By Jorge Casuso

March 19, 2026 -- Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus (BBB) topped 10 million riders last year, marking "a major milestone in ridership recovery," according to the Transportation Department's Annual Report released Wednesday.

The 10,100,208 passengers in Fiscal Year 2024-25 marked the highest ridership since 10,285,930 passengers rode the City's buses in Fiscal Year 2019-20, before the cornavirus emergency shut the system down.

Reaching the 10 million mark reflects "both the return of ridership and the trust people place in reliable transit service," said Anuj Gupta, the City's Transportation Director.

BBB has slowly recovered from the blow dealt by the COVID shutdown, which contributed to a shortage of 45 bus drivers as of December 2021, according to a BBB report issued that year.

Since then, ridership on Santa Monica's bus system has been slowly rising from a low of some 6.3 million passengers in FY 2021-22, to more than 7.7 million riders the following year, to 8.6 million riders in FY 2023-24.

Still, the bus system fell well short of the 12,536,069 passengers in FY 2018-19, the last year it operated fully before the coronavirus emergency.

The operating cost for BBB rose in that past fiscal year to $85,659,665, a 9 percent increase over the $78,276,686 it cost to operate the bus system the previous year.

The cost of operating a bus -- which includes driver and staff pay, as well as maintenance and repair costs -- rose from $182.20 to $188.64 per hour in service.

With the rise in ridership, the operating cost per passenger dropped from $13.90 in FY 2020-21 to $8.48 per passenger during the past fiscal year, which ended on June 30.

On-Time Performance has remained stable over the past four years, with 70 percent of the buses arriving close to the scheduled time, according to the report.

The most popular routes were Route 1, which travels along Main Street and Santa Monica Boulevard, and Route 7, which travels along Pico Boulevard and stops at the Santa Monica College (SMC) main campus.

By far, most BBB passengers paid their fare using a "TAP" card (74 percent), followed by cash (17 percent), while 6 percent rode the bus for free or refused to pay and 3 percent used mobile ticketing.

Of the total riders, 22 percent were college students; 15 percent were seniors, disabled and/or on Medicare, and 5 percent were youth.

To offset rising operating costs, all existing fares and passes increased in price last August, marking only the fourth fare increase since 1985, and the first since January 2016 ("Big Blue Bus Fares Go Up Next Month," July 21, 2025).

The increased fares "help offset the rising costs of fuel, utilities, and supplies accrued in recent years," Transportation Department officials said.

Ridership on BBB's Mobility on Demand Every Day (MODE) program -- which offers discounted rides to those over 65 or disabled -- also hit a milestone last fiscal year with 41,727 passengers.

That was some 2,000 passengers more than the previous year and more than double the 18,989 passengers who took MODE in FY 2020-21.