After looking into the DDOT data via TextMyBus for a while, I had been very interested in ridership and where people were riding the bus the most. All the issues with DDOT aside, my main question was: ‘what routes were transporting the most people.’ The data that I have obviously doesn’t account for where people got on or off, but rather an aggregate number of riders for the year on a particular route. Not surprisingly, the busiest routes are on Detroit’s main artery roads:

Agency	Route Num	Name	TOTAL
DDOT	53	Woodward	3,029,371
DDOT	16	Dexter	2,549,735
DDOT	21	Grand River	2,399,730
DDOT	34	Gratiot	2,038,153
DDOT	45	Seven Mile	1,573,339

The crosstown routes were also busier than others with 7 Mile, 8 Mile, Crosstown, and Jefferson routes all moving at least 1 million riders.

The top SMART routes also follow Detroit’s main arteries (Gratiot, Michigan, Grand River), but tend to have an expected focus on routes that travel North-South from suburbs to city, such as Van Dyke or Southfield-Greenfield. With the passage of the recent SMART millage, these data show that SMART is an important connector for many people to travel between the city and suburbs and vice versa.