BLACKSBURG, Va. – Blacksburg Transit is being recognized for a record-breaking year on the road.
The Virginia Transit Association named BT a recipient of the inaugural Hill Spencer Ridership Award, which goes to the transit system with the greatest year-over-year ridership increase among public transit systems across the Commonwealth.
The recognition follows a historic year for the agency. Blacksburg Transit provided more than 4.7 million passenger trips during fiscal year 2025 — a 26% increase over the previous year and the highest ridership total in the system’s history. BT is the fifth largest transit system in Virginia and was recognized in the award’s 2 million-plus annual passenger trips category.
“This award reflects the hard work and dedication of our staff, the support of our community partners, and the trust our riders place in us every day,” Blacksburg Transit Director Brian Booth said. “We’ve worked hard to improve service reliability, efficiency, and the overall rider experience, and it’s rewarding to see those efforts recognized.”
What drove the ridership surge
Two key changes fueled the growth. BT opened a new Transit Center on Virginia Tech’s campus in March 2025 and launched “The Loops” in August 2024 — a redesigned network that centralized transit operations on campus and improved efficiency system-wide.
Booth said the new hub removed a major bottleneck that had slowed routes for years.
“It helped to centralize transit services on the Tech campus,” Booth said. “Another large piece of it was because all of the routes were not going through central campus and having to add additional time to get through crosswalks and traffic congestion.”
The redesigned network has allowed BT to increase service frequency on many routes without adding buses, while also cutting travel times and improving route connectivity.
Booth acknowledged the scale of the jump was unexpected.
“We won’t see that type of increase again. It’s probably a once in a lifetime increase,” he said. “It would take something much more significant to cause that type of increase.”
Campus shuttle changes how students move
Alongside the Transit Center, BT introduced a dedicated campus shuttle that transformed how students travel across Virginia Tech’s campus.
“Previously, every route touched campus in some way, but there was no real easy way to navigate from one side of campus to the other on a bus,” Booth said. “You had to sort of know the schedule, but now there’s a dedicated campus shuttle route that pretty much runs a horseshoe around the main arteries of the campus.”
The shuttle also cleared bus traffic from high-pedestrian areas, a change Booth said improved both safety and on-time performance.
“You don’t have any buses going through all those crosswalks with just the constant pedestrian flow of students going across the drill field,” he said. “So that’s greatly improved the safety and performance of the routes.”
Virginia Tech rising senior Leo Kovatch said the improvements have made a real difference in his daily routine.
“Especially being an off-campus student, it’s nice to be more organized with these two bus stops — I know all of these stops go in this direction and those stops go in that direction,” Kovatch said. “It feels a lot cleaner, just knowing where you need to go for the buses.”
Kovatch, an engineering student, said the system saves him time he can’t afford to lose.
“I have a car, so I’ll sometimes come down here and I’ll just be driving around for 10 minutes trying to find a spot,” he said. “So it’s really nice just to have the bus system here for efficiency when I’m trying to go on and off campus. Especially as an engineering student, I really need to save as much time as possible.”
About the award
The Hill Spencer Ridership Award is named in honor of Robert Hill and Dr. Turner Spencer, the inaugural presidents of the Virginia Public Transit Officials Association and the Virginia Transit Association, respectively. The award recognizes transit agencies achieving the highest percentage ridership increase based on data from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation’s Open Data Portal. Awards are presented across four ridership categories, ranging from systems with more than 2 million annual passenger trips to those with fewer than 100,000 annually.
Community survey open through June 19
Blacksburg Transit is currently running a community survey to gather input on how riders plan to use the system to access the incoming Amtrak station in Christiansburg. The survey is open through Friday, June 19. For more information and how to fill out the survey, click here and here.