Seattle Scores Record Transit Ridership

21 Replies to “Seattle Scores Record Transit Ridership”

1. Once again, LINK crushes it. For reference, 280,000 boardings puts us on par with what BART was averaging daily in the early 2010s, during the height of the recession and peak public transit ridership in the bay. That’s pretty good to be doing with much smaller trains and fewer lines, and shows what the potential of the system is if it can hit the planned 6 minute branch headways. I think the next few years are going to be very positive in terms of ridership growth and use of rail in the puget sound.

   1. Not to take away from the achievement…but peak vs average is not really an apples to apples comparison to BART

      1. Sorry, peak as in their highest ridership year not peak time of day.

         It’s comparing our highest day to their daily averages

   2. No BART average weekday ridership was at or above 400K throughout most of the 2010s. That’s about 45-50% higher than this peak day. It well beyond double an average Link day of 160-165K in April or May of 2026. Finally, BART counts station entries rather than train car boardings (unlike ST) so the comparison would be more like 450K.

      1. After researching BART’s reporting (linked trips) and the FTA National Transit Database (unlinked trips), the differences can apparently be seen.

         For example, FTA reported a 2024 weekday average as 178,949 here:

         https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/90003.pdf

         The same 2024 average weekday is reported by BART as 165,502 here:

         https://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership

         The difference may not seem that great and there may be different beginning and ending months. Still, a good rule of thumb for BART that the internal systems data of linked trips should probably be increased by about 10 percent to get to unlinked trips reported by FTA.

2. Very exciting! I think this one will be hard to beat until the system substantially expands. The USA game drew a massive crowd, but having a Mariner’s game the same day probably nudged it over the line set by the Superbowl parade. It’s nice to see transit working well on big crowd days!

   1. If the USA beats whoever in round of 32 then they will be playing again in Seattle for the round of 16. I don’t think it’ll break records bc of a lack of a Mariners game but it’ll be another big ridership day

   2. This is what we need, a transit-riding culture. Enthusiasm for riding Link and express buses to ballgames or large Seattle events has been growing for several years. Crosslake unlocked the latent demand on the Eastside. I’d seen the 550 westbound early Sunday evenings standing room only on some ballgame days. But the 550 couldn’t carry the full crowd Link could, plus it was less desirable because it was less frequent and got caught in congestion on I-90 and south Bellevue Way. I was in that south Bellevue Way congestion on ballgame days.

      ST has been running Sounder specials on many ballgame days so much that it has become routine. I’ve never seen their ridership, but I presume it must be there or the runs wouldn’t have continued for so long.

3. It’s important to remember that if someone boards a 2 Line train and transfers to a 1 Line train or vice versa, it’s counted by ST as two boardings. The transfer number is quite small as CID monthly boarding average approaches 10K now with at least half not likely transferring. (It used to have 5-6K boardings and now has over 10K.) But comparing the door counters adds a few more riders when compared with systems that tally up those entering through turnstiles.

   That also means that transfers between lines are higher number of boardings than total boardings at over half of the stations in the system. I think that there really needs to be down escalators added at CID assuming that ST can’t justify a center transfer platform due to ADA design limitations. .

   1. The stadium is right where the 2 Line branches off, so there are probably few ballgame transfers. And the 1/2 Lines are combined in the north so there’s no reason to transfer from the 2 Line, although people might if they took a southbound 1 Line first. But with the World Cup crowd they’d assume they wouldn’t be able to transfer without waiting in line. That leaves East-South transfers, the most common ones. But also the least-common ridership pattern. And with the World Cup crowds, nobody would assume the transfer is viable around game time, so they’d take the 560 if they’re going to the airport.

   2. I think that “unlinked” trips which count transfers as new riders are pretty widely used as a standard for counting passengers – in fact the US DOT data that agencies report specifically list require unlinked trips.

      This might seem weird but there are a lot of cases where unlinked data is arguably preferable to linked trips, such as measuring the popularity of a specific line.

4. It’s showtime!!

   ST no longer is a system judged more by pretty renderings and system diagrams. It’s doing real work now. Its future larger public perception will forever now be governed by how well it actually operates for riders rather than by it merely hopes to go.

   That means that things like reliability, overcrowding, working vertical devices, cleanliness and safety will be more in the forefront. And like any mature system, it’s now what I think most riders will care more about moving forward.

5. This is a great achievment.

   But “busiest light rail system” feels like an irrelevant ranking. The “light rail systems” in Los Angeles and Boston are parts of larger systems that include heavy rail rapid transit lines, which we don’t have.

   It is funny that Link is now surpassing Los Angeles’s combined heavy and light rail ridership, despite having half the stations and half the track length. We are nowhere near surpassing Boston’s combined system, though. (If Ballard Link was actually built, I think we would.)

   We are already pretty close to surpassing the ridership of Philadelphia’s combined system. Given that Seattle’s population is growing faster than Philadelphia’s, and we are far more aggressive about upzoning around transit stations, it’s only a matter of time.

   1. “It is funny that Link is now surpassing Los Angeles’s combined heavy and light rail ridership, despite having half the stations and half the track length.”

      LA Metro’s rail system shows over 6.3M rides in March (the latest month). Link ridership for April and May is only about 4.4M rides. Add to that the D Line extension under Wilshire just opened boosting their ridership beyond March.

      I’m not sure how you came to the conclusion that Link has more rail riders than LA Metro rail has. But it doesn’t appear to be accurate.

      https://www.metro.net/safety-support/by-the-numbers/

      https://www.soundtransit.org/ride-with-us/system-performance-tracker/ridership

   2. ““busiest light rail system” feels like an irrelevant ranking. ”

      The headline is Link surpassing its own record. Surpassing other light rail systems is an interesting note in passing, and the STB authors have long discussed how this measure is mostly meaningless. It depends on the arbitrary choices of cities to build heavy rail or light rail. When I rode the LA Blue Line to Long Beach in the 2000s, it seemed backward to me that the Bay Area has BART while LA doesn’t, even though LA has three times the population.

      Link is an unusual light rail, with much more grade separation, wider stop spacing, and higher frequency. That makes it functionally more like a light metro, that gets people from A to B faster and more frequently, and that generates higher ridership. But it uses like rail technology so it’s in the light rail category. That makes it an unfair comparison: it’s like a genetically gifted athlete compared to everybody else. The proper comparison is to light metros, or to all metro rail combined. Then it drops to the bottom half because it’s not as fast or frequent as heavy rail or a light metro.

6. This ridership surge pushed Link past light rail systems in Los Angeles, Boston, and San Diego to become the busiest light rail system in the United States.

   That’s because it almost exactly meets the defintion of a “Light Metro” between Lynnwood CC and SoBel and Lynnwood CC and Stadium. The major shortcoming is the overhead power distribution and low-floor platforms. I fully realize that these shortcomings are necessitated by the at-grade running between Stadium and BAR and the two sections in Bellevue.

   But it’s hardly fair to compare Link to the MBTA Green Line, DART or even LAMTA’s Blue, Orange and Yellow Lines all of which mostly run on the surface except through the downtown tunnel.

   This is not a slam against Link, merely a reminder that the system is about 85% grade-separated. That is not “Light Rail” even if the vehicles are the same.

   1. Overhead electrification does not matter in the slightest. Sydney, barcelona, and now Paris all use metros with overhead electrification. In fact it’s a much safer system than third rail, and it also allows for higher voltages and fewer substations.

      1. Those may be advantages, but the extra maintenance never ends. Plus, tunnels have to be foue feet larger in diameter for full-speed operation. Trains can only travel fairly slowly when the pans are depressed.

         And elevated structures with catenary are quite an eyesore.

         1. Eyesore, really?

         2. It’s in the eye of the beholder, but adding new overhead wires is considered a negative impact in an EIS. Personally, I like the wires because they somewhat resemble streetcar tracks. But some people think streetcar tracks are an eyesore.

   2. There’s also the issue of platform lengths. Most other light rail systems are not designed to accommodate four-car light rail trains. These other systems bring mentioned don’t have platforms for trains as long as Link does — and do have overcrowding issues at times.

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