Michael lives in Rainier Valley and primarily rides Route 7 and the 1 Line. Originally from Philadelphia, he lived in Singapore for 10 years where he learned the value of a great public transportation system. Michael has called Seattle home since 2020.
King County Metro’s RapidRide E Line travels inbound along Aurora Avenue from the Aurora Village Transit Center through Shoreline and north Seattle to South Lake Union, Belltown, downtown Seattle, and Pioneer Square. Outbound trips travel in the reverse direction, except for a small deviation to Linden Ave N between N 65th St and N 76th St. In October 2024, the E Line was the busiest bus route in King County with 13,568 average weekday boardings.
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.
Average Weekday Ridership per E Line Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward downtown Seattle; “Outbound” is toward Aurora Village Transit Center. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
King County Metro’s Route 8 travels inbound from Uptown to Mount Baker, primarily east and south through South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, Madison Valley, and the Central District. Outbound trips travel north and west from Mount Baker to Uptown. In August 2024, Route 8 had 6,177 average weekday boardings.
Unlike most of the high ridership routes in King County, Route 8 does not travel to downtown Seattle nor is it the fastest transit option to travel end-to-end. Instead, it has an east-west segment from Uptown to Madison Valley and a north-south segment from Madison Valley to Mount Baker. The two segments are distinct from both a geographic and ridership perspective.
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.
Average Weekday Ridership per Route 8 Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward Mount Baker; “Outbound” is toward Uptown. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
King County Metro’s RapidRide D Line travels inbound from Crown Hill to downtown Seattle, primarily through Ballard, Interbay, and Uptown. Outbound trips travel north from downtown to Crown Hill. In August 2024, the D Line was the fourth busiest bus route in King County with 8,824 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.
Average Weekday Ridership per D Line Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward Downtown; “Outbound” is toward Crown Hill. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
King County Metro’s Route 7 travels inbound from Rainier Beach to downtown Seattle, primarily through Rainier Valley and the International District. Outbound trips travel south from downtown to Rainier Beach. In August 2024, Route 7 was the second busiest bus route in King County with 10,599 average weekday boardings.
Before diving into the ridership data, it’s important to note the asymmetric routing of inbound and outbound trips. All inbound trips follow the same route (View Map). The trip starts on Henderson St east of Rainier and follows a clockwise loop back to the Rainier Ave/Henderson St intersection via Seward Park Ave and Rainier Ave. It then continues north on Rainier Ave to the rest of the route.
Outbound trips have two variations. As Route 7 approaches Henderson St from the north on Rainier Ave, about two thirds of trips turn left from Rainier Ave onto Henderson St and layover on Henderson St (View Map). The rest of the outbound trips continue on Rainier Ave to 57th Ave and loop via Prentice St (View Map). These trips then travel north back up to Henderson St to layover. Riders traveling inbound will need to transfer to one of the northbound stops on Rainier Ave between Seward Park Ave and Henderson St. All stops on the Prentice St loop are considered part of the outbound trip. In the outbound chart below, the bus is traveling south until the S Prentice St & 64th Ave S stop. It then travels north until S Henderson St & Rainier Ave S. The stop at S Henderson St & Rainier Ave S is served by all outbound trips, hence why its ridership data does not match the ridership data of the stops on the Prentice St loop.
When these data were recorded in 2023, some trips on Route 7 and Route 49 are through-run downtown. This results in the outbound stop at Pine St & 9th Ave showing more than 5 riders per trip despite minimal boardings. These riders are continuing from Route 49. The through-running service pattern was discontinued in September 2024.
Average Ridership Per Trip
The plots below shows 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.
Average Weekday Ridership per Route 7 Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward Downtown; “Outbound” is toward Rainier Beach. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
King County Metro’s RapidRide C Line travels inbound from Westwood Village to South Lake Union. It passes through Roxhill, Fauntleroy, Gatewood, Seaview, Fairmount Park, Genesee, SODO, Pioneer Square, downtown Seattle, Belltown, and Denny Triangle. Outbound trips travel in the reverse direction. In August 2024, the C Line was the 7th busiest bus route in King County with 7,541 average weekday boardings.
Average Ridership Per Trip
The plots below shows 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.
Average Weekday Ridership per C Line Trip: March 2023 to March 2024. “Inbound” is toward Downtown; “Outbound” is toward Westwood Village. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.
A few months ago, I was waiting for a Route 7 bus and was frustrated by the far too common bus bunching along Rainier Ave. When the bus arrived at my stop, it was followed immediately by two other Route 7 buses. I spent some time thinking about simple changes King County Metro (KCM) could implement to reduce bunching in Rainier Valley. One idea seemed to make sense: turn some northbound buses around at the Mount Baker Transit Center. To further back up my idea, I requested stop-level ridership data (boardings, de-boardings, and bus passenger load) by time of day for Route 7 and numerous other routes from King County. While the actual ridership patterns invalidated my turn-back idea, plotting the data showed some interesting stories hidden in the numbers.
Fortunately, I can share this detailed ridership data with the Seattle Transit Blog community. Through a series of posts, I’ll share the results for various routes in the KCM network. Like the data shared in Bruce Nourish’s excellentseriesofposts on 2010 ridership patterns, these numbers are gathered by the Automated Passenger Counters (APCs) present on almost all KCM buses. Metro reports these totals per service change, with each service change lasting approximately three months. Although there is potential for error with APC data, the large number of trips over the course of a service change absorbs the impact of one-off errors or missing values. To smooth out potential outliers and errors, I calculated an annual average across three service change periods spanning March 2023 to March 2024: March 18, 2023 to June 10, 2023; June 10, 2023 to September 2, 2023; and September 2, 2023 to March 30, 2024.
I’ll get to Route 7 soon, but let’s start the series with the results from Route 70, soon to be converted into RapidRide J. The plot below shows average weekday ridership by stop in each direction, color-coded by time of day.
