One of our commentators noticed that Sound Transit updated their ridership data for March 2024 sometime yesterday, revising the results downward but still indicating a noticeable uptick in ridership from the winter and associated closures:

Revised Sound Transit Link 1 Line Ridership Data

This new data indicates that total March boardings averaged 69,318 per day (an increase of 16% from February and up 3% from 2019).

Sunday boardings in March were up 14% from February and 12% from March 2019.

Saturday boardings in March were up 8% from February and 1% from March 2019.

Weekday boardings were up 25% from February and 3% from March 2019.

The previous article based on the originally released data is retained in strikethrough, below.

This is an Open Thread.

Sound Transit ridership data for March 2024 was released earlier this week, with Link ridership jumping 25% from February to a total of 2.61 million boardings, making March 2024 the second-highest ridership month in Link history (behind July 2023 with 2.71 million boardings). While weekday ridership was a meager 3% greater than the same month in 2019 (and nearly 8% less than in March 2023), the most interesting development was a massive spike in weekend ridership – in particular Sunday rides.

Saturday boardings in March averaged 81,147, a 55% increase over February, a 14% increase over March 2023, and a 45% increase over March 2019.

Sunday boardings in March averaged 112,096, a 191% increase over February, a 126% increase over March 2023, and a 186% increase over March 2019.

Sound Transit Link Ridership Dashboard – February 2023 to March 2024 (Original)

62 Replies to “Link Ridership: March 2024”

  1. On average vs median, if Jeff Bezos walks into a grocery store, the average net worth of everyone in the store is $5 billion dollars each.

    1. There were five weekends in March 2024, and four in March 2023. Good luck comparing median ridership (not sure how you’d even get that number).

    2. I’ve taken it three times.

      Only maybe a dozen other people on the train each time. Downtown Bellevue and Redmond Technology are the most popular stations by far, although I’ve never gone beyond Downtown Bellevue.

      One time, the countdown clock said the next train was twenty-something minutes away, which bummed me out, but the train arrived ten minutes after the last one, like it was supposed to.

      I wish the buses were as quiet and reliable as this train.

    3. I took it a few times last week. It ran well, but it was pretty empty. I had a car to myself at about 8am on Thursday.

      It’s pretty obvious why no one is on it: almost every stop seems to be a park and ride, no housing or destinations. The few other riders I saw seemed to all be transferring to buses to Seattle or biking to one of the terminal stops.

    4. Based on my recollection, ST – and many people here – projected 6k daily boardings. I’ve always believed it would barely break 2k until the line is connected with Seattle. A good example of this is Los Angeles’s Crenshaw line. It falls short of LAX airport and connects to the Expo Line. Overall, it hardly goes anywhere.

      The Eastside Starter line is no different.

  3. I expect 2018 ridership was greater than in 2019. Three stations opened in fall 2021. The north Seattle bus network was restructured around Link. Link is powerful; it is especially useful for trips to/from congested urban centers or in the reverse peak direction, as southbound I-5 is jammed each afternoon.

  4. does anyone know what caused this? It seems a little suspicious. Maybe a data collection error or something

    1. I’m thinking it may be more a reflection of service being impacted in January and February by Link closures for maintenance and construction, rather than a reflection of some crazy increase in transit demand in March.

      1. That makes sense for Saturdays and Weekdays. It was a good month for Link, but not exceptional when you look back to 2023. In contrast, Sunday ridership was higher than it has ever been by a lot. Something weird there (see Al’s comment below).

      2. My first thought was that people flocked to Link after the winter reductions were finished. That’s not what I’d expect passengers to do: I’d expect them to return gradually and in lower numbers. And the date range of the reduction makes this even more implausible: the reduction ended February 4th, so there should have been a similar increase in most of February.

        And there have been lesser reductions and outages throughout March and April, of one or two days at a time. So I would expect the March numbers to be slightly depressed, not skyrocketing. Unless there was a large ballgame/event we’ve forgotten. Or maybe there were freeway closures that drove people to Link? But those have also been happening regularly, especially on 520.

    2. I’m assuming a data error, but we’ll see if it’s sustained in April and May.

      1. Doesn’t explain why the average across those 5 days was so much higher.

  5. I’m scratching my head about the Sunday ridership. The other days seem reasonable and even slightly lower than expected , but the surge in an average Sunday looks odd. Was there an event that I wasn’t thinking about? It isn’t the Seahawks or Mariners. There were two Sounders games at home in March. There wasn’t a big parade, festival or Taylor Swift concert that I’m aware of. There was higher ridership at Stadium Station — but not higher enough to create a systems growth of that magnitude.

    Given how weekdays is lowest average of the three, I’m actually wondering if automated counters have the dates out of whack on some cars, or if some data got compiled into the wrong cells.

    If my job was reporting these data, I’d be proactive and look into it. It’s natural to consider this happy news at face value, but it the trend just seems too implausible to be accurate.

    1. Their ridership dashboard has data quality indicator and apparently ST has determined this data is good and internally consistent – and they don’t always say that. It’s possible that the data is wonky, but I think it’s worth giving the benefit of the doubt that the data is legit.

      I think it’s notable that Link was basically closed on the weekends in January and early February due to the rail DSTT replacement (https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/prepare-for-link-service-disruptions-jan-13).

      1. The data problem I’m seeing isn’t questioning total ridership. It’s instead questioning why Sunday is so much higher at every station, and why weekdays may be a bit low.

        With two light rail car manufacturers, it would not surprise me if there are two different ways the data gets reported and one of the two has the date set wrong.

      2. Yes, but this isn’t just a return to high numbers. For example, consider Sounder ridership. January 2024 saw a huge increase in ridership compared to December. It was an 11% increase from the month before. But ridership for December was down. January did not set a post-pandemic record for Sounder ridership — August 2023 was higher, and October was much higher.

        In contrast this was by far the biggest month for Sunday Link ridership, at 112,000. The previous high was July 2023, with 73,000. ST broke the record for Sundays by over 50%! This isn’t a big rebound from January and December, this is a giant leap from every other month ever!

        Oh, and Saturday ridership (while high) was nowhere near that high. About 81,000, compared to months of 77,000, 78,000 and 91,000 last year. So again, why was Sunday so high, given that Saturday wasn’t? I can think of several explanations:

        1) They made a mistake this month.
        2) They made mistakes in the past, and the numbers should have been considerably higher.
        3) People put off riding the train on Sundays in December and January, and did all that riding in March.
        4) We are in the midst of a huge upswing in Sunday ridership (that started this year) that was artificially constrained by the problems in January and February.
        5) There was some set of events that have caused people to suddenly ride Link on Sundays like never before.

        I have no idea what it was, but it is certainly unusual. I don’t think we’ve ever had anything like it.

      3. I guess we have an answer (1). They made a mistake. Oh well. That seemed like the most plausible answer, but it is nice that it is finally confirmed.

    2. The Seattle Reign women’s soccer team had their opening game on a Sunday, March 17, attendance about 8,500. That’s a number of Sunday riders that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

      1. That could be part of it, but likely a small bit. Ridership was about 40,000 more (on average) for each Sunday in March compared to the highest for any other month, ever.

      2. Maybe that’s it? I went to a Reign game (not the March 17 one) and it seemed like most people took Link there. (I myself went by car… I had six other people with me, and parking was only $8.)

        These ridership figures are truly puzzling. I’ve never seen anything like it.

    3. Part of the explanation is likely due to March 2024 having 5 Sundays. This most recently happened in December 2023, but two of those Sundays were on holidays. Before that it was October and July 2023, both of which seem to have slightly higher Sunday ridership as well.

      1. I thought about that, but it’s not a five Sunday issue. The average Sunday is the total Sunday tabulation divided by 5.

      2. Al is right. That explains the big jump on the graph. But it doesn’t explain the big jump in average ridership per Sunday. As I wrote up above ridership in March 2024 was 112,000 per Sunday. The previous record was 73,000 in July 2023. If anything, having more Sundays would have diluted the numbers (if something extraordinary was happening on one of the Sundays).

    4. I’m actually wondering if the leap year day (February 29, 2024) has something to do with it.

    5. Maybe cherry blossom trips? There was some pretty nice weekend weather during cherry blossom season this year, and the UW campus was packed. We’re really talking about ~100k above July 2023 here, so it might just be within the realm of possibility.

    6. Filtering by station, there was a very high number of people at Seatac so travelers do explain some of it.

      March 2024: 45k (sundays) 9k daily average
      March 2023: 17k; 4k daily average
      July 2023: 40k; 6.7k daily average

      The other largest ones were
      Westlake at 85k (normally 45k) and u district at 55k (normally 32k)

      TIBS also surprisingly had a very large amount
      March 2024: 19k sunday boardings 3.8k average
      july 2019 was at 11k boardings 2.3k average

      There was however some single tracking on the weekends March 9, 10
      https://www.soundtransit.org/get-to-know-us/news-events/news-releases/link-light-rail-single-tracking-between-northgate

      I wonder if that somehow accidentally double counted a lot of riders getting off and coming on.

      1. Good catch. I forgot to look at stations. Comparing previous daily record numbers versus that month:

        Northgate: 8k — 12k
        U-District: 5k — 11k
        Capitol Hill: 6k — 11k
        Westlake: 12k — 17k
        CID: 6k — 8k
        Colombia City: 9k — 12k
        SeaTac: 7k — 9k

        Most stations set a record, but not all of them. Pioneer Square and Stadium did not set records, suggesting this wasn’t about the stadiums. Neither did the UW, but it did set a record for the period after Northgate Link. (Basically a lot of riders who used to use UW Station are now using U-District Station). Rainier Beach didn’t set a record but the rest of Rainier Valley did. Go figure.

        In general it looks like the increase was spread out. Double counting might be it, but that still seems odd. It may just be a combination of things. A few events at the Center, cherry trees at the UW, nice weather in general and pent up demand from the previous months. It still doesn’t quite explain why Saturday didn’t see a huge increase as well.

      2. That makes a lot of sense. The counters are typically door sensors. If a partial closure means having to board Link twice, you’ve got people causing two boardings to make the same trip.

    7. Seattle became very religious and everyone started going to church? Transit oriented religion.

  6. Did Metro see similar ridership trends in March? If so, then I’d trust this data.

      2. Just to reiterate, here is a summary of Link membership in March:

        Weekdays: Good, but not top ten.
        Saturday: Very good. Third best month ever, although nowhere near the highest.
        Sunday: Highest ever, eclipsing previous records for Sunday. Also better than any Saturday or weekday. My guess is that never happened before.

        Sunday is the weird day. Metro for weekdays isn’t much use.

      3. @Nathan,

        Ya, Metro data is always a little later to post and not as complete as Sound Transit’s data. And I’m not sure it is as accurate, but at least it is a bit of a sanity check.

        @John D,

        Yep. There you have it. Metro YoY data for March is up 10% and ST’s data is up 15% overall. So not too much difference.

        The only issue is the weekday ridership, but since ST is more DT focused, you might expect its weekday ridership to be flatter than Metro’s. Given WFH and all the issues with DT. And you might expect its weekend ridership to be more impacted by events.

        And March 2024 had an extra weekend in it, so of course the total ridership numbers for weekend service are going to be higher – about 25% higher!

        So….. seems a bit like some individuals are trying too hard to find a reason not to believe good ST news. Parsing data like this down to too granular a level and then expecting general trends to hold is a fools errand. Best not do it.

        So congrats to ST. Looks like March was a good month for them. For whatever reason.

        Now let’s hope ST doesn’t get too much good news. Because if ridership gains like this become a general trend, then it is going to make the crowding issue on Lynnwood Link just that much worse.

  7. The officials of Seattle in the state of Washington have been a little bit slow the showpiece for the light rail system was built in 1962 the Seattle monorail just have to keep poking at them 😂😂

  8. To be more informative, each month should just have 7 ridership categories for each day of the work. The way they did it, it’s really hard to compare ridership on, say, Sunday vs. ridership on Friday.

  9. Calculating it a bit the sunday schedule has trains running every 10 minutes from 6 am to 10 pm. 6 trains per hour * 14 hours * 700 possible people per train * 2 (for each direction) = 117,600. 700 calculated from 175 people per train car * 4 train cars.

    In general I find “Sunday boardings in March averaged 112,096” a bit suspect. Near crush loads for every single sunday for the entirety of the day from early morning until late evening would have made the news. I don’t remember the light rail being especially busier though perhaps I somehow missed using it every sunday in march?

    Of course we can increase the possible capacity a bit more by adding after 10 pm and increase the people per train car from 175 up to 200 for crush loads. But unless sound transit was secretly running extra frequency or somehow not a single news agency reported on the packed sound transit cars I find it more likely the data is wrong somehow.

    1. You’re not accounting for turnover during the ~hour-long run of a train. If a train car cycles through 3-4 different batches of 50 people over the course of an hour, that’s 150-200 boardings. Easily doable, especially with high-density trip pairs between Northgate, U-District, Capitol Hill, Downtown, and South Seattle.

      1. Sure there’s turnover, but there’s also only one line. If one is going from northgate to cid and another from capitol hill to south seattle one is still over lapping in the section from capitol hill to cid.

        Of course one could have say northgate to capitol hill and a separate person from capitol hill to beacon hill. But in general most traffic one line and most also are taking it for more than one station.

        Either way the main point stands, this is a relatively a lot of riders per train car when we divide it by the weekend schedule (weekday runs more trains so they’ll be less riders per trains for equivalent ridership).

  10. Are transit agencies measuring Thursday ridership now with Thursday ridership in 2019? I am very curious how that compares and if the difference isn’t that far off. Weekday ridership is down at most/all transit agencies but seems to correlate a lot with a typical hybrid 3 days in the office schedule… ie 60% of 2019 weekday ridership. Friday is probably the lightest day for transit now.

  11. The numbers on ST’s website appear to have been revised now.
    New total March boardings: 2.15 million, average 69,318* (up 16% vs Feb* and 3% vs 2019*)
    Sunday: 219k, average 44k (up 14% vs Feb and 12% vs 2019)
    Saturday: 283k, average 57k (up 8% vs Feb and 1% vs 2019)
    Weekdays: 1.65 million, average 78k (up 25% vs Feb and 3% vs 2019)

    *I calculated these values myself after noticing that listed monthly averages and changes are identical to weekday values for those months, and concluding that the monthly stats are erroneous duplicates. This error combined with the headline error of this article and the update without notice of change on the Data Quality Info page leads me to treat the data with suspicion.

    My theory is that this data pipeline is not automated (evidenced by the fact that this report first came out over a month after the data was generated) and is transferred manually. The person transferring the data might have selected the wrong timeframes or the entire system ridership, or any number of other errors that can come from manual data entry.

    1. I did some more digging.
      July 2023 lists 440,173 Sunday boardings but lists the sunday average as 73,362, which implies there were exactly 6 Sundays that July, when in reality there were 5 Sundays. The data further imply 5 Saturdays (correct) but 20 weekdays (actually 21). This is probably explained by accidentally tagging a weekday as a sunday. This same average Sunday July 2023 ridership stat even made it into this document:
      https://www.soundtransit.org/sites/default/files/documents/2024-service-plan-phase-one-rail-service-plan-draft.pdf
      On page 13, the charts reflect July 2023 numbers from that website, and there is even analysis based on this demonstrably erroneous data.
      The apparent error (tagging a weekday as a sunday) cannot explain the March 2024 error and revision we’ve just witnessed, which means that there are multiple sources of error in this data pipeline, some of which make it through into publications and analysis.

      1. Independence Day counts as a Sunday since that is the schedule they operated. There will be five Sundays this year in July (four Sundays and the holiday).

    2. Yep. Looks like a revision downward. Good catch.

      Still some pretty darn solid numbers, but not the big weekend spike shown before.

      Would have to dig into it, which I’m not going to do, but my guess is they double counted some people during a bus bridge or service interruption.

      But good catch.

    4. It dawned on me that Link quits running about 1:30 in the morning. Does Sunday data end at 2am Monday or midnight on Sunday? That could be the source of confusion (data attributed to the following day).

      Of course, that would not explain the original illogical ridership report for March. Clearly, there is more than one calculation error rippling through these data.

      Maybe someone at ST saw the thread posted here and revisited the data. I don’t see ST ever admitting a recent mistake or crediting how it got uncovered — which is fine as long as ST puts a better system in place for quality control.

      And I commend ST for correcting its data reporting. In other countries, the government institutionalizes data manipulation to justify their actions. Even though I see ST doing some PR that is somewhat misleading (like reporting anticipated Lynnwood Link ridership without explaining how many already riding Link and using the Northgate Station) in their system expansion forecasting, their reporting of the actual conditions remains seemingly honest.

  12. Thank you to Commenter “M” for noticing the data revision and recalculating the results. While the ridership uptick is less notable now (and represents a YoY loss from March 2023), we’ve revised the article to represent the new numbers and kept the old numbers as a reminder that behind all data, there there may be human error.

  13. Year-over-year ridership on Link has been down for the past 3 months despite gradually increasing in-office work requirements, recently improved security presence, deep cleaning of stations, and new real-time arrival signs. Not a great omen. I mostly blame Metro’s service reductions inspiring more people who can to just drive.

    On a related note, Sound Transit should replace their “Month over month % change” column with year-over year. Month-to-month change is not a good comparison for most purposes, because it conflates actual change in ridership patterns with seasonal factors.

    I suspect this kind of improvement is above Sound Transit’s head though, and the best we can expect is for them to occasionally cobble together some numbers, any numbers, to post on their website. Credit to them for fixing the error.

    1. There were significant weekend closures in January/February – I don’t remember if there were equivalent services hits in 2023. With the opening of Lynnwood Link later this year, future YoY comparisons will be misleading without doing station-by-station analyses. I’ve been mulling over a way to that analysis that balances effort/value, since ST doesn’t do it for us.

      Maybe some fancy data dashboard using ST data; but since they don’t release the data in an easily manipulatable format, it’s still a slog to transcribe into a useful dataset.

      1. The February closures ended on February 4, right? That’s only 2 of 21 weekdays. I’m sure that it affected weekday ridership, but I can’t see it more impactful than about 5 percent (half ridership for those 2 days) if that.

        I could see how closures generally drive away riders for awhile even after service is restored. . Has ST ever reported how long it takes to restore ridership after major disruptions for a few weeks?

    2. Yes, ST should not compare to the prior month but instead to the same month of the prior year. Each month has special circumstances unique to that month or season (holidays, sporting events, festivals and special events) that create blips or dips in the data. It seems silly to make the same comments about the Mariners or Seahawks or Sounders games or the Pride Parade each year.

  14. Would readers be interested in a slightly deeper analysis (e.g. station-by-station, YoY comparisons instead of current-vs-2019) on a more frequent basis? Since ST doesn’t publish their monthly/quarterly ridership reports any more, all we get are the annual service reports and these updates to their ridership dashboard.

    1. It would be good to see more ridership analysis out of ST. The boarding info is great but it’s very high-level.

      These are the areas that ST needs to report but doesn’t:

      1. Time of day. ST says that commuting at peak hours is less prominent but hasn’t disclosed how much. What percent of directional travel is on the peak train or during the peak hour? The topic is particularly relevant to DSTT2 but is seemingly relevant to what peak Link service should be. The Board has had many peak load analyses presented but those analyses are anticipated loads and not actual loads today.

      2. Mode of access. How do riders use ST services? Are parking lots empty? Is Uber/ Lyft usage to transit growing or shrinking? How many are transferring from another transit line and in what direction? This info is basic when locating bus stops, managing parking garages and ultimately looking at train loads.

      3. Station trip pairs, especially direction. How many Columbia City riders are heading south or north? I think ST used to disclose directions but not lately.

  15. Since I pulled open the NTD data I took a look at streetcar ridership as well. Strong YoY growth but still not closing in on 2019 numbers. SLU ridership seems to be really struggling.

    2024Q1: 381464 (+18%)
    2023Q1: 321449 (+28%)
    2022Q1: 251670

    2023: 1411817 (+26%)
    2022: 1117605
    2021: 806120
    2020: 749443
    2019: 1863409

    https://www.transit.dot.gov/ntd/data-product/monthly-module-adjusted-data-release
    https://www.seattle.gov/transportation/document-library/reports-and-studies#streetcar-reports

Comments are closed.