NTD ID 50198 · Full Reporter

Medina County

Medina County carried 68,611 boardings in FY2025 at $47.13 per ride and $34.74 in subsidy per ride. Ten years of NTD data, by mode.

Medina, OH Cleveland, OH Bus Demand Response
FY2025 boardings
68.6K
-1.7% vs FY2024
Cost per ride
$47.13
+17.8% $45.92 in 2024 dollars
Subsidy per ride
$34.74
+18.2% operating cost less fares
Fare recovery
26.3%
-0.9% fares average $12.40 per ride
Passenger miles
652.2K
average trip 9.51 miles
Operating cost
$3.23M
$107.75 per revenue hour
Rides per resident
0.37
service area 183.5K people
Rides per revenue hour
2.29
30K hours operated
Passengers aboard
1.9
average at any moment, passenger miles over vehicle miles
Average speed
11.43 mph
in revenue service, stops and traffic included
Cost per vehicle mile
$9.43
what running a mile costs, before anyone boards
Seasonal swing
1.32x
busiest month against quietest, 2025

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.

Since 2019
86% of riders

Running 75% of its 2019 service for 86% of its 2019 riders. Riders have come back faster than the service has.

The same twelve months of 2019. Through August 2026.

Public money per resident
$13 a year

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: $10

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: 27% of service hours

Rides on an average day
188

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.

Average pay
$34,185

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.

U.S. transit: $88,387.

Pay plus benefits
$42,354

What one full-time job costs the agency in a year, with pensions, health coverage and payroll taxes. $28 for every hour worked.

U.S. transit: $135,698.

Average operator pay
$27,555

The people driving the agency's vehicles, overtime included, benefits not.

U.S. transit: $78,723.

Hours a full-time operator works
1,469 a year

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.

Benefits and paid time off
59¢ per $1 of wages

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: 27¢.

Insurance and claims
$0.02 a revenue mile

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
Medina County
Address
144 N BROADWAY ST STE 201
Medina, OH 44256-1972

Organization

Organization type
City, County or Local Government Unit or Department of Transportation
Reporter type
Full Reporter
Fiscal year ends
December 31, 2025
Reporting since
FY2015

Service area

Population served
183,512 over 425 sq mi
Density
432 people per sq mi
Urbanized area
Cleveland, OH · 1.71M people
Vehicles at maximum service
23 · 5 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 85.8% 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 58% more to run and carries 18% more riders. The rise in cost per ride is all the service getting dearer.

Across all U.S. demand response service over the same years, an hour costs 22% more to run and carries 9% fewer riders.

Where the money goes

Operating cost by function

Who pays for it

Federal, state and local funding, 2007 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.

Operating subsidy per ride
$34.74
FY2025, cost less fares
Capital spent per ride
$0.00
that year's spending, not the cost of the assets
Both together
$34.74
public money spent that year, per boarding
Capital per ride, averaged
$4.60
mean of 3 years

Cost per ride including the vehicles

An estimate, and the only part of capital this data can honestly support.

Operating cost per ride
$47.13
Plus fleet consumed per ride
$3.88
Cost per ride including vehicles
$51.01
$266.1K of fleet consumed a year

How this is worked out. FTA publishes what every agency spent on rolling stock each year since 1992. Restate all 11 years in today's money and average them over 10 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. Most of this agency's fleet spending falls in the last 3 years. It has been buying hard lately, so the average is pulled up and probably overstates what the fleet costs in a normal year.

What it leaves out. Every tunnel, track mile, bridge and station. Those last forty to a hundred years and the data goes back 11, 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, 2012 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.

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 $3.25M 51.1% 18.7% 3.7% 26.5%
capital $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 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0 $0
2024 $0 $0 $645.6K $0 $0 $0 $645.6K
2023 $0 $0 $318.3K $0 $0 $0 $318.3K

Peers

Compared with similar systems

320 agencies serve an urbanized area of similar size, carry a similar number of riders, and run demand response as their main service.

Cost per ride
$47.13
better than 16% of peers
Subsidy per ride
$34.74
better than 25% of peers
Fare recovery
26.3%
better than 84% of peers
Rides per resident
0.37
better than 52% of peers

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
Medina County this agency Cleveland, OH 1.71M 68.6K 0.37 $47.13 $34.74 26.3%
Indianapolis, IN 1.7M 70.7K 0.18 $32.36 $26.97 16.7%
Cincinnati, OH--KY 1.69M 65.2K 0.55 $28.40 $26.79 5.7%
Cincinnati, OH--KY 1.69M 64.7K 0.31 $38.73 $32.67 15.6%
Iowa Non-UZA 1.77M 75.8K — $22.11 $16.77 24.1%
Arkansas Non-UZA 1.79M 61.6K — $44.81 $36.67 18.2%
Arkansas Non-UZA 1.79M 78.6K — $21.54 $15.72 27%
Oregon Non-UZA 1.55M 75.8K — $16.86 $16.82 0.3%
Indianapolis, IN 1.7M 55.9K 0.28 $36.64 $35.10 4.2%
Iowa Non-UZA 1.77M 83.4K — $46.12 $37.02 19.7%
Indianapolis, IN 1.7M 54.6K 0.23 $29.44 $26.76 9.1%
Peer median (320 agencies) 0.34 $28.01 $24.49 7.6%

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
Bus Directly operated — — — — — — — Detail →
Demand Response Directly operated 66,448 603,497 28,927 $2,971,490 $44.72 $31.92 28.6% Detail →
Demand Response Purchased transportation - taxi 2,163 48,668 1,084 $262,284 $121.26 — — 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, 2012 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.

Injuries, latest full year
1
Fatalities, latest full year
0
Total events, latest full year
1

Fleet

Fleet, workforce and reliability

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

Staff
48
FY2025, all functions
Vehicle operators
43
1.87 per vehicle at peak service
Maintenance staff
0
vehicle and facility
Labor hours per revenue hour
1.98
all staff hours over hours of service run

Workforce by mode, FY2025

Mode Service Hours Operators Vehicle maintenance Administration All staff
Demand Response Directly operated Full Time 25 0 5 30
Demand Response Directly operated Part Time 18 — — 18

Staff, 2015 to 2024

The agency's own employees on operations. Staff on capital projects and a contractor's staff are not counted.

Revenue vehicles
22
FY2025
Average age
2.96 yrs
weighted across the fleet
Past useful life
0%
0 vehicles at or beyond FTA's benchmark
Miles between failures
42,951
all mechanical failures, revenue miles

How the fleet has aged, 2012 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 17 3.24 yrs 10 yrs
0%
Van 5 2 yrs 8 yrs
0%

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
Demand Response Directly operated 300,660 2 7 42,951

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
Demand Response — 54,807 — 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 68,611 652,165 342,968 30,011 $3,233,774 $850,486 $47.13 $34.74 26.3%
2024 69,804 834,239 375,677 29,951 $2,792,915 $741,005 $40.01 $29.40 26.5%
2023 70,136 611,987 429,305 32,395 $2,914,641 $618,324 $41.56 $32.74 21.2%
2022 63,131 610,001 497,884 34,272 $2,452,419 $498,722 $38.85 $30.95 20.3%
2021 64,427 602,873 516,809 36,743 $2,387,179 $534,904 $37.05 $28.75 22.4%
2020 60,596 537,000 394,248 30,536 $1,975,617 $45,525 $32.60 $31.85 2.3%
2019 77,844 705,060 500,685 36,430 $1,965,359 $63,053 $25.25 $24.44 3.2%
2018 79,987 728,266 504,325 32,040 $2,018,651 $62,180 $25.24 $24.46 3.1%
2017 74,163 664,383 492,209 32,151 $1,961,332 $61,180 $26.45 $25.62 3.1%
2016 58,614 470,365 428,153 28,084 $1,696,153 $56,054 $28.94 $27.98 3.3%
2015 67,479 555,121 503,389 34,896 $1,751,991 $76,319 $25.96 $24.83 4.4%