Area (i) · Service & ridership analytics

The VTA network, in three dimensions and real ridership.

Every bus and light-rail stop VTA operates, rendered as a 3D column scaled to its average daily ridership, over the live route network. Built from VTA open data: 3,346 stops across 73 routes. Rotate, zoom, and hover any stop.

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Active stops mapped
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Busiest stop (avg daily activity)
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Activity carried by the top 20 stops
73
Bus & light-rail routes

Avg daily activity per stop

Highest (1,000+)
High (300–1,000)
Moderate (100–300)
Low (25–100)
Lowest (<25)
━ Light rail   ─ Bus route

Source: VTA Open Data, average stop boardings and alightings (Oct 2025); VTA GTFS route network. Basemap © CARTO, © OpenStreetMap contributors.

What the map shows

Ridership is concentrated, and that is a planning lever

VTA's ridership is heavily concentrated on a small set of corridors and stops. A few light-rail platforms and trunk bus stops carry a large share of total activity, while thousands of stops see very light use. That pattern is the starting point for cost-effective service planning.

Recommendation · Area (i)

Tie the long-range service plan to the ridership distribution

Concentrate frequency investment where boardings already cluster, and test lower-cost modes on the long tail of light-use stops. The financial model on the Long-Range page quantifies the operating cost of each option.

Recommendation · Area (iii)

Stand up a stop-level ridership-to-cost dashboard

Join this ridership layer to route operating cost so planners see subsidy per boarding by corridor, refreshed automatically from the same open feeds this map uses.

Top 12 stops by average daily activity

Boardings plus alightings, weekday average.

This is one module of a working analytical platform for VTA.

See the sales-tax forecast, the equity and access analysis, and the SCIP funding engine, each built on VTA's own public data.

Explore the platform