Fill Those Seats!
Typically, I ride the bus during rush hour, when it's so crowded that it's sometimes hard to nab a seat. I've done a quick passenger count a number of times, and the bus almost always has at least 35 passengers. Sometimes, especially on the big articulated buses on a busy afternoon, it's more than 50.
But apparently it's pretty unusual for a transit bus to be so full. According to nationwide statistics (see table 2.10, here), transit buses carry fewer than 9 passengers, on average. That average includes both the busy routes and the sparsely-ridden ones; apparently there are lots of buses that have just a few riders, especially in spacious suburbs or during late-night runs.
The average transit bus gets a little around 3.5 miles per gallon in regular service. When I do the math, I find that buses average about 30 passenger-miles per gallon of fuel, or thereabouts.
Curiously, that makes transit buses--at least, at current levels of occupancy--just about the least efficient form of personal travel around!
