Valley Metro
transit system in the Phoenix, Arizona area
The Valley Metro Regional Public Transportation Authority, branded as Valley Metro, is the unified public brand of the regional transit. Valley Metro serves 18 member municipalities across the region, including Avondale, Buckeye, Chandler, El Mirage, Fountain Hills, Gilbert, Glendale, Goodyear, Mesa, Peoria, Phoenix, Queen Creek, Scottsdale, Surprise, Tempe, Tolleson, Wickenburg, and Youngtown.
Within the system, it is divided between Valley Metro Bus, which runs all bus operations, and Valley Metro Rail & Streetcar, which is responsible for light rail and streetcar operations in the Valley. In 2025, the combined bus and rail system had a ridership of 41,422,400, or about 126,100 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2026.
Valley Metro is a membership organization. Most services are separately funded and operated by individual cities and suburbs in the greater Phoenix region. These cities have agreed to participate in Valley Metro as a unifying brand name to streamline service and reduce confusion among riders. Each city appoints a representative to the RPTA board of directors, and a chairman, vice chairman, and treasurer are voted on amongst the board members for a one-year term.
The two largest operators of bus service are the city of Phoenix and the Regional Public Transportation Authority (operating multi-city routes and services primarily in Mesa, Chandler, Gilbert, and Tempe). Circulator service in Glendale is operated by the city of Glendale directly, the Scottsdale Trolley circulators are contracted by the city of Scottsdale, and intra-city paratransit service in the cities of Glendale and Peoria are operated by the respective cities directly.
The public source identifies “Valley Metro” as transit system in the Phoenix, Arizona area. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Valley, Metro and transit.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3553869. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025 and 2026.
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This entry incorporates text from “Valley Metro” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.