Across the U.S., public transit is in crisis. While ridership was in a decade-long decline before 2020, post-pandemic Gensler’s City Pulse 2022 Urban Mobility Report found that public transit use fell by an additional 5% globally. Today, only 50% of people feel that their city’s transit systems provide a great experience. Today, transit agencies face a considerable challenge: how to regain ridership even while people continue to change where and how they live and work. However, despite this decrease in usage, urban residents still value public transit. Two-thirds say they would like to see increased investment in public transit over highways or electric car infrastructure. To tap into this latent desire, cities need to remove barriers to access to public transportation and improve the rider experience. Our research seeks to discover how the rider experience of public transit is changing post-COVID through focus groups with a diverse set of participants. Our research uncovers what factors have the greatest impact on a good transit experience, and how design can help support and grow ridership. In this study, we focused on three rail systems in three diverse metro regions: Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. We selected these cities as each has an existing regional transit system that is not the predominant choice for daily transportation among residents.