Matthew grew up in rural South Alabama and has lived in the Seattle area since 2007, settling down in Columbia City in 2012. Active in transportation issues, he is a cofounder of Seattle Subway. Since December 2013 he works at Sound Transit. All opinions are solely those of the author.
All ST service was higher or flat (ST Express decreased by 13 riders/day) in April of 2017 than a year earlier. With University Link opening in March of 16 this is the first full month with U-Link numbers. However Angle Lake didn’t open until September of 16 so it is not fully apples to apples.
Average daily ridership for Link in April was:
Weekday: 71,328 (+17.3%)
Saturday: 50,154 (-4.0%)
Sunday: 33,215 (+2.4%)
Other weekday modal ridership stats:
Sounder: 17,172 (3.8%)
Tacoma Link: 3,279 (3.5%)
ST Express: 64,080 (2.6%)
Sound Transit Systemwide, +20.8% Weekday, +19.7% Total Boardings
All ST service was higher in March of 2017 than last year. With University Link opening in March of 16 this is the first month with partial U-Link numbers, which showed in Link’s Year over Year growth finally dropping down from the 80s and 90s.
Average daily ridership for Link in March was:
Weekday: 67,174 (+54.4%)
Saturday: 43,824 (+11.5%)
Sunday: 34,688 (+30.0%)
Other weekday modal ridership stats:
Sounder: 17,172 (3.8%)
Tacoma Link: 3,279 (3.5%)
ST Express: 64,080 (2.6%)
Sound Transit Systemwide, +20.8% Weekday, +19.7% Total Boardings
While Link’s numbers were all up, Sounder was down (mostly due to the Tacoma Trestle Cutover where service was reduced for 3 days) as well as ST Express down slightly and Tacoma Link also down.
Average daily ridership for Link in February was:
Weekday: 65,125 (+81.5%)
Saturday: 39,409 (+67.6%)
Sunday: 29,184 (+68.7%)
Other weekday modal ridership stats:
Sounder: 16,088 (-3.0%)
Tacoma Link: 3,364 (-7.1%)
ST Express: 61,829 (-1.1%)
Sound Transit Systemwide, +23.4% Weekday, +18.9% Total Boardings
Welcome everyone to the return of Link Ridership posts. I took a bit of break and what do you know, ST went and opened up a couple new stations.
Turns out they are quite popular and not only are running at 2018 projections for ridership, but they appear to have broken the previous pattern. We’re in a whole new world here. Aside from its first few months of operations, Link ridership has always experienced significant seasonal variation, with summer peaks and winter lulls, but U-Link is reducing it sharply. For the first time since 2009, October ridership was higher than September. It’s obviously very early and we won’t see an solid patterns until a couple years of Year-over-Year (YOY) data, but it’s certainly interesting.
Average daily ridership for Link in October was:
Weekday: 68,387 (+84.3%)
Saturday: 42,440 (+90.4%)
Sunday: 35,769 (+48.6%)
Other modal ridership stats:
Sounder, +3.2%
Sounder North, -3.4%
Sounder South, +3.9%
Tacoma Link, -0.3%
ST Express, -0.3%
Sound Transit Systemwide, +25.4% Weekday, +23% Total Boardings
The complete October Ridership Summary is here. Another milestone reached was that for the first quarter ever Link Weekday ridership surpassed ST Express in Q3.
February was the last full month of Original Segment ridership data. But we’re not quite finished. When the March numbers are released Zach will request ridership by day so there will be one last post before we shift gears to U Link ridership. Look for a more retrospective and even predictive post at that time. Also, since my last ridership post ST updated their 2015 rough monthly estimates which had the effect of smoothing out the wild swing in growth rates across the year.
February’s Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday average boardings were 35,875 / 23,513 / 17,300, growth of 11.3%, 33.4%, and 5.3% respectively over February 2015. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 13.6%. Tacoma Link’s weekday ridership decreased 7.3%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up .8%. System wide weekday boardings were up 5.2%, and all boardings were up 9.9%. The complete February Ridership Summary is here.
January’s Link weekday ridership was 15.6% higher than the year before. In the last 4 months (Oct 15 – Jan 16) Link has averaged 13.9% growth.
It’s becoming quite apparent that the October 2014 to September 2015 ‘slowdown’ (for the first time ever Link wasn’t growing by double digits) was in fact simply a reaction to the massive growth rate of the prior year. From October 2013 to September 2014, Link grew an incredible 15.9%. A significant portion of that was likely due to the Mariners having a great season boosting weekday ridership on game days. When the Mariners quickly returned to form the next year those ‘lost riders’ partially masked the sustained steady growth of Link that was still chugging along underneath. Link has now returned to its regular double digit growth.
January’s Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday average boardings were 34,956 / 21,237 / 19,472, growth of 15.6%, -1.3%, and 3.4% respectively over January 2015. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 16%. Tacoma Link’s weekday ridership decreased 3.7%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up 2.4%. System wide weekday boardings were up 7.6%, and all boardings were up 2.4%. The complete January Ridership Summary is here.
Link’s weekdway ridership was up an impressive 13% in November. It’s looking like Link will finish up the year with around 8% growth. This is especially impressive when you consider that 2014 saw growth of 14.2%.
November’s Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday average boardings were 35,420 / 22,522 / 23,852, growth of 13.2%, 2.1%, and 9.6% respectively over November 2014. Sounder’s weekday boardings were up 11.4% with ridership increasing 17% on the North line and 11% on the South. Tacoma Link’s weekday ridership decreased -0.1% with overall ridership up 1.4%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up .3%. System wide weekday boardings were up 5.3%, and all boardings were up 7.4%. The complete November Ridership Summary is here.
Sound Transit has released their July Ridership Report and Link is still going strong, up 16.7% overall.
