University of California Institute of Transportation Studies

In the U.S., more than 500,000 people lack a stable roof over their heads on any given night. With few other places for unhoused individuals to turn, transit settings such as buses, train cars, bus stops, and train stations often represent sites of visible homelessness in U.S. cities, especially since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic. As policymakers, transit operators, and other stakeholders consider strategies for responding to homelessness on transit, they must first ascertain its extent. Unfortunately, there are currently little data and few prior studies that explore this basic question. While people experiencing homelessness use transit regularly, both for shelter and transportation, transit operators and other institutions generally do not have accurate data — or often even estimates — of the scale of homelessness on their systems.