Based upon information calculated from a School Transportation News survey (February 2000 issue), it is estimated that school buses carry 52.4 million passenger journeys each school day. School Transportation News developed an annual ridership estimate of 9.322 billion passenger journeys, which are generally taken 180 days per year (the school year). The range in school days per year is from 170 days in Alaska to 184 in Hawaii. This is 2.4 times as many daily passenger journeys as is carried by all of the nation's public transit (buses, subways, light rail commuter rail, paratransit, ferries, etc.)

By comparison, latest Federal Transit Administration data indicates that approximately 27.0 million unlinked trips are carried each weekday by the nation's transit agencies. However, the transit data counts individual passengers multiple times when they transfer from one vehicle to another to complete their trip. The 1995 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey found that there are 0.8 passenger journeys (transfers excluded) per each unlinked trip (transfers included). It is thus estimated that weekday transit ridership is 21.6 million passenger journeys.

The transit ridership includes approximately 900,000 daily school trips. Inclusion of these trips as school trips increases the school bus to transit ratio to 2.57 (table).