Asset Inventory Time Series

The U.S. transit fleet

How many vehicles American transit runs, how old they are, and how many of them a wheelchair user can board — 1992 to 2024.

Vehicles in service, 2024
182,027
75,335 in 1992
Average age
8.37 yrs
youngest was 7.59 in 2015
Accessible buses
97.8%
of the bus fleet meets the ADA standard
Years of record
33
one row per agency, mode and year

Is the fleet getting older?

Average vehicle age, weighted by fleet size, all modes

The fleet got newer for twenty years and has been getting older since 2015. Age is weighted by fleet size, so a city with four hundred buses counts four hundred times as much as an agency with one. What this does not say is whether a vehicle is worn out: a bus and a rail car have very different working lives, and each agency's own page compares its vehicles against FTA's benchmark for their type.

How many vehicles

Active revenue vehicles, 1992 to 2024

Making the buses accessible

Share of the U.S. bus fleet meeting the ADA standard, 1993 onward

Half the national bus fleet in 1993, nineteen in twenty by 2002. The series starts in 1993 rather than 1992 because every reporter filed a zero for 1992, the first year the field existed — which records when FTA started asking, not the state of the fleet.

Oldest fleets, 2024

Agencies running at least 100 vehicles, by fleet-weighted average age

# Agency Location Vehicles Average age
1 Camden, NJ 120 51.4 yrs
2 Chicago, IL 1,464 33.11 yrs
3 San Carlos, CA 163 32.18 yrs
4 New York, NY 1,293 20.93 yrs
5 New York, NY 1,272 18.98 yrs
6 Los Angeles, CA 275 18.45 yrs
7 New Orleans, LA 321 18.41 yrs
8 Brooklyn, NY 12,475 17.56 yrs
9 Philadelphia, PA 2,681 17.01 yrs
10 San Juan, PR 124 16.3 yrs
11 Chicago, IL 3,419 14.83 yrs
12 San Francisco, CA 1,328 14.16 yrs
13 Atlanta, GA 1,046 14.14 yrs
14 Woodbridge, VA 120 13.55 yrs
15 Newark, NJ 4,442 13.41 yrs
16 Newington, CT 384 13.26 yrs
17 Boston, MA 3,152 13.24 yrs
18 San Jose, CA 695 12.45 yrs
19 Santa Barbara, CA 110 11.91 yrs
20 New York, NY 422 11.55 yrs
21 Mahwah, NJ 205 11.54 yrs
22 Santa Cruz, CA 147 11.5 yrs
23 Buffalo, NY 377 11.15 yrs
24 Fresno, CA 177 10.91 yrs
25 Albuquerque, NM 110 10.85 yrs

What this counts

  • Revenue vehicles only. Buses, rail cars, vans and ferries that carry passengers. Tow trucks and supervisor cars are not here.
  • Age is not condition. A twelve-year-old bus is near the end of its life; a twelve-year-old rail car is barely broken in. FTA sets a different benchmark for each vehicle type, and each agency's page uses it.
  • "Accessible" is NTD's flag. It counts vehicles meeting the ADA requirements, as the agency reported them. It does not say whether the lift worked that morning, or whether the stop the bus pulls up to has a curb ramp.
  • A growing fleet is not more service. Vehicle counts rose faster than service did over this period, partly because demand-response fleets — many small vans, each carrying few people — grew fastest of all.