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Welcome to the Department of Rail and Public Transportation’s Data Stories, and thank you for signing up! This monthly series aims to find the narrative in data DRPT collects and uses, highlighting Virginia’s rail and transit community. This month, Data Stories takes a look back at the newsletters of 2025, covering what you may have missed!
Charting the First Full Year
2025 was the first full year of Data Stories, with an edition published every month except for August. As 2025 wraps up, it is a good time to review how far Data Stories has come since January, and what Data Stories has covered throughout the year.
First, let’s look at how far Data Stories has come since January. At the beginning of 2025, there were approximately 1,000 subscribers to Data Stories. The most recent Data Story, Issue No. 15: The Transit of Tidewater and Beyond, was sent to over 8,510 subscribers, with an open rate of 75%. Thank you to all those who tune in each month to see a little more data about transit and rail in Virginia!
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January
This Data Story used Census Bureau data to examine how Virginians commute to work. The vast majority of Virginians (and Americans) drive alone to get to work, but how people get to work varies greatly depending on where you live.
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February
DRPT’s Open Data Portal is not the only data portal around. From CAT to WMATA, ART to HRT, Virginia has great data portals covering all the transit statistics you could ever want.
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March
Virginia’s transit ridership has been growing year on year, and 2024 continued that trend, with over 137 million trips taken through the calendar year.
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April
In April, DRPT launched a new feature for our website: Our Story. Our Story is just that, DRPT’s story: who we are, what we do, where we’ve been, and where we are going.
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May
The Six-Year Improvement Program (SYIP), DRPT’s portfolio of grants and funded projects, comes out every year in mid to late April, and subsequently, Data Stories reviews what it funds. The 2026 SYIP provided over $1.1 billion towards rail and transit in Virginia, and the May Data Story broke down what got funded.
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June
Americans overwhelmingly drive to get around, but the cost of owning, operating, and maintaining a car costs the average American household over $12,000 a year. Additionally, approximately 6% of Virginians do not have access to a personal automobile. Public transportation fills these gaps: saving households money and providing transportation accessibility for those without a car.
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July
Data Stories rode the rails in July, travelling across Virginia’s 3,000 route-miles of rail. This Data Story visited all nine shortline railroads in Virginia, both our Class-I railroads, and the millions of tons of freight moved each year, before boarding Amtrak and riding with the hundreds of thousands of passengers traveling in Virginia each year.
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September
From July 2024 to June 2025, Virginia’s 40 public transportation providers moved over 144 million people across the Commonwealth. That 14% growth in ridership shows just how much demand for transit continues and grows!
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October
WMATA (Metro) and VRE (Virginia’s sole commuter rail) merit their own Data Story! WMATA is Virginia’s single largest public transportation provider, providing almost half of all transit trips in Virginia. VRE as Virginia’s sole commuter rail provides a unique transportation option in its service area.
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If you want a huge range of transit types in Virginia, then look no further than the Transit in Tidewater and Beyond. From ferries to light rails, and smallest to some of the largest, Tidewater and Beyond has it all!
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What’s coming in 2026
In 2026, in addition to the regular Data Stories on the SYIP and on annual ridership, Data Stories will continue the series on the regions of Virginia and the transit within them. We hope to see you in 2026!
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 DRPT’s mission is to connect and improve the quality of life for all Virginians with innovative transportation solutions. The SYIP turns that mission into action, by funding rail and public transportation priorities. With funding from the SYIP, transit agencies across Virginia provide over 10 million trips per month on buses, light rails, and subways. Freight rail programs divert around 14 million trucks from Virginia’s roads and attract hundreds of new jobs. Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page.
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