Another month, another double digit weekday ridership gain for Link.
November’s Central Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday boardings were 29,289/26,073/15,508, growth of 11.8%, 32.3%, and -7.6% respectively over November 2012. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 8.8% (up 8% on the South Line, 1% North Line). Total Tacoma Link ridership was down 6.4% with weekday ridership declining 4.6%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up 7.7%, with most growth occurring on East King, South King and Pierce routes. Complete November Ridership Summary here.
Link has seen double digit weekday ridership growth fourteen out of the past seventeen months.
My Link charts below the fold.
Great to see the strong YoY weekday growth. We should get station-level data and see which stations have grown the most since Spring ’11.
Bruce, see this thread:
https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2013/05/18/three-years-of-central-link-station-data/
Only up to Feb 13, but plenty for you to dig into.
Why the huge surge on Saturdays? I can not recall a big event.
Lots of games, a nice summer in general.
The Seahawks had 2 home games each November — both Sundays — in 2012 and 2013, so that shouldn’t make much difference.
The Sounders had a Friday home match and a Sunday home match in November 2012. They just had a Saturday home match in 2013. So there is your year-on-year Saturday Link ridership bump and Sunday drop, and why weekday growth, though still strong, lagged weekend growth.
My math says a typical weekend Sounders match generates roughly 4600 additional Link rides (or that 2,300 Sounders fans who would not have otherwise ridden Link on a weekend day take Link to and from the match). Until we get 3+car trains, it takes at least eight Link trains to clear out the crowd after a match.
I don’t have a similar analysis available for Sounder, as I don’t recall which 2012 Seahawks games had Sounder service, and which had service cancelled by mudslides, and I haven’t found an easy source of such info.
Thanks!
What inputs are you using to estimate the 4,600 rides?
I averaged the decrease in Sunday ridership with the increase in Saturday ridership, and split it in half.
Looking at Mathews spreadsheet shows the effects of elimination of the Ride Free Area in the tunnel. Link always charged a fare until Sep ’12 when the change was made, and Metro was free.
It appears there was little change in mode choice in the DSTT, so Link didn’t get a bump out of that. I suspect lax enforcement in the tunnel on fares for both modes has a lot to do with that, both before and after the change was made. Has anyone been fare checked at Westlake lately?
While DSTT and MLK station produced double digit gains YoY, Seatac Stn rose only 3% last year and Metro’s gain in the prior 17 months was only 2.4% on average (YoY).
I was checked this morning just before University Street station heading towards Westlake.
I was checked between International District and University Street last week.
I was checked two days ago; not sure exactly where it was.
Looking at ST modeshare:
Link ridership grew 66,850 rides year-on-year for November 2013.
ST Express, which still accounts for 82% more rides per month than Link, only grew 52,782 rides, and that is with more peak trips to deal with overcrowding (which is still clearly a problem and requires additional peak trips in 2014 on the most popular routes).
BTW, I’m either misunderstanding “System Total” on the Boardings table, or there is a large summation error on Saturday’s and Sunday’s columns.
My goodness, the stats for Sounder North are tragic. It looks like that route’s sole purpose is to make Tacoma Link look amazing.
Whoa. Sad, and funny, and sad.