Across the country, ridership on public transportation plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While cities are working on bouncing back, ridership is higher in nine U.S. cities than it was before the pandemic: Albany and Poughkeepsie are two of the cities where ridership has increased.

So what’s working here?

Martin Ramos has worked at the Renaissance Hotel for eight years and each day when he leaves the downtown Albany business, he catches the CDTA bus. And he looks forward to it.

"I'm happy that we're back. I'm happy we're back as a family," said Ramos. "We're happy that we're back on the workforce here at downtown Albany."

Albany and Poughkeepsie are two of nine cities in the country where public transit ridership is higher than it was pre-pandemic, according to the American Public Transportation Association.

"What a lot of agencies did was they never brought their systems back to full service," said Jaime Kazlo, director of communications of CDTA. "So during the pandemic, when we were cutting routes and making the service as efficient as it could be in those critical areas, we went back to what we were before the pandemic. Listen, it's not without challenges. I can't sit here and tell you that every day we don't have a team of people who figure out how to get the busses out on the streets and make sure service runs as efficiently and smooth as possible."

CDTA credits their surge in ridership to Bus Rapid Transit and Universal Access Partners.

"A lot of the ways that we have gotten there is by taking a look at our whole route network and figuring out where can we make efficiencies, what changes need to be made to enhance the quality of service for our customers community and also for our employees," said Kazlo.

Ramos' workplace was one of 40 Albany businesses and organizations that participated as a Universal Access Partner. He and his co-workers got free bus tickets for a year.

In December 2023 alone, 410,000 riders took advantage of the Universal Access Program.
For Ramos, it's the comradery of doing something as a community it's powerful.

"When you have full ridership on the bus after pandemic, there's a peacefulness," said Ramos. "You have voices, children heading home with their parents, going to and from school."