NTD ID 00042 · Reduced Reporter

Targhee Regional Public Transit Authority

Targhee Regional Public Transit Authority carried 80,900 boardings in FY2018 at $30.31 per ride and $25.62 in subsidy per ride. Ten years of NTD data, by mode.

Idaho Falls, ID
Also known as TRPTA
FY2018 boardings
80.9K
+6.1% vs FY2017
Cost per ride
$30.31
+3.1% $37.87 in 2024 dollars
Subsidy per ride
$25.62
-11.6% operating cost less fares
Fare recovery
15.5%
+994.7% fares average $4.70 per ride
Passenger miles
average trip — miles
Operating cost
$2.45M
$47.51 per revenue hour
Rides per resident
Rides per revenue hour
1.57
51.6K hours operated
Passengers aboard
average at any moment, passenger miles over vehicle miles
Average speed
11.9 mph
in revenue service, stops and traffic included
Cost per vehicle mile
$3.99
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.

Profile

Agency profile

As filed with the National Transit Database.

Contact

Legal name
Targhee Regional Public Transit Authority

Organization

Organization type
Reporter type
Reduced Reporter
Fiscal year ends
Reporting since
FY2015

Service area

Population served
Urbanized area
Idaho Falls, ID · 90.7K people
Vehicles at maximum service

Services operated

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

Ridership

Ridership

Targhee Regional Public Transit Authority 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 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 +29.7% more and carries -25.8% as many riders. The two have pushed cost per ride up about equally.

Where the money goes

Operating cost by function

Who pays for it

Federal, state and local funding, 2000 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

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

Cost per ride
$30.31
better than 31% of peers
Subsidy per ride
$25.62
better than 33% of peers
Fare recovery
15.5%
better than 83% of peers
Rides per resident
not enough peers to rank

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
Targhee Regional Public Transit Authority this agency Idaho Falls, ID 90.7K 80.9K $30.31 $25.62 15.5%
Manteca, CA 86.7K 78.8K 0.94 $45.09 $44.40 1.5%
Kingsport, TN--VA 98.4K 82.7K 1.49 $21.89 $21.16 3.3%
Portsmouth, NH--ME 95.1K 75.8K 0.35 $33.01 $32.71 0.9%
Bowling Green, KY 97.8K 74.6K 1.03 $25.75 $25.62 0.5%
Auburn, AL 100.8K 86.8K 0.37 $25.24
State College, PA 83.7K 68.7K 0.43 $30.23 $24.13 20.2%
Altoona, PA 74.4K 86.3K 0.7 $27.59 $1.28 95.4%
Madera, CA 81.6K 94.9K 1.43 $34.78 $34.75 0.1%
Camarillo, CA 76.3K 73.5K 1.01 $41.81 $40.05 4.2%
Valdosta, GA 76.8K 93.4K 1.68 $9.39 $8.20 12.7%
Peer median (200 agencies) 1.46 $22.31 $20.57 5.9%

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
Demand Response Directly operated 47,621 37,325 $1,747,075 $36.69 $29.30 20.1% Detail →
Bus Directly operated 33,279 14,296 $705,368 $21.20 $20.34 4% Detail →

Safety

Safety

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

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, 2009 to 2011

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. NTD publishes all three from 2022 onward.

How the fleet has aged, 2000 to 2018

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 and reliability

NTD publishes the vehicle age and breakdown files from 2022 onward, and this agency does not appear in them.

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
2018 80,900 614,404 51,621 $2,452,443 $380,059 $30.31 $25.62 15.5%
2017 76,214 524,964 40,799 $2,239,885 $31,710 $29.39 $28.97 1.4%
2016 80,860 565,830 41,926 $1,581,345 $41,952 $19.56 $19.04 2.7%
2015 86,284 639,460 40,831 $1,495,650 $53,172 $17.33 $16.72 3.6%