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metrosp: metro ridership in São Paulo

This package distributes demand data from the São Paulo metro system inside R. The data covers 2012 to 2026 and comes from several operators. Most of it is already public, but it is scattered across poorly structured CSV and PDF files.

METRÔ publishes lines 1, 2, 3, 15, and line 5 through July 2018 on its open data portal. Line 4, and line 5 from August 2018 onward, come from the Insper Dataverse.

All datasets are tibble objects bundled with the package, so they load without a download. The data is cleaned and standardized to make it easier to work with.

Line coverage

The package covers every metro line in São Paulo. Commuter train (CPTM) demand is not included, though train lines and stations do appear in the spatial datasets.

Line Name Operator Coverage
1 Azul (Blue) METRÔ Jan 2016 – Jul 2026
2 Verde (Green) METRÔ Jan 2016 – Jul 2026
3 Vermelha (Red) METRÔ Jan 2016 – Jul 2026
4 Amarela (Yellow) ViaQuatro Jan 2012 – Mar 2026
5 Lilás (Lilac) METRÔ / ViaMobilidade Jan 2016 – Apr 2026
15 Prata (Silver) METRÔ Jan 2016 – Jul 2026

Coverage refers to passengers_entrance, which is missing July 2017 for every METRO-sourced line. The other datasets start later for some lines. The data dictionary vignette gives the coverage window of every dataset by line.

Installation

Currently, the best option is to install the package from R-Universe which is more up to date.

install.packages('metrosp', repos = c('https://viniciusoike.r-universe.dev', 'https://cloud.r-project.org'))

The package is also available on CRAN.

install.packages("metrosp")

Datasets

Four datasets carry the demand data: passengers_entrance, passengers_transported, station_averages, and station_daily. The rest are auxiliary tables that support analysis and visualization.

Dataset Description Frequency Spatial
passengers_entrance Monthly passenger entries by line and day-type metric Monthly No
passengers_transported Monthly passengers transported by line, in thousands Monthly No
station_averages Average weekday passenger entries by station Monthly No
station_daily Daily passenger entries by station Daily No
station_inauguration Station opening dates and ramp-up window flag — No
calendar_spo São Paulo holiday and business-day calendar Daily No
metro_colors Named vector of official metro line colors — No
lines Metro and train line routes (current + planned) — Yes
stations Metro and train station locations (current + planned) — Yes

passengers_entrance and the two station datasets count individual passengers. passengers_transported reports thousands of passengers, as the METRÔ source does. For more details on the data, see the data dictionary.

Data vintage

The bundled data is a fixed snapshot, current through July 2026. It is regenerated when the column schema changes, not when new months are published, so examples and analyses stay reproducible across package versions. METRÔ publishes on an irregular schedule and revises past years, so these numbers drift from the source over time. Freshly rebuilt data is published on every pipeline run to the data-latest release.

Usage

The data is bundled with the package, meaning it works out of the box and doesn’t rely on internet connection. To use a dataset simply call its name.

library(metrosp)
# To work with spatial datasets (lines, stations)
library(sf)
# For better tables load dplyr or tibble
library(dplyr)

# Passenger entries by line
passengers_entrance

# Station-level weekday averages
station_averages

# Spatial line routes
lines

Explorer dashboard

An interactive dashboard for browsing and downloading these datasets lives in a separate repository: metrosp-explorer.

Data sources

Next steps

This package is still in development. While the datasets are stable and checked on every new release, there may still be errors. If you find any, please open an issue.