SEPTA
SEPTA system-wide ridership for December 2025 decreased 1% or 8,611 unlinked trips per day from December 2024, the agency recently reported.
Average daily ridership was 693,261 unlinked passenger trips across all modes.
Metro ridership declined by approximately 2% or 4,508 trips per day relative to this time last year. The trolley tunnel closure and bus substitution resulted in a 31% decline or 15,990 less unlinked passenger trips on the T and D—the lowest level since 2022 but a 19% increase on the G. Average daily ridership on the B, M, and L combined grew 6% or 11,482 average weekday trips since this time last year.
Regional Rail ridership declined by 6% or 4,597 trips per day relative to this time last year due to the SLIV car shortage and the SLIV FRA safety inspection mandate.
Brightline West
Brightline West Executive Director Michael Reininger said work is under way on the company’s planned Las Vegas station on Las Vegas Boulevard between Warm Springs and Blue Diamond roads, according to a Las Vegas Review-Journal report.
With the magnitude of the project, Reininger said “it takes time to get to heavy construction,” according to the report. He said it was “a long, drawn-out process to get to the first portion of the Las Vegas building going up, a parking garage for the project.”
“They take an enormous amount of work, most of which is not visible to the naked eye,” Reininger said. “There’s nothing like seeing to start believing, so we’ve now reached that point where you can actually see the stuff happening before your eyes. We expect that will continue to reinforce peoples’ anticipation of the finished product.”
According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal report, Brightline West trains are being built at a Siemens factory in Germany. The remaining eight train sets will be built at Siemens’ New York facility, which is currently under construction.
According to the report, the project budget jumped by about $9 billion last year, going from a projected $12 billion to $20.1 billion. “The price jump can be attributed to cost escalations in the construction market,” said Reininger, who added, that, despite the large increase, “Brightline is good to go on getting the project rolling.”
Brightline, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, “applied for a $6 billion loan from the federal government late last year; it already received a $3 billion grant from the FRA and sold a total of $2.5 billion in private activity bonds from Nevada and California.”
Heavy construction on the 218-mile Brightline West rail line is expected to kick off this year, according to the report.
Early last year, Brightline had hoped to have the project up and running ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. That goal post, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, “has been shifted to late 2029, but there are milestones along the way that the company plans to hit before service begins.”
“In 2028, a little less than 36 months from now, we will have the station in Las Vegas, the vehicle maintenance facility (in Sloan) and a portion of the system in Nevada complete; and a fairly sizeable amount of our total fleet of trains also complete and here in Nevada so that we can begin testing, training and certification processes on the track and in the station here in Nevada, while the remaining infrastructure and stations are completed, so that we can actually start carrying passengers and revenue service in 2029,” Reininger said.
Brightline West has five of the 10 construction contracts signed and ready to go for the start of construction along the route, according to the report.
Those include the Las Vegas station work and early infrastructure work within the median of I-15 in Nevada, “including the construction of a temporary water line to feed the construction of the line in the Nevada corridor,” Reininger said.
“With the conclusion of some of the big structural elements, the design work has reached its completion point and is going through approval from the Department of Transportation,” Reininger said. “All of this is setting the stage for the soon-to-come heavy construction.” He said site work for the vehicle maintenance facility in Sloan has begun, detailed design documents have been completed, and items are being ordered.
Brightline owns 110 acres where the Las Vegas station is being built, with the station only set to take up a small portion of that property, with larger goals for the rest, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal report. Plans include building out a large mixed-use project on the site to accompany the station.
“We don’t yet have any specific project components, timing or plans associated with that, other than to say that it’s an incredibly well-positioned and entitled piece of land that’s going to benefit significantly from the introduction of this portal in the transportation network that Brightline will bring. We foresee a number of uses. Hospitality uses, residential uses, retail and commercial uses, all will be highly attractive potential for the use of that land,” said Reininger, who called his shifting title and focus to Brightline West’s project and away from Brightline’s Florida passenger rail system “a natural progression within the larger Brightline Holdings company.”
“The Florida business is now a fully mature operating business that is entering the stage of its life where it’s going to be focused on internal growth and operations,” Reininger said. “At the same moment, Brightline West is a very large-scale construction and development program in of itself. Both of the projects, both the companies are of such scale… that they will benefit from fully focused and dedicated leadership.”
TTC
TTC’s new Ontario Line will include protective barriers at all stations to separate platforms from the tracks, according to a CBC News report.
According to the report, “platform edge doors” will be part of all 15 stations on the 15.6-kilometer (9.7-mile) downtown subway line, slated to open in 2031, city staff said at a budget meeting Wednesday. “The doors are transparent barriers that open to allow riders inside when trains roll in, but otherwise keep people, animals and debris off the tracks.”
According to the CBC News report, the TTC “has been studying the possibility of retrofitting existing subway stations for more than 15 years,” something the Toronto Public Health recommended in 2014 as part of a larger report on suicide. Advocates, CBC News reports, have also been asking for them for years to protect commuters.
A TTC report last year found installing barriers at all platforms “would save the agency $16 million annually by reducing delays, and $92 million in the social cost of injuries and deaths.”
“On average, one to two people go onto transit tracks each day,” TTC spokesperson Stuart Green said in an email.
The transit agency announced in 2023 that platform edge doors would be installed at Bloor-Yonge as part of a major overhaul, “but there’s currently no funding to add them,” according to the CBC News report. “The TTC also recently backed away from a pilot project for platform edge doors at TMU Station, formerly Dundas Station.”
“Adding platform barriers to Lines 1, 2 and 4 would cost an estimated $4.1 billion, according to a report that went to the TTC board last year. The report said the average costs of the doors for two platforms at one station would be $44 million to $55 million.”
TTC board chair and City Councilor Jamaal Myers said the TTC “is reviewing that estimate as some councilors and people in the industry have questioned it, and the city may look at gradually retrofitting stations one at a time to spread out the cost over time,” according to the CBC News report.
“There’s definitely momentum to start that work just because it’s so important in terms of improving reliability and also to protecting the public and protecting the drivers, said Myers.
Myers said the TTC “is looking at how retrofits elsewhere were done and whether Toronto could learn from those projects.”
According to the CBC News report, Paris, Hong Kong, Singapore, Copenhagen, and Seoul “have all successfully retrofitted subway systems with platform edge doors.”
