Its sibling, the rail system, still has ground to make up, but Metrobus service is now running above pre-pandemic levels in terms of passenger counts, officials with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) recently announced.
Passengers totals are now 101 percent of 2019 levels in the latest monthly data, the agency said.
Average weekday ridership in June was 398,966, up from 394,351 in June 2019, according to new data. That is the second highest ridership total since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020; the highest was the average of 411,611 in May 2024.
The bus network hit bottom in June 2020, falling to an average of 108,304 passengers, according to WMATA data, before beginning a rebound.
The rail rebound remains a work in progress, with the 401,125 average weekday entries into the system in June 2024 still down significantly from 661,529 in June 2019, according to WMATA figures.