(The Center Square)- First-quarter ridership for transit in the U.S. in 2024 increased by 8% as compared to the previous year after plummeting during the pandemic, but the report shows ridership is still short of pre-COVID levels.

This data comes from the American Public Transportation Association’s first quarter 2024 report.

Ridership has been increasing every year since 2020 but the rate hasn’t been enough to catch up to pre-COVID levels.

American Public Transportation reported 2.4 billion riders in the first quarter of 2019 before the pandemic when ridership took a hit. Since then, ridership has slowly begun to rise, with 1.7 billion riders in the first quarter of 2023.

The number of riders for the first quarter report in 2024 has increased to 1.8 billion, showing an 8% increase from the previous year.

Ridership is the number of times people board public transportation vehicles, including heavy rail, light rail, commuter rail, trolleybuses, buses, and other forms of transit.

After transit ridership was leveled during the pandemic, transit agencies focused on improvements and altering services to fit the new travels of people in their communities, these changes, as well as redesigning the transit networks led to an increase in ridership, as previously reported by The Center Square.