Paratransit cost per trip: 2024 National Transit Database figures and what drives them

What does paratransit cost per trip?

A contracted demand-response trip cost a median of $52.41 in the Federal Transit Administration’s 2024 National Transit Database figures, the most recent annual data on FTA’s portal. Demand response is the NTD’s name for van service that picks riders up on request, and it covers ADA complementary paratransit along with other dial-a-ride service. The file does not split cost between them, but about 69 percent of the trips full-reporting agencies logged (62.5 million of 91.0 million) were ADA trips. For how contractors work under the ADA rules, see working as an ADA paratransit contractor.

The medians below come from the agencies that file the full report, counted one agency each regardless of size.

Weighting by volume gives higher numbers. The 236 agencies that contract out spent $3.87 billion on 60.6 million trips and 36.1 million revenue hours, which is $63.78 per trip and $107.26 per hour. The 219 agencies that run it themselves averaged $57.47 per trip and $122.21 per hour. The weighted figures run above the medians, so the high-volume systems cost more than the typical one. Rural reporters sit below: the 117 with contracted service had medians of $33.36 per trip and $59.46 per hour.

For scale, the 288 full reporters running their own fixed-route buses had a median of $10.16 per trip, so a contracted demand-response trip costs about five times as much.

What do trip, hour and cost mean in these figures?

Each figure divides the agency’s operating cost by trips or by revenue hours, and FTA defines all three. The terms matter because a contract can define them differently.

• Trip. One boarding. A rider with a wheelchair who goes from home to dialysis and back is two trips. For demand response, a personal care attendant or companion boarding counts too, even when they ride free, unless they work for the agency.
• Revenue hour. The hours a vehicle spends serving riders, counting waits at a pickup, empty drives between riders and no-show attempts, but not the drive out from the garage or the drive back. NTD reporting for contractors has FTA’s table of what counts, and deadhead miles explains how the business view differs.
• Cost. Operating expense. For contracted service, FTA’s manual has the agency report what it paid the contractor, including the contractor’s profit and any fares the contractor kept, plus its own contract oversight staff and a share of joint costs such as planning, scheduling and marketing. Depreciation and lease costs for vehicles and facilities go on a separate reconciling form, and that includes what a contractor charges the agency for using its own vans, so the cost of owning the vans is not in the figure.

Nationally, the contracted service of full reporters ran 36.1 million revenue hours out of 43.8 million vehicle hours, so revenue hours were 82 percent of the time the vehicles were out. By miles, 84 percent were revenue miles.

Taxi contracts need a caution. For taxi service FTA counts only the time a transit passenger is aboard as revenue time, so the hourly figure in the table is a different measure from van service, and cost per trip is the safer comparison.

What makes the cost per trip higher or lower?

Trips per revenue hour matter most, because wages, fuel, insurance and overhead are bought by the hour. Splitting the 236 contracting agencies into four equal groups by trips per revenue hour (calculated from each agency’s reported trips and hours) shows the pattern.

From the least to the most productive group the hourly cost climbed from $97 to $113, while the cost per trip fell from $73 to $38. At an hourly cost only 16 percent higher, the group carrying 2.8 trips an hour paid about half as much per trip as the group carrying 1.4. That is why trips per hour is the number to know about your own work.

Trip length matters too. Full reporters’ contracted service averaged about 9 passenger miles per trip, at about 14 miles of revenue driving for each revenue hour.

How does it compare with a Medicaid ride?

The two programs buy different things, so the per-trip figures overlap rather than rank one above the other. Many paratransit contracts price an hour of van time, and some price a trip, while Medicaid pays for a trip plus loaded miles.

• Ohio. The state’s fee-for-service maximum for a wheelchair van is $31.00 per trip plus $1.30 per mile, unchanged since January 1, 2024. At 9 miles, the average passenger trip length in the NTD file, that is $42.70. The state tables are in wheelchair transportation cost.
• Kentucky. Regional brokers received $174,953,006 for 3,363,272 trips in state fiscal 2025, about $52 per trip across every ride type, with the brokers’ administration and risk margin included in the rates. See Kentucky Medicaid NEMT rates.

An ADA agency also cannot manage cost by turning trips away. Under 49 CFR 37.131(f) it may not cap trips, keep a waiting list, or run a pattern of significantly late pickups, trip denials, missed trips or overlong rides, so it pays for the vehicle hours the demand needs. For the Medicaid side of pricing, see how to price NEMT trips.

How do agencies judge a contractor’s price?

An agency buying with federal money must run a cost or price analysis on every procurement above the simplified acquisition threshold, which the FAR sets at $350,000, and it must make its own independent estimate before it opens bids (2 CFR 200.324). So the agency has its own number before your bid arrives, and the NTD’s public data lets it check that number against peers.

Two comparisons come out of the national data. Contracting costs less per hour, with a median of $105.19 against $116.02 and weighted figures of $107.26 against $122.21. It also carries fewer trips per hour (1.68 against 2.13), so the per-trip gap is small. At the median contracting saves about 6 percent per trip, and in the weighted totals the agency-run systems come out cheaper at $57.47 against $63.78. A contractor with a lower hourly rate but low productivity can still cost an agency more per trip than its own drivers.

How does a contractor turn this into an hourly bid?

Start from your own cost and work toward a price per revenue hour, then check what that price means per trip. The national median of $105 is the agency’s operating cost for the service. It leaves out the cost of owning the vans and includes pieces a contractor never invoices, such as the agency’s own oversight staff, so it is not a rate to bid.

1. Add up your cost per vehicle hour. Include driver wages and payroll costs, fuel, maintenance and insurance for each van-hour, the van payment or depreciation, and your margin.
2. Convert it to a revenue hour. Divide by the share of vehicle hours the contract will count as revenue hours. The national figure is 82 percent; use your own, taken from trip logs, once you have them. Read the contract’s definition of a revenue hour first, because some count from the first pickup to the last drop-off and exclude the drive out.
3. Divide by the trips per hour you can carry. Use your own scheduling history, not the 1.4 to 2.8 range in the table, then compare the result per trip with what the agency pays now.
4. Price overhead on its own line. Call center, dispatch and supervision costs do not move with hours, and some contracts pay them as a fixed monthly amount. The contract structures agencies use are covered in the paratransit contractor guide.

An example: a company’s all-in cost is $62 per vehicle hour. At 82 percent, that is $75.61 per revenue hour. If it carries 1.7 trips per revenue hour the agency pays $44.48 per trip, and at 2.3 trips it pays $32.87, which is 26 percent less at the same hourly price. Productivity is the lever to bring to the negotiation.

Getting your own numbers

The national table only helps once you know your own hours and trips. HealthRide’s trip log exports every trip’s pickup and drop-off times with GPS-recorded miles, and timecards show driver hours, so you have the trips, hours and miles to divide. The on-time and driver reports sit next to the log, and revenue per vehicle hour explains the measure.