Earlier this week, Sound Transit shared the per-station breakdown of Link’s record-breaking ridership in April 2026. The two new stations, Judkins Park and Mercer Island had 2,130 and 1,723 average weekday boardings, respectively. Ridership at these stations will increase over the next year as travel patterns change. Additionally, Metro and Sound Transit will restructure their bus networks in August, further boosting Link ridership.

For the existing stations, these new data show how Link usage has changed over the past month and the past year. The chart below shows the average weekday ridership for April 2025 (light blue, left column), March 2026 (blue, center column), and April 2026 (dark blue, right column). System-wide Link boardings increased 52% year-over-year (YoY) and 35% month-over-month (MoM).

Average weekday ridership by station for April 2025 (light blue, left column), March 2026 (blue, center column), and April 2026 (dark blue, right column).

Lynnwood City Center – International District/Chinatown (CID)

While no new stations opened between Lynnwood and CID between April 2025 and April 2026, passengers along this section have benefited from improved Link frequency. Since February 14, Sound Transit has run both 1 Line and 2 Line trains, providing 4 or 5 minute frequencies throughout the day. This improvement, along with the new possible trips to Federal Way and the Eastside, has caused a surge in ridership. In March 2025, the 13 stations accounted for 56,919 boardings. Just one year later, this count has jumped to 98,300, a 72% increase. Higher gas prices and I-5 construction may have also contributed to more people taking Link.

Mountlake Terrace ridership has ballooned over the past year and has surpassed Lynnwood. Lynnwood is now the only terminal station to have lower ridership than the adjacent station. Ridership at both Shoreline stations and Northgate has more than doubled YoY. U District and CID stations have each gained over 5,000 daily weekday boardings since April 2025. The top 5 busiest Link stations are now Westlake, U District, Capitol Hill, CID, and SeaTac.

Stadium – Federal Way Downtown

The southern half of the 1 Line got a bit longer this past December with the opening of the Federal Way Link Extension (FWLE). Since we first discussed FWLE ridership in January, more passengers have started to use each station. Kent Des Moines and Star Lake are both approaching 2,000 daily weekday boardings while Federal Way Downtown has nearly 5,000 boardings each weekday. Despite the strong FWLE ridership, overall boardings on this section of the 1 Line have dropped 9.2% from April 2025. Boardings at Angle Lake and Tukwila Int’l Blvd have fallen 60% and 23% YoY, respectively. This is likely due to passengers choosing to board Link at one of the new FWLE stations. SeaTac/Airport also saw a 26% decline in ridership, possibly due to a nationwide drop in tourism and higher airfares. Beacon Hill and Mount Baker both had a smaller ridership drop, potentially from the nearby Judkins Park station poaching some passengers. Curiously, Stadium station lost more than half of its average weekday ridership. The Mariners played a similar number of home games in April 2025 as April 2026 (13 vs 11) so the fluctuation of other events may have caused this drop.

Judkins Park – Downtown Redmond

Standing room only 2 Line train approaching South Bellevue on April 28. (Michael Smith)

As expected, the Crosslake Connection caused a a ridership boom at every station on the Eastside. Including the two new stations, overall ridership has increased 505% YoY. East Main saw the largest relative increase at 647%. The ridership at every other station has at least doubled since April 2025. Most of the new ridership is from park & ride stations (South Bellevue, Marymoor Village) and the downtown stations in Bellevue and Redmond. Wilburton station now holds the title for the least busy Link station, with just 931 passengers each weekday. Significant development in the area surrounding the station will let the station reach its full potential within the next few decades.

34 Replies to “Early Look at Crosslake Connection’s Record-Breaking Ridership”

  1. I’m surprised Kent-Des Moines and Star Lake are beating out the Wilburton-Overlake Village section. I guess those parking garages are worth something at least…

    2. Also Federal Way Extension stations are spaced more far apart.
      Part of area accessible from Wilburton are better served by adjacent stations. Wilburton’s ridership will largely remain underwhelming until all the neighboring lots get redeveloped. And that is happening.

    3. Kent-Des Moines is across the street from Highline College, so a lot of students who normally take the A from Federal Way or Tukwila to class have likely switched to Link. I would know since I used to take the A everyday to class a decade ago and the bus was always crowded when late morning/early afternoon classes let out.

  2. overall boardings on this section of the 1 Line have dropped 9.2% from April 2025

    Does this mean that FWLE reduced total ridership? Or that Stadium – Angle Lake reduced in ridership? I wonder what’s driving the reduction at Beacon Hill and Mount Baker.

    1. The increase in ridership from FWLE (~8.5k) was not enough to offset the decrease between Stadium – Angle Lake. Some of this decrease is because of FWLE (TIBS and Angle Lake), but the rest of the decrease is likely unrelated (Stadium, SeaTac, Beacon Hill, and Mount Baker).

  3. Wow that DT Redmond is the highest ridership station on Eastside. Shows what proper TOD and good station placement can do. Bellevue would be #1 if they didn’t cave to Kemper

    1. I dream that one day we will re-route the East Main section to Bellevue Way where it should be…

      2. I was thinking they could truncate issaquah link at south Bellevue then in ST4 build a new alignment along Bellevue way up to Kirkland.

      3. Delta, if you think Link should be rerouted to Bellevue Way, do you also think it should be rerouted to PacHwy between Angle Lake and Federal Way?

    2. The more annoying thing than a poorly located Bellevue Downtown station is that sharp 90 degrees turn west of Bellevue Downtown station make light rail travel extremely slowly in the tunnel yet still making so much noise.

  4. The surge in ridership at UW and U District stations are notable. The increase seems to be due to campus trips being made to and from the Eastside. U District is the second highest station in April after Westlake.

  5. “Ridership boom” seems a big exaggerated – perhaps “bump” is more appropriate? Both Lynnwood and Federal Way extensions are serving an average of 3k riders per station, and East Link looks to be about half that at best. Honestly a but disappointed, but maybe TOD between Wilburton and BelRed can close that gap in a decade or so. Curious as to why East Link seems to have so much less demand.

    1. The routing of the 2 line does a serious loop back, going south of downtown to cross the 90 bridge, then heading back up north. Riding south requires a transfer and is also slow.

      It is still faster to bus from Redmond to Northgate. (Google will sometimes even recommend taking a bus from Redmond to Westlake and then taking link from there.) Trips to SeaTac are also often faster by bus.

      Add to this that many of the 2-line stations are geared towards park and ride, and it becomes logical to just drive down 405 from Lynnwood to Bellevue rather than park and take the 2 line. East Link is left primarily as a way for the east side to commute downtown or send kids on a one seat ride to UW.

      1. This is what makes it unusable for me. My trip is the perfect link combo (Redmond-downtown/Westlake), but the 545 is 10-20 minutes faster at all times of day. Link is a slog and it’s grueling to be sitting there for so long. I’m curious to see how the 545 and 542 ridership has been affected. I think there was an article on it but I can’t remember.

      2. I don’t the 2 line was ever intended for traveling all the way from Lynnwood to Bellevue. That’s what a bus down 405 is for. And Sound Transit is in the process of spending a lot of money to make that bus down 405 faster.

        1. But Line 2 clearly is intended for travelling between Redmond and Westlake, which it is clearly failing at given the “10-20 minutes” loss to the 545.
          I think a lot of the Bellevue section travels unnecessarily slowly. Maybe the engineers can improve it?

        2. Much of East Link is surprisingly slow for the track environment. One hopes ST will be able to bring it up to normal speed someday like the north and south segments, and then Redmond-Westlake would be faster.

        3. One doesn’t have to be a rail expert to see why East Main to Spring District is slow. Station – curve – station – curve – station -curve – station. All in about a mile.

        4. @Mike, for whatever reason the westbound trains slow to an absolute crawl entering Downtown Bellevue station; it’s far enough from the curve after Wilburton that it actually has some speed but then slows. This doesn’t seem to happen at other stations where trains at normal speed pull into the station (slowing of course) – Northgate is a good example with similar geometry, elevated track with a service walkway at the north end of the platform, where the train arrives at a speed you’d expect.

          The other speed issue in Bellevue is the Kemper Freeman Not Yet Memorial Slow Tunnel; it’s not much more than walking speed from East Main to Bellevue Downtown due to that thing.

  6. I think Wilburton, Spring District, BelRed, and Overlake Village have a lot of potential. Unfortunately, that potential is years away. Of the four, I think OV’s ridership will increase at a highest rate, due to all the multifamily housing development south of the station.

      1. Those are being redeveloped gradually. Many are owned by Kevin Wallace, who intends to convert them to mixed-use or retail buildings. He’s already done one, and a second one is starting.

  7. I wonder what kind of effect various service disruptions had. I don’t have a memory about when different ones happened.

    1. I don’t remember either, but that’s a possible factor. Link had outages or single-trackings almost every day for months.

  8. It seems hard to believe that Mountlake Terrace has more ridership than Lynnwood. Anecdotally, it seems like more people get off/board at Lynnwood. In September 2025 it was 4.5K Lynnwood and 1.9K Mountlake Terrace according to the dashboard. In October 2025 it was 2.8K and 2.6K respectively, a huge shift that has been consistent ever since. What changed that month? It seems unlikely that bus restructures can explain all of this. Did they maybe change/fix their ridership methodology or something? What am I missing here?

    1. Must be some kind of error in their methodology for determining ridership. There’s absolutely no way MLT is busier than Lynnwood, there’s so many more connections and I always see way more people using Lynnwood than MLT when I’m in the area. Maybe worth a question to ST.

    2. When Michael got the stats we were surprised that Lynnwood is lower than Federal Way and Mountlake Terrace. And that Lynnwood has less growth than Mountlake Terrace or the two Shorelines. There could be a mistake; we’ll know when ST cross-checks it against ORCA taps and other sources.

      Assuming it’s correct, Lynnwood station is unexpectedly disappointing. It’s possible that new drive-up passengers found Lynnwood P&R full but found spaces at Mountlake Terrace or Shoreline South P&R. I’ve also heard there’s a significant number of people on the 515 (I can’t imagine why); that will go away in the fall.

      2. I looked at the day plot for the two stations. Mountlake terrace was pretty consistent for the last nine months. Lynnwood CC on the other hand shows erratic shifts since last September from one day to another.

    1. In a twist on how financial writer Morgan Housel says the saying earnings missed estimates should really be estimates missed earnings, I don’t think of it as certain stations falling short of projections, I think whoever made the projections fell short.

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