NTD ID 20197 · Reduced Asset Reporter

Meadowlands Transportation Brokerage Corporation

Meadowlands Transportation Brokerage Corporation carried 256,197 boardings in FY2018 at $7.95 per ride and $7.52 in subsidy per ride. Ten years of NTD data, by mode.

Wood Ridge, NJ
Also known as MTBC
FY2018 boardings
256.2K
+12.9% vs FY2017
Cost per ride
$7.95
-5% $9.93 in 2024 dollars
Subsidy per ride
$7.52
+0.1% operating cost less fares
Fare recovery
5.4%
-47.2% fares average $0.43 per ride
Passenger miles
—
average trip — miles
Operating cost
$2.04M
$67.79 per revenue hour
Rides per resident
—
Rides per revenue hour
8.53
30K hours operated
Passengers aboard
—
average at any moment, passenger miles over vehicle miles
Average speed
14.6 mph
in revenue service, stops and traffic included
Cost per vehicle mile
$4.64
what running a mile costs, before anyone boards

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

FY2018 unless noted. Each figure is computed from what the agency filed with NTD, and set against something to read it by.

Where the operating money came from
29% federal

Fares were 3% of all the money that paid for operations. That is lower than the 5% fare recovery on this page, because these funding figures also cover depreciation and pension costs that operating cost leaves out.

  • Fares 3%
  • Federal 29%
  • Other directly generated 68%
Run by contractors
0% of service

Revenue hours bought from a private operator or another agency rather than run in-house. Nationally, much of this is paratransit.

U.S. transit: 26% of service hours

Paratransit and dial-a-ride
47% of operating cost

For 14% of rides: $26.59 a ride, against $4.91 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.

U.S. demand response: $32.58 a ride.

Rides on an average day
702

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.

Profile

Agency profile

As filed with the National Transit Database.

Contact

Legal name
Meadowlands Transportation Brokerage Corporation
Address
144 PARK PL E
Wood Ridge, NJ 07075-1804

Organization

Organization type
Private-Non-Profit Corporation
Reporter type
Reduced Asset Reporter
Fiscal year ends
June 30, 2025
Reporting since
FY2015

Service area

Population served
—
Vehicles at maximum service
—

Services operated

Each mode has its own page, with its own ridership, cost and safety.

Ridership

Ridership

Meadowlands Transportation Brokerage Corporation reports annually. NTD publishes monthly figures for full reporters only.

Monthly boardings

NTD publishes monthly figures for full reporters only. This agency reports annually, so its ridership appears in the yearly chart alongside.

Annual boardings

Ten-year series

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.

Where the money goes

Operating cost by function

Who pays for it

Federal, state and local funding, 2010 to 2018

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.

FTA publishes the capital files from 2022 onward, and this agency does not appear in them.

Peers

Compared with similar systems

No comparable agencies found.

No comparable agency was found. Peers must serve an urbanized area of between half and twice the population, carry between a quarter and four times the rides, and run the same primary mode.

By mode

By mode

Each service this agency runs, for FY2018. Directly operated and purchased service are summed.

Boardings by mode

Annual, stacked

Cost per ride by mode

FY2018

Mode detail, FY2018

Mode Service Boardings Passenger miles Revenue hours Operating cost Cost / ride Subsidy / ride Fare recovery Link
Bus Directly operated 220,326 — 20,556 $1,082,631 $4.91 $4.68 4.7% Detail →
Demand Response Directly operated 35,871 — 9,483 $953,694 $26.59 $24.95 6.2% Detail →

Safety

Safety

Collisions, fires, derailments and security events reported to NTD. Only complete years are shown.

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, 2011 to 2012

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.

Fleet

Fleet, workforce and reliability

How old the vehicles are, how many people run them, and how far they get between breakdowns.

Revenue vehicles
26
FY2025
Average age
6.5 yrs
weighted across the fleet
Past useful life
0%
0 vehicles at or beyond FTA's benchmark
Miles between failures
—
all mechanical failures, revenue miles

How the fleet has aged, 2010 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
Cutaway 26 6.5 yrs 10 yrs
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 — — — — — — — — —
2024 — — — — — — — — —
2023 — — — — — — — — —
2022 — — — — — — — — —
2021 — — — — — — — — —
2020 — — — — — — — — —
2019 — — — — — — — — —
2018 256,197 — 438,664 30,039 $2,036,325 $110,060 $7.95 $7.52 5.4%
2017 226,918 — 454,880 29,923 $1,899,491 $194,603 $8.37 $7.51 10.2%
2016 220,397 — 445,145 28,554 $1,424,849 $187,746 $6.46 $5.61 13.2%
2015 188,231 — 319,762 24,064 $1,442,373 $158,595 $7.66 $6.82 11%