Route 60 travels inbound from Westwood Village to Capitol Hill via White Center, South Park, Georgetown, Beacon Hill, the International District, and First Hill. Outbound trips travel in the reverse direction. In November 2025, Route 60 had 5,976 average weekday boardings.
Average Ridership Per Trip
The plots below show the average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day. For a more detailed breakdown of how the plots are set up, please refer to the How to Read the Plots section of the article discussing Route 70.
Route 60 provides essential crosstown service, operates as a last-mile connection to Link, and stops near numerous schools and hospitals. Some observations:
- Route 60’s terminus at Westwood Village connects it with several important trip generators and other transit routes. The mall has a grocery store, Post Office, and an array of other stores and restaurants. Denny International Middle School and Chief Sealth International High School are two blocks north of the stop. Route 60 is used by students from White Center and South Park, shown by the morning boardings on outbound trips along Roxbury St and Cloverdale St. Passengers can transfer to Metro routes 21, 22, 125, C Line, H Line, and Sound Transit Route 560.
- In White Center, Route 60 has strong ridership in the mid-day, afternoon, and evening. Unsurprisingly, most passengers are boarding inbound trips and alighting outbound trips.
- The route’s stops on Cloverdale St in South Park have decent ridership all day. South Park is severely underserved with the half-hourly Route 132 being the only other Metro route in the neighborhood.
- After crossing the Duwamish Waterway, Route 60 passes several Boeing facilities and South Seattle Community College’s Georgetown Campus. Neither are significant trip generators for Route 60. Route 124 also serves this segment.
- Route 60’s stop at 13th Ave & S Bailey St has some ridership throughout the day. This is closest stop to the bars and restaurants along Airport Way in Georgetown.
- On the east side of I-5, Route 60 stops outside of Cleveland High School at 15th Ave S & S Lucile St. This stop is heavily used by students traveling to and from areas north of the school. The rest of the stops along 15th Ave follow a commute pattern with most passengers boarding inbound trips in the morning and returning on outbound trips in the afternoon. The stop at Oregon St is a slight exception as it has some mid-day ridership, likely due to the small commercial area around the stop. Mercer Middle School is located near the Oregon St stop, but it was under construction when these data were collected. Route 60 shares this segment with Route 107, and intersects with Route 50 at S Dakota St.
- Beacon Hill station (Beacon Ave S & S Lander St) is the busiest stop on the route. While the stop is busy all day, its ridership is highest in the morning for inbound trips and in the afternoon for outbound trips. This suggests two different ridership patterns. Morning trips to Capitol Hill drop off many passengers from South Park, Georgetown, and Beacon Hill at the station, and pick up many passengers going to First Hill and Capitol Hill. Someone boarding Route 60 at Beacon Hill could be traveling from south King County to one of the hospitals in First Hill. The reverse pattern is seen for outbound trips in the afternoon.
- Route 60 overlaps with Route 36 between Beacon Hill station and 12th Ave & Jackson St. Along this segment, trips in both directions primarily have passengers board in the morning and alight in the afternoon. Some passengers use Route 60 as a last-mile connect to Link, while others use it to get to First Hill and Capitol Hill.
- Between the International District and Capitol Hill, nearly every Route 60 stop is busy all day. Inbound morning trips have a significant number of passengers alighting at Harborview Medical Center (9th & Alder). The spike in morning ridership on outbound trips between Capitol Hill station and First Hill, show the route’s role as a last-mile connection to Link.
Daily Totals per Stop
The average daily total boarding and alighting counts show a similar pattern to the per trip data. The distributed ridership highlights the many destinations connected by Route 60.
Looking Ahead
King County Metro is working with the Seattle Department of Transportation to identify improvements to make Route 60 more reliable and speed up Route 60 by 10-15% during busy commute hours. Wesley Lin walked through the possible enhancements in an article on Tuesday. Metro’s survey is open until February 20, 2026.
This article is part of the Ridership Patterns series. Click here for an index of previously covered routes.
I’m a regular on the 60 off peak, so it’s interesting to see the commute patterns with this bus. There’s definitely a strong draw for the hospitals which is no shock, but I’d be interested to know the specific by hospital complex (Haborview vs Swedish vs Virginia Mason). Obviously Harborview is the biggest draw, but knowing more about ridership to Virginia Mason seems like the most important part if Metro would ever pursue keeping the 60 on Broadway.
Swedish is better served at the streetcar stop on Broadway and Marion (where the 60 would stop on Broadway), and there’s only about a 100 to 400 foot difference in walking distance for a stop on the south side of Boren at Alder for Haborview (depending on entrance). Virginia Mason is the only hospital that gets significantly worse by moving the 60 to Broadway.
Looking at LEHD employment by block in the area, I see that both Harborview and Swedish have well over 8,000 employees, while Virginia Mason has about 3,500 (rather, the blocks the complexes are on have that many employees. LEHD isn’t a perfect tool, especially when it comes to granular stuff like this). Serving Swedish better, Harborview a little worse, and Virginia Mason much worse is probably a net loss if you don’t account for the speed impacts to the route. At peak hours, the 60 takes 5 minutes longer than the streetcar from Pike to Yesler, which would offer the same time savings as all the proposed improvements mentioned in yesterday’s article (5% to 10% of route run time).
As someone who doesn’t use this route for the hospital connections, and who is able bodied, it’s easy to say that the shift to Broadway would be a no brainer. And I do think it’s a necessary future change, but I’d be curious to see how many riders use the 60 specifically for medical purposes and who are living with a disability that affects their ability to walk the extra distance to Haborview.
The First Hill segment of the 60 has a clear mission and purpose: connecting Harborview/Yesler Terrace/Jefferson Terrace with Capitol Hill and Beacon Hill. Instead of pushing to move the 60 to Broadway, I would advocate for improving the Broadway-Yesler Terrace-Beacon Hill corridor by either: (a) improving the FHSC or (b) funding more service hours to augment streetcar service with more rubber tire coaches. Option (a) is expensive, but (b) has several possibilities. Maybe a version of the 9 that runs from Aloha to John and then follows the 43 routing to CID Station? Maybe a new route that overlays the FHSC to 12th and Jackson and then loops back to Capitol Hill?
Obviously, trying to get funding for more service hours is difficult, but serving connections to Capitol Hill Station is important and the Broadway-YT corridor is emerging as a vital link. Don’t waste time trying to convince Metro that Harborview and the 9th Avenue corridor don’t need the 60. Advocate for better service on Broadway while preserving the existing 60 services.
The issue is that the 60’s jog through First Hill is slow and out of direction. And none of your options connect with Beacon Hill. Moving the 60 to Broadway has fairly marginal impacts on Harborview/Jefferson Terrace, at most adding 3 minutes of walk time. This time difference is then made up for by a faster route. Of course, there could be worse impacts for people living with a disability, so that warrants more specific study along with connections to Virginia Mason.
The FHSC + 60 together would provide better service to Yesler Terrace if the 60 stayed on Broadway.
Supplementing the streetcar service with busses is an excellent idea. Double the frequency, and see how much ridership improves. It’s a relatively short route and shouldn’t require many busses. The City Center Connector/Culture Connector route on 1st Ave. can be similarly prototyped and test run to help gauge the demand. If ridership dramatically improves, then consider upgrading the streetcar itself and running it more frequently. Such a “dry run” would demonstrate that either 1) the streetcar route itself really is flawed, and it may be worth retiring it, or 2) operational limitations limit the streetcar, so it is worth improving upon.
Forty years ago it made sense to focus on the handful of institutions on First Hill. But things have changed. There is density everywhere. Trying to zig-zag in order to pick out the stops that someone thinks are “the best” is a fools errand. Think of the Columbia Tower. It is the biggest building in Seattle. Should a bus on Third make a detour up to fifth to get riders right to the front door? No, of course not. Same thing here. For every rider that would miss the detour there would be a rider that appreciates the route being closer to their destination (and another one that is happy the bus is running faster).
Keep in mind, riders can always transfer. The 3/4 goes right by Harborview (serving James/Jefferson). The RapidRide G goes on Madison. Then you have the huge number of riders that just want to go down Broadway and they are stuck with the messy streetcar/60 combination. It is just a much better network. Metro could dramatically improve headways on the corridor for no extra cost. In fact, they would likely save money!
“Think of the Columbia Tower. It is the biggest building in Seattle. Should a bus on Third make a detour up to fifth to get riders right to the front door?”
Uh…. Columbia Tower can be entered off of Fourth Avenue, just 250 feet away. Even Fifth Avenue is just 500 feet away.
The Boren and Madison medical office building is about a 1000 foot walk from Broadway. Virginia Mason is even further. So is O’Dea. The main Harborview stop is about 750 feet from Broadway.
The Columbia Tower / Third Avenue example seems quite irrelevant.
Al S,
The point is that detouring to serve the front door of every major destination in First Hill (when other buses already do that) is bad service planning since it slows buses down. All the locations you mention are already served by another bus, and an extra 400 foot walk on flat sidewalks between Broadway and Harborview is not a great reason to detour a bus filled with people. Plus, while the Boren/Madison building for Swedish may be further from Broadway, their main building at Broadway and Columbia would be far better served by the 60 staying on Broadway.
It would be more like detouring the 4 to serve Uptown/Climate Pledge directly. Sure, that would provide another specific area with a one seat ride to a very popular and important destination. But adding an out of direction detour would be bad for all the people who currently use the bus as is.
One way of thinking about it is “if this service existed as proposed now, would we consider moving it to the way it currently is?”. If the 60 were already running down Broadway, no one would suggest a 5 minute detour to 9th. It’s a relic, and it should be addressed in one way or another, ideally through improving service to First Hill with other buses. First Hill is generally poorly served for being such an important destination, and this is especially true along routes running parallel to downtown. An all-day bus on Boren (or 9th) to complement the 60 on Broadway is almost certainly justifiable, it’s just a matter of deciding which bus should serve that corridor. Having one bus pull double duty in such a core urban neighborhood is ridiculous.
The reason the 60 detours to 9th is that when it was created with an initiail plan on Broadway, the First Hill neigborhood argued for it to detour to 9th to serve more of the neighborhood. The tradeoff is longer travel time between Broadway, Beacon Hill, and Georgetown (its then terminus). Neighborhoods in between are generally given more clout than people taking longer trips where travel time is more critical.
Another option for route 60 is to continue to use 9th, but move the northern terminus to SLU/Queen Anne instead of Capitol Hill. To avoid impacts to Cap Hill-First Hill trips, you would probably want to also reroute the 49 to take Broadway to Madison before heading downtown. The new 49 could even serve the route 60 stops on 9th and take Yesler into downtown.
Of course, this would be a major restructure in a very high ridership area, which Metro is probably too chicken to do.
9th would be a bit awkward for a First Hill – Uptown route, since it doesn’t continue past University. And in general, there probably should be a bus link between the South End and Capitol Hill, as there should be a First Hill – Uptown route. To me (someone who lives a 15 minute walk north of the Beacon Hill light rail stop), the simplest way to do this is to retain the 60 (but maybe straighten it out through First Hill), and to run the 9 all day via Boren and Denny to Uptown (probably originating at Mount Baker instead of Rainier Beach, or potentially doing this with the 106). If the 60 is moved off 9th, backfilling a downtown route like the 13 via Seneca and 9th could be an option.
Jog over to 8th around Madison or Seneca, and take it under the Convention Center?
There are options. The bus could jog to Boren, or 8th. For Southbound trips, perhaps 8th could be made into a two-way transitway by removing car parking. I prefer 8th to Boren, due to chronic congestion on Boren.
As to Beacon Hill-Cap Hill, that gets tricky. Your suggestion with an all-day 9 is an option, though it would cost service hours. For a cost-neutral restructure, my assumption is that walking 15 minutes and taking Link already reaches time parity with sitting through the detour on the 60, so sending the 60 to SLU wouldn’t really be a regression for Beacon Hill-Cap Hill trips. But, I don’t live in that area or ride the 60, so I can’t say for sure. The option to switch to either the 49 or Streetcar at Broadway would also exist.
I think the 106 to Uptown is a more natural choice (though that would make for a very long route) than the 9, mostly because the 9 doesn’t really exist.
And it’s ten minutes faster via the 60 to the Capitol Hill light rail station than it is to go via a walk to Beacon Hill from the northern sections of Beacon Hill (near Beacon Tower). The 60 is a much better way to get there, especially since it stops at Union and Pike/Pine (which is usually my destination anyways). Sending the 60 to SLU would definitely be worse for people in my neck of the woods getting to Capitol Hill. How much this matters in the grand scheme of things isn’t clear to me, but not having a direct bus to Capitol Hill would be a big negative for me personally.
I’m generally agnostic about 8th or Boren. Boren seems easier to me, since it wouldn’t involve changing a one way to two way, and it’s more direct, but I think the general First Hill – Uptown link is what matters. I presume the Beacon Hill – Capitol Hill link is worth keeping, while the Rainier – Capitol Hill link is less important (mostly based on the history of the 9). I guess I just don’t see a good reason to swap Capitol Hill for SLU, provided we want to provide at least one direct link from the South End to Capitol Hill.
I think it is worth backing up here and looking at the big picture. I think the biggest weakness in our system — by far — is the poor headways. This is not universal. There are some corridors that have really good headways. But I think Broadway is greatly underserved. Broadway is extremely dense in all directions. It is a north-south route in an area with very strong east-west service. For example the 3/4 runs every 7.5 minutes all the way to 23rd. Yet Cherry Hill is tiny compared to Broadway.
While 12 minute frequency isn’t terrible, it isn’t that good either. There are a number of different ways of achieving high quality headways but they generally cost money. In this case we are lucky, in that it would take a bit of consolidation. We can keep the streetcar and the rest of the routing the same. By sending the 60 up Broadway we can combine service with the streetcar for 6 minute headways. This would be huge, and not cost Metro a dime.
In contrast, sending the bus to SLU would leave Broadway with the same poor headways. It would probably take longer to get to South Lake Union, which means it would cost money. It would make sense to have a route like that only when we can afford it. That should happen when we have a bigger restructure (which would save a lot of service money) and even then, we would probably need extra funding. Again, the biggest weakness in our system is poor headways. It is more important to focus on that, rather than new routes (or new corridors). That being said, if we ever get to the point where it is affordable, I agree with blumdrew:
I think the 106 to Uptown is a more natural choice (though that would make for a very long route)
Yes, on both points. The 106 is a more natural choice, but it is too long. Also, if you end in South Lake Union (with the RapidRide C) they you haven’t added that much value. You’ve overlapped the 70 (and future RapidRide J) but you’ve only served one corner of the South Lake Union neighborhood. In contrast, I would send the bus over Harrison (a designated transit street) and then up 5th to Roy and over to Uptown (laying over with the 8). From Mount Baker the route would be remarkably straight, with very few turns given it is running diagonally. Every trip pair is plausible. But again, that makes for a very long route. I would break it up in Rainier Beach, after the 7 is sent to Rainier Beach Station (and becomes RapidRide). That would allow the northern route (the one serving Uptown/SLU/First Hill) to serve the little loop at the south end of the 7 (and occasionally serve Waters as well). The southern 106 would end at the same layover being added for the RapidRide version of the 7.
There are other options. This route could be stand-alone from Mount Baker (so MBS, First Hill, SLU, Uptown). I would then send the 106 up 23rd to Yesler and then turn there. At that point you would send the 106 on a different path to downtown which would set off a cascade of other changes. In any event, I don’t see any of this happening until we get more money (and do a big restructure).
The point about poor headways is very true. The January 2026 ridership numbers show that excellent bus service generates excellent ridership. The routes with the largest YOY increase in boardings are (in order): G/372/60/7/36/4.
A skeptic might question if the increase on the G is at the expense of other local routes, but the 2, 8, 10, 11, 8, 12 all showed YOY increases from Jan 25 to Jan 26. Building a resilient network with frequent service benefits the entire system.
Using 9th avenue is dependent on using Madison Street; with its G line configuration, does Route 60 flow well?
Note that 9th avenue has electric trolleybus overhead; it could be served by routes 3 or 4 and use the Spring-Seneca approach.
A roughly revenue neutral change: the 60 could turn on Jefferson to Broadway after serving Harborview. That would be a much shorter detour than heading all the way to Madison, and would provide direct service to Swedish and Seattle U.
To serve Virginia Mason, the 106 could head down Boren after serving 12th/Jackson. It would lay over anywhere past Boren/Madison, though the route should get extended into SLU (and probably split at Rainier Beach) when additional service hours are available. With the network right now sending the 106 down Jackson is a waste of service hours; there are ample opportunities to transfer to the 7, 14, 36, or Link.
Moving around alignments on First Hill suggests to me that there first needs to be a First Hill Transit Study. Suggesting individual changes route-by-route doesn’t really get at many of the underlying systems issues. There has been some pretty major attempts to address transit in this area in various studies and projects from Sound Move proposing then eliminating a light rail station, resulting in ST2 work to Streetcar studies to Madison BRT studies. The area has changed greatly in the past 20 years too.
Besides ST, Metro and SDOT, the hospitals and Seattle U and the Archdiocese (O’Dea) need to be at the table too; without them an effort would be missing sone key aspects.
Part of the value of a neighborhood transit study approach is its focus on neighborhood residents who use transit daily in addition to people who travel to the area for work, shopping, school, medical trips and other reasons. While many of us can suggest things from the outside to consider, it always feels a bit awkward to recommend changes when we don’t actually get what’s going on.
Al: the G Line restructure was an opportunity to do that study. Sadly, the process retained coverage and reduced frequency; that is the opposite of good network design. Routes compete with the G line. Routes 10, 11, 12, and 49 have longer headway and waits.
Based on the ridership patterns, I believe there’s enough data to support truncating some trips at Georgetown. Cleveland Cap Hill has nearly twice the amount of ridership than West Seattle Cleveland. Having some buses turnaround sooner would help with reliability.
It would also mean removing Link access for all of South Park, and would probably mean decreasing frequency on the south leg in the long term (since the more productive northern half likely props that segment up somewhat). And I see a reasonable number of passengers through riding at Georgetown too, and I’m not convinced the 60 being too long is at all a reliability issue in the first place
Based on the ridership patterns, I believe there’s enough data to support truncating some trips at Georgetown.
I disagree. Just look at the numbers. Think of a northbound bus. The vast majority of riders who board before Cleveland stay on the bus well after Cleveland. Specifically there are 948 riders who board before 15th & Lucille. There are 460 riders who alight before or at that bus stop. That means almost half the riders are riding through that bus stop. There are also plenty of high-ridership stops south of the high school. The first two stops get over 100 riders a piece. The stop at Roxbury & 15th gets over 200. That is more than the ridership of the high school both directions (combined). Beacon Avenue really isn’t special until you get to the station. Basically everything south of the Beacon Hill Station is similar all the way to south end of the route. Forcing riders from South Park and Georgetown to transfer just to get to Beacon Hill seems like a mistake. Oh, and there is no layover at Cleveland either. That seems like a lot of work for very little benefit.
I suppose you could make a case for splitting the route at the station, but that would still mean over 500 riders would have to transfer. Besides, more than half the riders board south of the station so it really isn’t that imbalanced. I really don’t see the point. It is a fairly straightforward route (unlike a lot of buses in our system). It doesn’t make sense to ride it end to end and yet the anchors have very good ridership.
Some possibilities for improving service between CH Station–Yesler Terrace–Jackson Street
(a) The 49 currently uses 5 coaches for midday service and is wired for trolley buses. Run the 49 north/south on the existing Broadway wire to Jackson Street, then turn onto Jackson to 5th & Weller (CID Station) and terminate there. It’s about a 35-minute schedule middays. Depending on the terminal location in CID, this proposal would need 7 or 8 coaches for 15-minute headways (plus 2 or 3 coaches above the existing 49 levels) or 6 coaches for 20-minute headways (plus 1 coach).
(b) An all-day 9 trolley or diesel that begins at Aloha and runs to CID as described in (a) and loops back to Capitol Hill would have a roundtrip run time of about 38 minutes. Four buses needed to schedule 15-minute headways, three buses for 20-minute headways. This proposal would not be able to leverage the service hours of the existing 49. A loop through the ID would require some off-wire running; or, believe it or not, the old 91 wiring still exists in the ID and could be re-worked to serve this route (at some expense and probably not before 2034).
(c) a diesel version of the proposed (b) that would overlay the FHSC to Boren and Yesler and would then go to CID, Mt. Baker, Beacon Hill or Judkins Park.
I feel like ridership activity by stop doesn’t tell the whole story. The other piece is travel time between stops. If an area gets lots of riders it will slow down a bus. But bad traffic or slow streets can also affect bus speed.
I say this because many of the Route 60 stops in the chart appear lightly used — but a bus may just take 15-20 seconds to reach it on average. Other stops may take over a minute on average to reach. So each line on the chart is not “equal” because of varying travel times.
Along with that, a chart showing bus loads by segment would be useful. The need for frequent buses is usually based on the number of people on the vehicle at a given point (crowding) more than the number getting on and off.