ABQ Bus Ridership continues to rebound slightly post-COVID

Albuquerque’s bus ridership continued to slowly rebound from the COVID 19 pandemic in 2024, but as with the Rail Runner, ridership remains well below pre-pandemic numbers.

The Rio Grande Foundation requested and received publicly-available ridership records showing that ridership on the city bus system crept over 7 million for the 2024 calendar year. That’s a 12.6% increase from 2023 to 2024. But, bus ridership remains nearly 22% below where it was in 2019 (the last full year before COVID).

Notably, starting in January 0f 2022 the City began offering “free” bus fares which the City claims has boosted ridership, but bus ridership actually lags behind even the RailRunner in terms of where it stands relative to 2019.