The Rapid: the loss, the ridership, and the record

1The exhibits

Both claims are stated in their common form. Each circulates in many wordings in the Grand Rapids area, and each is rephrased here accurately and in the same way, so that no one person's exact words are singled out. The second claim restates the figure The Rapid publishes about its own service on its About page. That figure is the agency's own, and it is not an independent count of unique riders, because no federal source publishes such a count. Both claims are repeated constantly in the Grand Rapids area. This brief checks them against the record, figure by figure, and then leaves the part that is genuinely debatable where it belongs, which is with the reader.

2What is being decided

• The question the record can settle: what the audited statements report, what the federal database counts, and what the service costs per resident, because those are recorded in audited documents and in a federal dataset (The Rapid audited statements; FTA National Transit Database).
• The question the record cannot settle: whether a six-city region should tax property to run buses that most residents do not ride on any given day, and whether $108 per resident per year is a fair price for regional mobility, because those are questions of values and priorities.
• The definitions that bound the topic: Unlinked passenger trips means total boardings, where each boarding counts separately, including transfers; it is a count of rides and never a count of people (FTA National Transit Database). Operating loss means operating revenues minus operating expenses, where the revenues counted are fares and similar income only and the expenses include depreciation (The Rapid audited financial statements). Depreciation means an accounting charge that spreads the cost of buses and facilities across their service lives; no cash goes out the door when depreciation is recorded (the exhibit's glossary, from the audited statements' accounting basis).

3What this argument is really about

Underneath both claims sits one question, and it is whether a six-city region should tax property to run buses that most residents do not ride on any given day. That is a question about values and priorities, and reasonable people answer it differently. What the audited statements say is not a values question, and neither is what the federal database counts, or what the service costs per resident. Those are in the record, and the record is below.

4The verified record

• The loss, in full: The Rapid's audited FY2023 statement reports operating revenues of $4,920,240 against operating expenses of $68,104,967, including $16,676,021 of depreciation, for an operating loss of $63,184,727. The same statement then records $56,199,566 in non-operating revenues, made up of property taxes of $18,867,978, state funds of $16,839,046, federal funds of $13,128,675, and other local funds of $7,363,867. It also records $12,753,274 in capital contributions, and the year ends up $5,768,113. FY2024 ended up $10,204,673 the same way. The loss line counts fares and similar income as revenue, and it excludes, by accounting design, the taxes voters approved to fund the system. (Verified, audited statements.)
• The newest audit: FY2025, the most recent year available, reports operating expenses of $71,708,525 and an operating loss of $66,471,358, and after the same non-operating revenues and capital contributions, that year ends down $5,341,518, the only negative close of the three years. (Verified, audited statements.)
• The ridership count: the FTA's 2023 agency profile records a service-area population of 621,711 and 6,042,030 unlinked passenger trips, which is an average of 20,984 per weekday. Unlinked passenger trips are boardings, and one person who rides twice with a transfer can be counted three times. The percentage in the first claim rests on arithmetic: 22,031 weekday boardings divided by 621,711 residents equals 3.54%. The arithmetic is correct, and the conclusion that 3.54% of people use the system does not follow from it, because the numerator counts rides and the denominator counts people. The 22,031 figure is cited by the writer of the first claim, and it was not read directly in the federal profile. No federal source publishes a unique daily rider count, and the second claim's figure is the agency's own wording rather than an FTA measurement. (Verified, FTA National Transit Database.)
• The annual reach: 6,042,030 boardings across 621,711 residents comes to about 9.7 boardings per resident per year. That figure measures use, and it does not measure users, because the same person can account for many boardings.
• The funding vote: the 1.47-mill levy that funds the system was renewed by voters on November 7, 2017, with about 61% in favor across the six communities. The renewal runs for twelve years, through 2029. (Verified, election reporting and agency records.)
• The library comparison, tested: the first claim's side of this argument often compares The Rapid's budget to the Grand Rapids Public Library's budget of roughly $14.4 million. The library serves the city of Grand Rapids only, at about 200,000 people, which comes to roughly $72 per resident. The Rapid's FY2024 operating expenses of $67,250,994 across 621,711 residents come to roughly $108 per resident. The per-resident cost is about one and a half times the library's per-resident cost, and it is not the more than four to one difference that the raw totals suggest. (Computed from the library's published budget figures and The Rapid's audited statements.)

5Where exhibit 1 holds, and where it breaks

The first claim holds on the loss figure, because the $63 million operating loss is the agency's own audited label, printed in its own financial statement for FY2023. The claim holds on a further point as well, because no federal source counts 21,000 unique daily riders, and the second claim's number cannot be confirmed from any published count. The claim breaks on what the loss figure means, because the same audited statement closes the year up $5,768,113 once the funding the system was designed to run on is counted. It also breaks on the composition of the loss, because $16,676,021 of the expenses inside it is depreciation, which is an accounting charge rather than cash spent in the year. The claim breaks on its percentage as well, because the percentage divides boardings by residents, and boardings are rides rather than people. The longer post's wider impression, that buses run empty, is not supported by any count in the record. The count that exists is 6,042,030 boardings in 2023.

6Where exhibit 2 holds, and where it breaks

The second claim holds on the scale of use, because the system recorded 6,042,030 boardings in 2023, at an average of 20,984 unlinked trips per weekday across a six-city service area. The claim holds on the funding, because the 1.47-mill levy was put to voters and renewed in 2017 with about 61% in favor. The claim holds on cost, because the published peer comparison puts The Rapid's cost per passenger at $7.80 against a peer average of $9.44, and its cost per vehicle hour at $102.49 against $135.72. The claim breaks on the word "people," because the 21,000 figure is the agency's own phrasing, the federal count behind the system's ridership is a count of boardings, and one person who rides twice with a transfer can be counted three times. The claim also does not mention the cost side of the same record, which is $108 per resident per year on average, funded through the property tax whether a given resident boards a bus or not.

7What is true in both

Strip both claims down and they share a skeleton. The system runs at an operating loss on its own books, and it runs that way by design, because fares were never its funding model. The region's voters chose to fund it through a property tax, and the tax falls on residents across six cities while a minority of those residents ride on any given day. The system carries millions of rides a year, and nobody has counted how many individual people those rides belong to. The record answers what the arrangement costs and how much it is used. Whether the arrangement is worth its price is the actual debate, and it cannot be settled by a dataset, including this one.

8The number in the middle

$108 per resident per year. The first claim quotes $63 million, which is a system total, and a system total is hard to weigh against anything a single household experiences. The second claim quotes 21,000 people, which is a count that no published source has taken. The per-resident cost is the figure a voter can weigh directly, and it comes to about $9 a month for each person in the service area, for a six-city bus network.

9Projections and analogues

No projection filed. The record does not yet hold enough to project from.

10Debatable / not debatable

The factual part would settle with a unique-rider count, which neither the agency nor the FTA currently publishes. Until such a count exists, boardings cannot be converted into people in either direction, and every figure in this argument has to keep rides and riders separate. What the record cannot settle is whether $108 per resident per year is a fair price for regional mobility. It also cannot settle whether the answer the voters gave in 2017 should stand when the authorization next comes due. A proposed 1.88-mill measure is already drafted in the agency's September 2026 board packet, covering 2029 through 2040. Those are values questions. They belong to the reader, and they are real ones.

11What we simplified

Per-resident figures divide total operating expenses by total service-area population. They are averages for comparison, and they are not a statement that every resident pays equally, because property taxes fall on property in proportion to taxable value. This publication has also corrected its own earlier work on this argument once already, in Corrections Log entry 001, where a figure in our earlier debate material turned out to be unsupported and was withdrawn. The correction is recorded there.

12Words in this brief

Unlinked passenger trips

total boardings, where each boarding counts separately, including transfers. Commonly misused as: a count of individual riders. It is a count of rides, and it is never a count of people.

Operating loss

operating revenues minus operating expenses, where the revenues counted are fares and similar income only, and the expenses include depreciation. Commonly misused as: the amount of money the system lost. The same statement's bottom line, the change in net position, was positive in FY2023 and in FY2024.

Depreciation

an accounting charge that spreads the cost of buses and facilities across their service lives. Commonly misused as: cash spent in that year. No cash goes out the door when depreciation is recorded.

13Sources

The Rapid (Interurban Transit Partnership) audited financial statements, FY2023 and FY2024 · FTA National Transit Database, 2023 Annual Agency Profile, NTD ID 50033 · The Rapid, About page (source of the second claim's wording) · The Rapid board (PPS) packet, September 2026 · Grand Rapids Public Library FY2024 budget · 2017 millage renewal results as reported. Receipt Pack MC-0004 available on request.

14Filed updates

No filed updates.