Here’s an index of the routes in our Ridership Patterns series so far, and the next ones on the todo list. Each route article has stop-by-stop ridership data, and which stops have all-day bidirectional demand vs peak-hour peak-direction, and where clusters of people might be going to for work or shopping. This list was originally requested by Jordan, and we’ll keep it updated as a long-term reference. Feel free to suggest other routes in the comments. If you are familiar with a route and would like to write about it, let us know (we can supply the data).

King County Metro

RapidRide Routes

Regular Routes

Removed Routes

Sound Transit

Community Transit

Regional Coverage

These posts take a brief look at the ridership patterns for numerous routes affected by a planned restructure in a region.

To Do List

  • Route 21
  • Route 45
  • Route 48
  • Route 106
  • Route 150
  • Route 255

26 Replies to “Route Ridership Index”

  1. It might be interesting to see the impacts of ridership on the Community Transit routes that underlie the Swift routes.

  2. I’m super interested in the ridership of the new routes like the 117 that Community Transit added to connect Snohomish County communities to Link in Lynnwood. Thanks in advance for your research!!

  4. Is there a list of routes ordered by ridership? Like I know the E is the highest, but I’m not clear on the rest of them.

    1. I did a quick scan through the linked articles. The top four are, in order: E, 7, A, and D. 5th and 6th were not labeled so. 7th is C.

      1. Looking at the passenger counts, it appears 5th place belongs to the H and 6th place to the 40.

        After that, it sort of depends on what’s missing from the index altogether. But 8th may be 36, 9th 62, and 10th 44.

        If we include Community Transit in the rankings, Swift Blue would be 11th. Then 8, and G. Then if we include Sound Transit, the 545 would be ranked 14th. Then F, 160, 5, 70, B, 75, Swift Green, Swift Blue, 522, and 542.

        Looks like the highest-ridership route that I’ve never taken is the F.

      2. Oh no, I’ve never been on the A. I assumed that the third-highest ridership would be on a route in the city!

      5. Total ridership is interesting but somewhat arbitrary. The 45 and 75 are considered different routes. But they through-route. Thus metro could call them one route tomorrow and it would suddenly be one of the highest ridership routes in the system. Higher than the 40 (depending on what month you are looking at). That is an extreme example but if you extended any of the routes it would get more riders.

        Ridership per mile and ridership per hour of service are a lot more important. Ridership per hour of service is used by agencies when evaluating a corridor for service levels. When considering where to put a subway line (or even just corridor improvements) ridership-per-mile is one of the key metrics. Ridership per mile combined with average speed should also be a consideration. A route might not get that many riders per mile but get a lot if it was given grade-separation. This is what makes the 8 so impressive. It performs well despite being so ridiculously slow. It is also why the case for BAT lanes is so strong.

      6. Thank you, jd.

        In fact I have looked at that System Evaluation report before, but I didn’t happen to find the table I wanted. I see it now.

        The dashboard is a little counterintuitive to me. But it’s there, and I can just click on the column I want to reorder it.

      7. Yes, I see what you mean about ridership-per-mile. I see that that information is in Appendix H of the System Evaluation.

      8. I pulled the latest ridership numbers (Sep 2025) and driver hours (from the 2025 system evaluation). The highest ridership per hour routes are:
        1) G: 48.4
        2) 8: 44.8
        3) A: 41.8
        4) 7: 39.9
        5) E: 39.1
        6) D: 39.0
        7) 44: 35.7
        8) 5: 33.7
        9) 62: 32.3
        10) 40: 31.8
        11) 36: 31.6

        Note that this is solely for September, meaning school year-dependent routes (like the 48 and 67) are lower than expected.

      10. Thanks jd! That is a little sneak preview of the next System Evaluation. From a ridership-per-service hour the RapidRide A really stands out. Metro puts the buses that don’t serve downtown or the U-District in a special category — they label those “suburban”. In part that is because they typically don’t perform as well. It is like the minor leagues of Metro buses. Yet the RapidRide A is competing really compared to buses in Seattle. It is like a European soccer club ready to be promoted.

      11. I’m not surprised the A does well – it is a linear corridor, the route is essentially 100% straight while still connecting directly to all the major ridership generators (FW TC, Highline College, SeaTac, and 3 Link stations), and it has good ROW. Alongside the E and Swift, it is a textbook Arterial BRT route.

        I’m keen to see if the A ridership goes up or down when FW Link opens. It initially might go down as riders upgrade to Link, but longer term Link and A should support higher ridership than either would do on their own.

      12. I’m not surprised the RapidRide A does well. I Just thought the RapidRide E would do better (in terms of riders per service hour). This may be due to the higher frequency on the E. Ridership goes up when you run a bus more often but ridership per hour goes down (all other things being equal*). Thus the A is a bit more cost-effective, but would be passed by the E if it ran as often.

        Ironically, this is an argument for running it more often (from a ridership perspective). Ridership per hour would go down but you would still see an increase in riders. Given the existing high ridership per hour it may very well be the most cost effective way to increase ridership. You may get diminishing returns but they could be very high.

        *The main caveat with that generalization is when there is an alternative transit option that can compete with it. Sometimes you get a “tipping point” when you increase frequency. For example when the 67 was added as a frequent bus, a lot of riders from the 73 would just walk over to it. If they doubled the frequency of the 73 it is possible it would more than double ridership. Probably not — the corridor is not as strong south of Northgate Way — but that is the sort of thing that can happen. It is far more likely to happen with a bus like the 8, especially if the increased frequency comes with increased speed. There are bound to be plenty of riders that take awkward, two-seat or out of the way rides instead of dealing with the 8. If it ran faster and more often they would switch.

      13. Part of the reason RapidRide A does well is that buses move fast on SR 99 or Pacific Highway. Faster buses can mean that frequencies can ultimately be higher with fewer buses assigned on the route.

        To make that happen, a route’s round trip travel time has to be significantly faster to take advantage of the benefit. But a round trip travel time improvement of 20% mathematically has the same productivity benefit (riders per service hour) as attracting 25% more riders when Metro can drop a bus while maintaining the same headways. .

        I’m expecting that the Federal Way Link extension opening in just a few weeks will take some riders off of RapidRide A in the short term. However I don’t think it will be a major decrease . Instead, I think Link transferring riders will instead simply board or exit Link further south than TIBS or Angle Lake as they do today. That means that station boardings at current stations will fall a bit when the new ones open, but the RapidRide A boardings would not drop similarly.

        And as TODs evolve at KDM and Federal Way stations there could be more RapidRide A riders in a few years.

      14. Part of the reason RapidRide A does well is that buses move fast on SR 99

        Yeah, but so does the E. The A is a bit faster (mainly because the E runs through downtown) but there isn’t much difference in average speed. In contrast the average service level is quite different. Put it this way. To have the same frequency the A would have to go from 6 buses an 8 to get. To match that in terms of ridership it would have to go from about 9,000 riders a day to 12,000. I would expect an increase in ridership, but not that much.

        Which is why the RapidRide G has to be considered a huge success. They are running those buses a lot. That should weaken it in terms of that metric but it is our best bus.

        In terms of speed, the 8 stands out. It loses riders because it is slower. It also takes more time to actually serve the route. Yet despite all that, it is second in terms of ridership per service hour. It might pass the G line in that metric if it was faster.

  5. It would have been really interesting to see how the 70 changed before and after U Link.

    It will be really interesting to see how the ridership changes on the A after Federal Way Link. I’m guessing the A actually increases in ridership.

    When TriMet opened the Green Line, a lot of people expected the sorta-similar 72 to lose riders, but it actually increased a bit. It’s a bit different situation though as the 72 / Green Line cross about halfway through the 90 minute long 72, so switching to MAX can create some significant time savings. The A and Link only share Federal Way and the north section between TIBS and Angle Lake. This looks to me as though there’s a lot fewer places where transferring would help travel times much.

  6. It would have been really interesting to see how the 70 changed before and after U Link.

    Ridership went up with the 70 because they also truncated the 71, 72, etc. Interestingly enough, the 70 isn’t part of this blog post: https://seattletransitblog.com/2017/02/21/the-ulink-restructure-was-a-bold-gamble-it-has-mostly-paid-off/. But you can see folks brought up the issue here: https://seattletransitblog.com/2017/02/21/the-ulink-restructure-was-a-bold-gamble-it-has-mostly-paid-off/#comment-770169. The assessment is correct. Ridership on the 70 went from 5,300 to 7,500 (Fall 2015 to 2016). Ridership peaked at 8,600 in Fall of 2018 and then slipped a bit to 8,100 in Fall of 2019.

    Then, of course, came COVID. Northgate Link opened at the same time as COVID which makes it very difficult to separate the impact of each one on a bus like the 70. If not for COVID it is quite possible it would have lost a significant number of riders. As of now it is nowhere near what it was, but then neither are most bus routes. It is kind of weird reading the old data since the numbers are so much better. In 2016 there were half a dozen buses that got over 60 riders per platform hour. Now none of them do. To be fair, some of those buses have been replaced by Link and 2016 was a good year for ridership-per-service hour for a lot of buses.

  7. Ridership is going up in some route, but needlessly declining in others.

    Especially longer distance commuters are leaving Metro and Sound Transit every day.

    I used to have a bus driver who cared about the schedule. Always came on time (or only as late as traffic permits) and mostly arrived home several minutes early (even 10+ on some occasions). She even *apologized* to the passengers when there was a major traffic jam that caused us to arrive 15+ minutes late. The bus was packed with people who regularly rode.

    Now every bus driver comes late no matter what. In fact today, almost every single one of them were 10-15 mins late. Yes, there is an accident on I-5, but they should hit the road earlier. Even on other days, they sometimes arrive 10-15 mins late despite absolutely no traffic impact. And of course an unprofessional demeanor and grunts as you board.

    Ridership has dropped substantially. The buses are becoming more empty and almost nobody deboards at the distant stops compared to before. These are all people who returned to their cars and adding traffic to I-405, I-90, SR 167, and I-5.

    Metro should enforce timeliness and award performance, or at least improve the frequency of their buses.

    1. Metro may put these blocks on the chopping block because “there isn’t ridership” but they should really re-evaluate why that is the case. Why were these routes so successful pre-pandemic?

    2. And I should clarify this bus driver apologized for a traffic jam AFTER the route started. Arrived on time but got stuck in the freeway. Not even her fault, but still apologized.

    3. And even worse one day a bus never showed up (the next one arrives 40 minutes later). But on the Pantograph, it just sat at the bus base for the entire trip. The Metro app glitches and shows it as on time for the entire length.

      Why was a bus stuck there? Couldn’t they have just got onto another bus?

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