestrians, cyclists or others, 2 passengers, 1 transit worker and 1 suicide.
Deaths in homicides, counting everyone killed: 3 in 2022–2024, against none in 2017–2019. 1 of the 3 were passengers or people waiting. Across U.S. transit: 136, against 49.
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.
Who died, 2025
The total is not a measure of risk to riders, and NTD gives the breakdown that shows why.
Of 5 deaths, 1 were passengers. Most of the rest were people on the track or the road, and 0 were suicides.
Set against distance traveled, that is 61.41 deaths per billion passenger miles counting everyone, and 12.28 counting riders alone — a difference of roughly eight times.
Both are true. They answer different questions: the first is how many people die in connection with transit, the second is the risk of being on board. Quoting the first as the second is the commonest way these figures are misread.
Individual incidents
NTD publishes every major event on its own, with a time and usually a place. 1,017 of them for this agency since 2014, including 27 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| April 18, 2026 | Rail Collision | Light Rail | Right-of-way: grade crossing | Clear, Dark | 0 | 1 |
| December 5, 2025 | Assault not against Transit Worker | Light Rail | In or on vehicle | 1 | 0 | |
| August 22, 2025 | Homicide not against Transit Worker | Light Rail | In or on vehicle | 1 | 1 | |
| April 12, 2025 | Homicide not against Transit Worker | Bus | Revenue facility: transit station | 0 | 1 | |
| March 1, 2025 | Rail Collision | Light Rail | Right-of-way: grade crossing | Clear, Daylight | 1 | 0 |
| February 20, 2025 | Homicide not against Transit Worker | Bus | Revenue facility: transit station | 0 | 1 | |
| January 1, 2025 | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Bus Stop | Clear, Daylight | 4 | 2 |
| December 8, 2024 | Homicide not against Transit Worker | Bus | Revenue facility: transit station | 0 | 1 | |
| December 1, 2024 | Homicide not against Transit Worker | Light Rail | Revenue facility: parking facility | 0 | 1 | |
| July 14, 2024 | Suicide | Bus | Revenue facility: terminal center | Clear, Dark | 0 | 1 |
| June 18, 2024 | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: not a grade crossing or intersection | Clear, Daylight | 0 | 1 |
| May 22, 2024 | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Dark | 1 | 1 |
| May 17, 2024 | Assault not against Transit Worker | Light Rail | In or on vehicle | 1 | 0 | |
| May 11, 2024 | Non-Rail Collision | Demand Response | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Dark | 2 | 1 |
| September 28, 2023 | Non-Rail Collision | Bus | Roadway: intersection | Clear, Dark | 1 | 1 |
Fleet
Fleet, workforce and reliability
How old the vehicles are, how many people run them, and how far they get between breakdowns.
Workforce by mode, FY2025
| Mode | Service | Hours | Operators | Vehicle maintenance | Administration | All staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Streetcar | Directly operated | Part Time | — | — | — | — |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | Part Time | — | — | — | — |
| Light Rail | Directly operated | Part Time | — | — | — | — |
| Vanpool | Directly operated | Part Time | — | — | — | — |
| Light Rail | Directly operated | Full Time | 92 | 50 | 61 | 264 |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | Full Time | 113 | — | 37 | 152 |
| Streetcar | Directly operated | Full Time | 32 | 11 | 15 | 66 |
| Vanpool | Directly operated | Full Time | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
Staff, 2015 to 2024
The agency's own employees on operations. Staff on capital projects and a contractor's staff are not counted.
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 | 394 | 6.73 yrs | 14 yrs |
|
|
| Cutaway | 84 | 5.17 yrs | 10 yrs |
|
|
| Light Rail Vehicle | 39 | 12.62 yrs | 31 yrs |
|
|
| Over-the-road Bus | 38 | 9.42 yrs | 14 yrs |
|
|
| Sports Utility Vehicle | 26 | 7 yrs | 8 yrs |
|
|
| Van | 10 | 6.2 yrs | 8 yrs |
|
|
| Minivan | 6 | 2.5 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 | Purchased transportation | 8,656,080 | 888 | 2,698 | 3,208 |
| Demand Response | Directly operated | 2,045,974 | 114 | 522 | 3,919 |
| Light Rail | Directly operated | 1,623,104 | 30 | 108 | 15,029 |
| Commuter Bus | Purchased transportation | 562,006 | 42 | 121 | 4,645 |
| Vanpool | Directly operated | 459,252 | 7 | 12 | 38,271 |
| Streetcar | Directly operated | 125,292 | 14 | 23 | 5,447 |
| Demand Response | Purchased transportation | 93,889 | 0 | 0 | — |
Fuel and energy
What the fleet burned in FY2025.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commuter Bus | 185,506 | — | — | 118,274 | 77.73 | 7.8% |
| Demand Response | 69,511 | 186,577 | — | 0 | 8.91 | 0% |
| Light Rail | — | — | — | 12,326,851 | — | 100% |
| Bus | 1,829,282 | — | — | 1,182,748 | 0.89 | 0% |
| Vanpool | — | 43,019 | — | 0 | — | 0% |
| Streetcar | — | — | — | 2,653,948 | — | 100% |
| Demand Response | — | 3,932 | — | 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 16,601,166 | 81,421,074 | 13,565,597 | 945,135 | $238,931,571 | $13,779,207 | $14.39 | $13.56 | 5.8% |
| 2024 | 14,903,051 | 71,613,098 | 13,170,755 | 910,383 | $223,999,891 | $14,536,323 | $15.03 | $14.06 | 6.5% |
| 2023 | 14,027,141 | 67,531,449 | 13,143,873 | 896,229 | $202,908,235 | $14,657,394 | $14.47 | $13.42 | 7.2% |
| 2022 | 12,640,017 | 58,489,689 | 13,788,453 | 955,341 | $175,653,827 | $12,711,194 | $13.90 | $12.89 | 7.2% |
| 2021 | 8,723,635 | 41,187,071 | 13,313,654 | 950,210 | $161,151,321 | $11,113,201 | $18.47 | $17.20 | 6.9% |
| 2020 | 20,061,386 | 101,147,039 | 15,703,480 | 1,059,916 | $162,317,729 | $21,018,416 | $8.09 | $7.04 | 12.9% |
| 2019 | 24,278,653 | 126,140,136 | 17,079,304 | 1,138,383 | $156,853,722 | $27,615,366 | $6.46 | $5.32 | 17.6% |
| 2018 | 22,516,607 | 116,204,351 | 16,386,292 | 1,089,205 | $145,366,326 | $26,563,174 | $6.46 | $5.28 | 18.3% |
| 2017 | 24,985,270 | 119,582,030 | 16,310,559 | 1,093,509 | $123,257,826 | $29,733,078 | $4.93 | $3.74 | 24.1% |
| 2016 | 26,248,940 | 134,395,087 | 16,593,720 | 1,097,210 | $119,210,636 | $30,687,363 | $4.54 | $3.37 | 25.7% |
| 2015 | 27,165,943 | 148,900,328 | 16,934,866 | 1,072,448 | $113,087,745 | $28,971,099 | $4.16 | $3.10 | 25.6% |