With their walkable campus, mix of restaurants, shops, bars and attractions, college towns tend to host some of the busiest transit systems in the state, often outperforming their larger peer cities.
Note: I am traveling in Asia right now, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for some guest posts. If you are interested in writing for College Towns, feel free to reach out to me on Substack or at ryanmallen555@gmail.com.
who runs the Thoughts About Cities Substack. He is a professional transit planner based in Chicago, Illinois, and has worked a myriad of other jobs related to transit. I appreciate that we get a perspective from someone who has worked directly in these areas. -Ryan
I’m excited to be guest contributing here on the College Towns Substack! Over on my page we talk a lot about Good Transit.
In brief, good transit is frequent, reliable, and reasonably fast. However, for good transit to be successful, it also needs supportive land use. A lot of people, with a decent mix of restaurants, bars, shops, and other attractions is generally a great landscape for transit to thrive. Sounds like a college town, right? Hang on to that thought!
College Town Transit Tends to Punch Above Its Weight
Chicago, the largest city in Illinois, hosts the busiest transit system in the state, carrying 279 million passengers in 2023. However, looking at total ridership alone tells an incomplete story.
Passengers Per Revenue Hour (n) - Transit Planning Metric. Total ridership divided by total hours a transit vehicle is in service and available to service passengers. A high passenger per revenue hour figure suggests that the transit service that is on the road is useful to a lot of people. The higher this figure, the more full buses are on average.
Unsurprisingly, when passengers per revenue hour is factored in, the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) is still the most productive transit system in the state1. However, coming in a close second is the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (CUMTD) serving the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign🟨🟦.
CUMTD operates a network of 20 bus routes that operate in and around this Big Ten campus that sports an annual enrollment of just over 59,000 students. Some routes serve the college specifically, while others pass through the college and connect to destinations around town. Anybody with a current UIUC ID can ride the system for free2. Additionally, most stops on campus are “iStops” where anybody can board the bus for free.
In the Hoosier state, college towns’ capacity to punch above their weight is more pronounced. IndyGo, the transit authority serving the most populous city in the state (Indianapolis), delivers the highest total ridership, with 6.9 million passengers in 2023. However, when passengers per revenue hour is the metric, IndyGo does not even crack the top five3. CityBus, serving Purdue University💛🖤🚂 and the Greater Lafayette Area, and Bloomington Transit, serving Indiana University ⬜🟥 and Bloomington, Indiana, are the top two agencies in Indiana4.
Similar to CUMTD, both of these agencies have agreements with their universities to let students and faculty ride free. At CityBus, students can ride all campus loops for free, but must purchase a semester pass to ride other routes5. Historically, students rode all routes for free, but Purdue recently renegotiated its contract for campus transportation and dropped this benefit.
In Bloomington, anybody with a valid campus ID can ride all Bloomington Transit routes for free. Additionally, IU operates a network of 6, free Campus Bus Routes that circulate around the campus.
In Iowa, the trend continues. The Des Moines Area Regional Transit Authority (DART), which serves the largest city in the state (Des Moines) is not the busiest transit system by total rides or passengers per hour. The agency with the highest total ridership? CyRide, serving Ames, Iowa, and Iowa State University🟨🌪️🟥6. CyRide operates 14 bus routes and lets ISU students and faculty ride free.
CyRide System Map.
In 2023, CyRide provided 4.1 million rides, nearly a million more than DART, despite DART’s service area population being nearly 10x larger. Yes, CyRide has the advantage of a college campus to generate ridership, but that alone doesn’t speak to this disparity. The frequency of the service operated by these agencies must be considered as well.
Frequency (adj) - The elapsed time between consecutive buses (or trains, or ferries) on a transit line. From the passenger perspective, how often the bus comes. Transit is generally considered frequent if it comes every 15 minutes or better.
DART’s most frequent weekday routes come every 20 minutes, with several coming hourly. CyRide’s least frequent weekday routes come every 40 minutes, and its most frequent route, the #23 Orange, comes every 4 minutes. On college campuses where trips are relatively short and the bus is competing7 with walking and cycling, frequency ensures the bus is a worthwhile travel option. Check out More Buses, More Riders: The Case for Frequent Transit if you want to know more about why frequency is important to good transit.
Colleges are powerful centers of innovation, bringing together diverse minds, cutting-edge research, and a culture of curiosity. They also draw lots of people, many without cars, to walkable campuses to mill about, running from class, to work, to extra-curricular activities. This makes college towns the perfect context for good transit to thrive. For our final stop on this tour of college town transit, let’s head to Madison, Wisconsin, the state capital and home of the University of Wisconsin (UW) and Metro Transit.
Metro Transit operates 16 local routes, 4 UW routes and three peak-only routes. In September of 2024, Metro Transit launched Rapid Route A, its first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) line, featuring dedicated lanes, upgraded stations, and battery electric articulated (bendy) buses. Rapid Route A travels east to west across the Isthmus, passing through the state capitol and the University of Wisconsin. It operates daily, providing 15-minute service on all days except Sundays, when the service drops to 30-minute frequency. Since its launch, this service has been well received. While transit ridership nationally still lags below pre-pandemic figures, monthly ridership for Metro Transit reached 1.3 million rides in April 2025, the highest figure seen since April 2015.
Metro Transit System Map.
College towns and transit authorities are primed to have a synergistic relationship. When the town, university, and transit authority lean into this synergy (by providing frequent routes, student fare agreements, and accommodating student drivers) they create transit systems that punch above their weight and expose students to what good transit can look like. If done well, this can create lifelong advocates for good transit, which is better for the environment, municipal finances, and avoiding sitting in traffic.
Thank you for having me as a guest contributor. If you want to learn more about what makes good transit, check out the Transit Planning 101 section of my Substack, Thoughts About Cities!
This did not fit naturally into the final draft, but I think it’s worth sharing. While most transit agencies avoid hiring college students,8 CyRide encourages students to apply. Check it out:
About job section on the CyRide website.
I love this for so many reasons, but the fact that it leaves college students with a Commercial Drivers License (CDL) is a big one. While I was in undergrad at Purdue, I worked part-time as a planning and operations analyst for CityBus. I also got my CDL and drove routes as needed.
Look at me bending corners in a 40’ Newflyer.
When I first graduated college, I drove buses full time while I was searching for a job in my field. Even today, I maintain a part-time driving job that I can pick up when I need a little extra money. A CDL is great job security. Somebody is always hiring a bus driver (or a class B truck driver). Check out this video interviewing some student drivers about their experience working for CyRide.
1 It’s one of the largest transit systems in the country.
2 This is supported by a $59 fee automatically assessed to every student as part of their tuition.
5 Citybus offers anybody with a purdue.edu email address a free semester pass through their mobile ticketing app.
6 The agency with the highest passengers per revenue hour is The University of Iowa, with an impressive 39 passengers per hour. A lot of rivalries in this article today.
7 “Competing” with other modes is not a bad thing. Competition ensures that we have a strong mobility mix with travel options that meet everybody’s distinct travel needs.
8 Transit scheduling generally involves more rigidity than a college student’s schedule will accommodate. Additionally, agencies are often reluctant to hire and train an employee that they know they will lose in 4 years.
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