BART adds monthly ridership reports; latest release of open data

A leader in opening up its data to the public, BART now is providing monthly ridership number reports.

These reports, in a downloadable spreadsheet format, give a snapshot of how many people are traveling between various stations in the BART system. You can look at this "entry-exit" data to see average ridership for the month by type of day (weekday, Saturday or Sunday) for each of the 43 stations.

It's another step in BART's efforts to provide open data to the public, such as the BART API and the BART Station Profile Study.

How might such data be practical or useful to BART customers and the general public?

Our data has been used by third-party developers to create dozens of transit applications that help riders. We've also heard from people interested in looking at transit patterns as they make a decision on where to live, for example, or where they might want to locate a new business. Having the data in hand -- how many people are taking public transit, from where to where, on which days, in which numbers -- can be a valuable tool in decision-making for individuals, businesses and organizations.

We hope you find it useful. Feel free to send us your feedback.