Metro Transit service in Sun Prairie was going strong as the city’s two circulator routes marked their second anniversary in service, and the new BRT connection to Madison approached nine months in operation, according to figures provided by city staff at several recent city committee meetings and displayed on the city’s web site.
Metro recorded 9,944 boardings at Sun Prairie stops for the month of April, the largest monthly total since Sun Prairie city routes S and W were inaugurated on June 11, 2023. Boardings for May were slightly lower at 9,031, but even this was the third largest in the history of the service to date, the second largest being the total for October 2024, at 9,637.
Not surprisingly, Rapid Route A, Metro’s new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) connecting the Sun Prairie Park & Ride with destinations throughout Madison, saw the largest number of total boardings per month, representing nearly half of the monthly totals (5,112 for April; 4,302 in May).
Route W, the half-hourly loop serving the area west of (and including) Bird Street, saw the second-highest ridership of the three routes, logging 2,678 and 2,600 in April and May respectively. Meanwhile Route S, which serves a larger area of Sun Prairie at hourly intervals recorded 2,154 and 2,129 respectively for those same months.
For April, these numbers averaged out to 170 riders per day for Rapid Route A, 128 per day for Route W, and 72 per day for Route S.
Of the two internal Sun Prairie routes, Route W has proven to be more productive in terms of riders per revenue hour of service, at 9.1 for April, than Route S (with 4.8 passengers per revenue hour). This primarily reflects the fact that Route W runs twice as frequently as Route S on weekdays, and also that it runs only on weekdays, whereas Route S’s ridership is spread out over revenue hours that include Saturdays and Sundays.
Here are some links with more details on recent ridership statistics:
Sun Prairie Transit Commission Presentation, June 18, 2025
Sun Prairie Sustainability Committee Presentation May 15, 2025.
City of Sun Prairie Metro Transit Community Impact and Ridership Page.