Fans dressed in red, white, and blue exit a train at International District/Chinatown station on Friday. (Sound Transit)
On Friday, Sound Transit and King County Metro carried over 500,000 passengers on trains, buses, and boats throughout Puget Sound. Both Link and the King County Water Taxi set a new one-day ridership records of 280,000 and 9,483 boardings, respectively.
Friday was a busy day in Seattle. Communities around the City hosted Juneteenth celebrations. The USA vs Australia World Cup match drew crowds in Pioneer Square, at the Waterfront, and at the various other Fan Celebrations. In the evening, the Seattle Mariners played the Boston Red Sox.
Leaders from King County and Seattle met at Golden Gardens Park Monday morning to inaugurate a new shuttle service direct to Golden Gardens Park. “Golden Gardens Direct” will provide a direct connection between Market Street in central Ballard to the park on Seaview Ave NW. Buses will run every 30 minutes every day from 11 AM to 9 PM, with service starting this Saturday, June 27, and ending on August 30. Passengers can transfer to the Golden Gardens Direct from routes 17, 40, 44, and the D Line. The shuttle will have stops at 34th Ave NW and every few blocks along Seaview Ave NW.
Rides will cost the same as a King County Metro bus: $3, free for riders aged 18 and under, discounted for those eligible for reduced fares, and transfers will be accepted. Tap to pay is not available on the route. When reached for comment, Elaine Porterfield of King Count Metro provided the following statement:
“Metro is in the process of installing equipment on the Hopelink and DART fleet to enable tap-to-pay, which could allow Metro to collect tap-to-pay fares on the Golden Gardens Direct shuttles later this summer. We don’t have an exact date yet when that will take place. We recognize that after just a few months of launching, tap to pay features have made it quick and easy to pay fares and ride transit. We’re eager to offer this feature on the balance of our services as soon as possible.”
The Golden Gardens Direct shuttle is funded by the Seattle Transit Measure for this year only. Service in future summers would require additional funding which could come from the STM renewal Mayor Wilson proposed earlier this month. With this service, SDOT and Metro aim to improve park access and reduce traffic congestion during peak summer season.
What are Barcelona superblocks (superilles) really like? What do they look like, how many people use them, and what do they do in them? Here’s an overview:
By CityFixer. Seattle is briefly mentioned at 9:30-9:41.
Fans at Pioneer Square Station head to the Egypt-Belgium World Cup game at Seattle Stadium on June 15, 2026 (Sound Transit).
Borrowing a phrase from Kirk Hovenkotter (Executive Director of Transportation Choices Coalition), today’s Roundtable is about tourist use of Seattle’s mass transit system.
On Monday, Seattle held its first FIFA Men’s World Cup match at “Seattle Stadium” (Lumen Field). Sound Transit, King County Metro, Community Transit, and Pierce Transit each boosted transit service to get tourists and match attendees in, out, and around Seattle as smoothly as possible with the massive influx of international football fans. Sound Transit was the first to announce almost record-setting ridership, estimating that June 15, 2026, was the third-highest ridership day in Link light rail history with 210,000 combined boardings on the Link 1 and 2 Lines, representing an over 37% boost from Link’s quickly-growing rider count.
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).
Since 2024, Route 909 has connected Edmonds with Mountlake Terrace station. (Michael Smith)
Community Transit has transformed its network over the past few years. Since its founding in 1976, Community Transit (CT) has operated a mix of local routes in Snohomish County and commuter routes to Seattle and other significant employment centers. Following Sound Transit’s Link extension to Lynnwood in August 2024, CT deleted all but one of the Commuter routes to Seattle. The last Commuter route ended service on June 12, 2026.
Commuter routes were replaced with Link, improved local service, a new Swift route, and Express routes. Most Express routes provide peak-only service between a community and Link. In exchange for a required transfer to get to Seattle, Express routes run more trips and have improved reliability than their Commuter route predecessors.
Overall ridership on Commuter/Express routes decreased between October 2023 and October 2025 from 4,254 to 1,085 average weekday passengers. This is due to a few factors:
Reminders: Seattle is hosting 5 more FIFA World Cup games over coming weeks. Keep an eye on your transit agency’s service alerts and be aware there may be crowds at unusual times. Bikes and scooters are banned from Link trains on game days.
This Friday, June 19, is Juneteenth, and Seattle hosting a match between the USA and Australia at noon. Despite the federal holiday, most transit services will operate on normal weekday schedules. Sound Transit offers ways to celebrate freedom, resilience, and the beautiful game.
Reece Martin (RMTransit) resurfaces with a discussion with Dr Jonathan English on how process issues affect the quality of transit projects. They call it “engineering issues” vs “phone call issues”. Engineering issues are straightforward technical problems, like building Link on a floating bridge or a tunnel in dubious soil. Phone call issues are those where a phone call could fix the problem or reduce costs: a call between politicans or agencies or with environmental-impact stakeholders. It might be more than one call or another communication method or a series of meetings meetings, but a phone call is a nice symbolic image.
They look at the goods and bads of Toronto’s transit: the recent east-west subway/light rail lines — Eglington Crosstown (#5), Finch West (#6), Sheppard East (#4) — platform screen doors or short fences, streetcars, too-close stop spacing, or insufficient street priority or signal priority. They look at why these happen, and how a “phone call” could have made these better. They also posit that social media played a key role in getting politicians to commit to fixing the notorious Finch West line slowness. And also that proposing to fix a problem throughout the city can overcome opposition more than proposing one of the same fixes at a time in a few individual locations.
Riding all the Community Transit Swift lines in one day, with the history of each transit corridor. Swift is the limited-stop BRT in Snohomish County, 13-30 miles north of Seattle, serving Lynnwood and Everett and surrounding cities. Transfers from Link light rail are at Shoreline North/185th station and Lynnwood City Center station.
Seattle to Olympia and back with no backtracking. Southbound is via the Bainbridge ferry and rural bus routes in the west sound. Northbound is the usual way via I-5 express routes. (Olympia is 60 miles south of Seattle, the state capital and a small city. Tacoma is in between.)
Circumnavigating the Admirality Inlet. Where is Admirality Inlet? It’s on the west side of Whidbey Island between roughly Freeland and the Port Townsend-Coupeville ferry, and the corresponding east side of the Olympic Penninsula. In a 5-hour layover in Port Townsend he explores the town, an extra Jefferson Transit route and wooded trails, and meets deer.
The J-Man Explores channel also has many shorts ranking various transit routes.
The last inbound Route 424 bus in downtown Seattle on Friday morning (Michael Smith).
On Friday afternoon, Community Transit Route 424 made its final trip from Seattle to the City of Snohomish. This marks the end of Community Transit’s Commuter bus service to Seattle. When Community Transit was created in 1976, the agency operated just seven local bus routes. Within the first year, the system grew to 15 local routes and 16 commuter routes to Seattle. The commuter routes were contracted to King County Metro until 1989. Since then, commuter buses have carried millions of passengers between Snohomish County and downtown Seattle, the University of Washington, and Northgate.
Community Transit was the second transit agency in the United States to use double decker buses. The agency ran a one-year pilot project in 2007, after which it ordered 23 double decker buses. These were branded as “Double Talls” and entered service in 2011. Double decker buses allowed CT to increase the capacity of its busiest commuter routes, while minimizing the layover space needed during the day in Seattle.
Martin Munguia, a senior communications manager at Community Transit, told Seattle Transit Blog that on some days, a single Double Tall with 77 seats would carry over 100 passengers. With shifts from peak rush hour service to all day service, the extra capacity per bus is no longer needed. Community Transit plans to retire its entire double decker fleet over the next decade as the coaches age. “Double decker enthusiasts need not worry,” Munguia said, “because Sound Transit is purchasing battery electric double deckers for its upcoming Stride BRT routes.”
