Ridership – Seattle Transit Blog

Metro Update on Ridership Recovery and Service Planning

May 20, 2024June 3, 2024 by Nathan Dickey

On May 15, King County Metro staff briefed the County Council’s Regional Transit Committee, (presentation pdf download here) focusing on ridership trends and the agency’s capacity to return to 100% of planned service.

Ridership Trends

First, the good news: Metro ridership continued to grow across almost all modes between 2022 and 2023; Water Taxi service ridership was similar.

Slide from Metro’s Ridership and Service Planning presentation.

Focusing on fixed-route bus service, Metro presented an interesting chart showing how in March 2024, just 20 of the approximately 108 active routes carried half of Metro’s bus ridership. The 20 busiest routes were 2, 7, 8, 14, 36, 40, 44, 45, 60, 62, 70, 160, 372, and the A, B, C, D, E, F, and H RapidRide Lines.

Chart of average weekday boardings by route in March 2024.
Note: not all bars are labelled with the corresponding route number.

Transit app estimates local transit ridership decline

March 30, 2020March 30, 2020 by Frank Chiachiere

The people behind Transit, one of the more popular trip planning apps, have put together an estimate on how Covid-19 has affected every transit agency they track. Here are the figures for the Puget Sound.

The company says that the percentage declines are approximated based on previous years’ app usage, since they don’t have actual ridership data. Since these are all percentage declines against “normal”, you don’t see the typical weekend drop-offs. Still, some trends are obvious, such as the probably-shoulda-been-canceled Sounders home game on March 1.

Metro has also updated its own ridership measures, showing a continued decline over the month. There are now an average of 150,000 weekday riders, down from 400,000.

In related news, here is a big list of all local agencies, including many community-based shuttle services, that have had service impacts as a result of Covid-19.

Update 8:55am: Metro has an online tool for you to check whether or not a specific trip is cancelled.

Metro ridership plunges during social distancing measures

March 18, 2020March 18, 2020 by Martin H. Duke

As most reasons to leave the house (much less travel to the big hubs) disappear, transit ridership is going down with it:

King County Metro has analyzed preliminary estimates and extrapolations to create an unofficial estimate of ridership. The results show an estimated 45% reduction in Metro bus ridership – or a drop of 185,000 riders, from an estimated 415,000 to 230,000 – on Thursday, March 12, compared to this time in 2019.
Jeff Switzer, King County Metro

Record Link ridership in 2018

February 26, 2019March 8, 2019 by Peter Johnson

In 2018, Sound Transit continued to avoid the national decline in transit ridership, according to the agency’s latest service numbers.

Link light rail’s ridership grew a solid 6.1% in 2018, with 24,416,411 boardings.

Puget Sound region added most U.S. transit boardings in 2016-17

July 6, 2018July 5, 2018 by Peter Johnson

Rush hour buses on 3rd Avenue. Credit: Bruce Englehardt.

The Puget Sound region’s transit investments are paying off. In recent years, ridership has grown faster in the Seattle region than anywhere else in the United States, according to the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC.)

That trend is true over the long term, as total ridership in the Puget Sound region has grown by 19 percent since 2010. That growth is larger than any U.S. peer city’s over the same timeframe. In the short term, Puget Sound transit agencies saw a larger absolute increase in boardings—5,108,582—than any other urban area in the United States during 2016-2017.

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North by Northwest 61: A Sounder North Quarterly Ridership Report

May 9, 2015May 9, 2015 by Joe "AvgeekJoe" Konzlar

View post on imgur.com

Thursday night, I prepped the below table for a Friday interview that hopefully will go public Sunday at 12:01 AM. But I figured it was time to put together a ridership table for the controversial Sounder North train run. I got the Average Mean Daily Ridership by dividing the quarterly total boardings/ridership by 65 or 13 weeks X 5 days. I then divided that number by two to get an – arguably inflated – estimate of the users using the run round trip under “AMDR/2 for Round-Trip Estimate“. Finally due to Sounder North’s ridership depending on among other things slides and the economy to record growth by the same quarter in the previous year. Hopefully this helps the conversation.

View post on imgur.com

So here you go. It appears to me from the above we’re talking about a transit service that only serves 500-600 regular commuters or so.

If you want the Excel table, please e-mail me at growlernoise-at-gmail-dot-com and put in the subject line, “SOUNDER NORTH EXCEL SPREADSHEET PLEASE”.

Also would like to embed the spreadsheet, but having no luck.

Programming Note: I also yesterday had less than optimum ridership experience using Sounder North – again partially due to a need to see the Mukilteo Station’s behind schedule progress for North by Northwest – and will write about that next week after I verify some things that affirm my views on Sounder North. Also will hopefully, finally get an Island Transit update out the door.

ST Adjusts Ridership Forecasts Downward

June 3, 2011June 2, 2011 by Martin H. Duke

There’s a habit of considering ridership projections as an essentially political document — and with all the arguing, perhaps they are — but at its heart lies a technical model with actual inputs and assumptions. One of those inputs, of course, is previous ridership, when that data exists.

I’m a bit late on this, but now that ST has a full year of Central Link ridership data with Seatac station included, it has another input to its model. As that ridership was lower than expected, it’s caused a general downward revision to ridership going forward. The upshot is that 2011 ridership is projected to average 25,000 weekday boardings, instead of 31,000. There are also revised estimates for Tacoma Link, Sounder, and ST express.

ST spokesman Geoff Patrick tells me that these estimates are the first that use 2010 ridership as an input. They also incorporate the latest economic forecasts; Patrick points out that “there are 30,000 fewer jobs in downtown Seattle today than there were in the year 2000.”

It’s a little odd to me that there’s still supposed to be a big jump in 2011, and then much smaller increases through to 2016, so my (totally amateur) instincts tell me this number is still too high. In any case, models are always wrong, although they do have their uses. In the next few days, we’ll have a more detailed analysis of the ST ridership model and its errors.

April 2011 Link Ridership

May 25, 2011May 25, 2011 by Martin H. Duke

21,870 weekday, 14,026 Saturday, 12,749 Sunday. This is up from March, though that had to be revised downward by 30/weekday to 21,311/14,139/8,881.

On a completely unrelated note, don’t feed the trolls.

Link Ridership by Station, June 2010-February 2011

May 20, 2011May 24, 2011 by Martin H. Duke

STB recently obtained from Sound Transit per-station boarding statistics for both June-October and October-February. This continues the series from the first half of 2010.

A cursory glance at the numbers shows little qualitative difference between the first data set and the next two, so I think the analysis back then still stands. The June-October period is the peak ridership to date, and interestingly about half the total growth was at Westlake and Seatac.

Link Q1 Ridership Graphs

May 10, 2011May 24, 2011 by Andrew Smith

weekdayridersperhour — Weekday Riders Per Hour, Courtesy Sound Transit

I’m a big numbers nerd, and when I came across these graphs of Q1 Link ridership data I felt had to share them. It’s pretty interesting to see what time rush hour is for Link and that Friday is the line’s busiest day. Make sure you read Martin’s “how to understand ridership numbers” post before drawing wild conclusions from these.

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