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 2025.
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 2009. 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 2025
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, 2025
Agencies running at least 100 vehicles, by fleet-weighted average age
| # | Agency | Location | Vehicles | Average age |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Camden, NJ | 120 | 52.4 yrs | |
| 2 | Anchorage, AK | 100 | 40.14 yrs | |
| 3 | Chicago, IL | 1,450 | 33.95 yrs | |
| 4 | Chesterton, IN | 102 | 30.76 yrs | |
| 5 | Staten Island, NY | 125 | 23.4 yrs | |
| 6 | New York, NY | 1,296 | 21.76 yrs | |
| 7 | New Orleans, LA | 268 | 20.38 yrs | |
| 8 | Los Angeles, CA | 285 | 19.95 yrs | |
| 9 | New York, NY | 1,254 | 19.8 yrs | |
| 10 | Philadelphia, PA | 2,654 | 18.24 yrs | |
| 11 | Brooklyn, NY | 12,491 | 17.5 yrs | |
| 12 | San Juan, PR | 125 | 17.27 yrs | |
| 13 | Atlanta, GA | 1,040 | 15.04 yrs | |
| 14 | Chicago, IL | 3,720 | 14.95 yrs | |
| 15 | Newington, CT | 754 | 14.56 yrs | |
| 16 | Woodbridge, VA | 120 | 14.55 yrs | |
| 17 | San Francisco, CA | 1,307 | 14.37 yrs | |
| 18 | Newark, NJ | 4,541 | 14.05 yrs | |
| 19 | Boston, MA | 3,223 | 13.94 yrs | |
| 20 | New York, NY | 422 | 12.55 yrs | |
| 21 | Santa Cruz, CA | 143 | 12.4 yrs | |
| 22 | Santa Barbara, CA | 105 | 11.63 yrs | |
| 23 | Seattle, WA | 530 | 11.21 yrs | |
| 24 | San Jose, CA | 729 | 11.06 yrs | |
| 25 | Cleveland, OH | 537 | 11.02 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.