Unitrans
Transit system serving UC Davis and Davis, CA

Unitrans is the transit system which operates in and around the campus of the University of California, Davis. It takes its name from an abbreviation of the words "University Transport". Excepting several managerial and maintenance positions, Unitrans is managed and operated entirely by students of the University of California, Davis who usually work part-time while attending school. The system is well known throughout the area for its use of several distinctive ex-Transport for London double-decker buses, as well as its fleet of modern natural gas single-decks. The system has 18 weekday, 1 school-centered and 6 weekend routes. Current fares are $1.50 for the general public and included in student fees for undergraduate University attendees. Unitrans is one of a small number of transit systems in the United States to operate double-decker buses in regular (non-sightseeing) service. Unitrans has one of the best safety records of any public transit system in the US.
In 2025, the system had a ridership of 3,887,100, or about 16,200 per weekday as of the second quarter of 2026.
History
In the late 1960s, members of the Associated Students of the University of California, Davis (ASUCD) realized the need for a transit system to transport students between the City of Davis and the university campus. In the spring of 1966, providing a transportation system became an ASUCD presidential promise.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Unitrans” is transit system serving UC Davis and Davis, CA. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Unitrans, Transit and system, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “transit system serving UC Davis and Davis, CA” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 22, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7893703. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2025, 2026 and 1966.
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This entry incorporates text from “Unitrans” 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.