DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – The city of Detroit’s bus system is slowly recovering riders it lost during the pandemic but is still far short of pre-2020 levels.

The bus system had 14 million riders in 2024, an increase of 19% from the previous year. The 14.06 million riders is still far short of the 22.7 million riders it had in 2019.

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The annual ridership dropped to 10.5 million in 2020 during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Detroit Department of Transportation gave its February update to the City Council at the Feb. 18 meeting. The data completes ridership for 2024.

Monthly ridership at the end of 2024 tailed off and dropped from 1.43 million in October to 1.22 million in November and 1.06 million in December.