California transit providers

From buses, shuttles, and on-demand paratransit to commuter and intercity rail, passengers want transportation that’s easy to find and easy to pay for.

To better understand the size and scale of opportunities for integration in transportation, the Cal-ITP team compiled a list of California’s transit providers.

Explore the data below, which links to each operator’s website and offers just a taste of our full dataset—a CSV download that includes funding information, fleet size, GTFS information, and more.

Download the data package

The data package includes the full dataset, data dictionary, and glossary as CSV files.

Download data

About the data

This dataset includes all publicly-funded transit agencies in California that provide fixed-route service that is available for the general public to ride without advance reservations. Each provider entry includes its headquarter city, counties where active, the associated National Transit Database (NTD) ID (if available), the website URL, and key attributes from the NTD. It is currently limited to providers who operate their own services.

This list is a living document that will be updated regularly with new service provider information. If you have comments, additions, or corrections to this dataset, we’re working on ways for you to share that feedback. Please check back soon.

Data dictionary

  • Agency Name: The name of the TA as specified in NTD.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    agency_name

  • NTD ID: The organization’s ID in the National Transit Database / FTA agency ID number. Data entry processes / sources of truth for this field have changed over time. As of May 2023, the source is the raw_ntd_id field in the Airtable organizations table; for records before May 2023, sources were some combination of the NTD agency info table in Airtable and the ntd_agency_to_organizations CSV seed file in this dbt project (now renamed to _deprecated__ntd_agency_to_organizations).

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    ntd_id

  • HQ City: The city where this TA’s headquarters is located.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    hq_city

  • HQ County: The county where this TA’s headquarters is located.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    hq_county

  • Counties Served: A semi-colon delimited list of counties that are serviced by the parent organization this TA belongs to; this TA may not service all counties listed.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    counties_served

  • Agency Website: The website for this TA.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    agency_website

  • CalTrans District ID: null

    Data Type
    int64
    Column
    caltrans_district_id

  • CalTrans District Name: null

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    caltrans_district_name

  • Is Public Entity: Formula in source system returns true if the organization_type column has been set to one of the following: City/Town, Independent Agency, MPO/RTPA, County, Tribe, Federal Government, Joint Powers Agency, or Council of Governments

    Data Type
    bool
    Column
    is_public_entity

  • Is Publicly Operating: Formula in source system returns true value if the following criteria are met: 1. Service has “Operating” value in operational_status column (for organizations, only at least one managed service must meet this criterion) 2. Service is rideable by the general public (for organizations, only at least one managed service must meet this criterion) 3. Provider is either an NTD reporter (indicated by non-empty raw_ntd_id) or is a public entity.

    Data Type
    bool
    Column
    is_publicly_operating

  • Funding Sources: A semi-colon delimted list of numerical funding program names that this TA’s parent organization receives; all non-numerical (e.g. Public, Caltrans) funding programs are excluded in this column.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    funding_sources

  • VOMS: (abbreviated as “voms”) The number of revenue vehicles operated to meet the annual maximum service requirement. This is the revenue vehicle count during the peak season of the year on the week and day that maximum service is provided.

    Data Type
    float64
    Column
    vehicles_at_max_service

  • VOMS (Demand Response): (abbreviated as “voms_dr”) The number of revenue vehicles operated to meet the annual maximum service requirement for NTD categories: Demand Response (DR) and Demand Response Taxi (DT).

    Data Type
    float64
    Column
    on_demand_vehicles_at_max_service

  • GTFS Schedule URIs: A semi-colon delimited list of URLs for GTFS schedules this TA’s parent organization has under its umbrella of services; there may be feeds that do not belong to this TA but instead from a sibling service provider within the same parent organization.

    Data Type
    string
    Column
    gtfs_schedule_uris