Providers of for-hire passenger transportation services such as airlines, railroads, and transit agencies charge a variety of fares for different services. The average fare for a mode is defined as the sum of all fare revenue received by the service providers in that mode, divided by the number of one-way trips.

Data on revenue and trips for air come from the U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Office of Airline Information. Revenue is divided by trips. Baggage fees are not included in passenger revenue and free flights such as frequent flyer rewards are not included in trips.

Data on revenue and trips for rail come from Amtrak’s Annual Report. The annual report gives ticket revenue per passenger mile which is multiplied by average trip length of passengers. Data on commuter rail and transit come from the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database. For transit the revenue is divided by unlinked trips. Trips on transit often involve transfers between two buses, or a bus and rail transit. Many transit systems are only able to capture the number of boardings, and cannot link the segments into a complete one way trip, so unlinked trips (i.e., the number of times a passenger boards a transit vehicle) is used instead. If data on complete one way trips were available, it would show somewhat higher average fares for transit.

SOURCE : U.S. Department of Transportation, Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2016.