Seattle light rail ridership in 2011 was 7.8 million, way short of the 12.9 million commitment to the Federal Government justifying the $500 million grant that made the line possible.

This page is a living document that is revised and updated periodically, most recently January 21, 2012

Average weekday ridership of Central Link was 23,535 for all of 2011, compared to 25,000 set as the revised budget last April. The Seattle light rail network as now operating with 13 stations continues to be off-track in its desired progress toward the 45,000 weekday average target that was the basis for a $500 million Federal grant awarded in 2003.  Since revenue service began, the highest daily ridership ever achieved on Seattle's light rail is 32,334. Short-term agency forecasts plus ridership counts from the first two complete years of Central Link to the Airport indicate 45,000 per day ridership is unrealistic. 

This updated page covers Seattle's light rail passenger counts from the first day of revenue service July 20, 2009 through December 31, 2011.  Sound Transit has provided PITF with the data presented here, all of which are estimates subject to change. Archive of data sheets from Sound Transit is at the bottom of this page.

Washington State Auditor announced January 4, 2012 a forthcoming audit of Sound Transit's achieved ridership compared to forecasts.

Sound Transit's Central Link Light Rail between downtown Seattle and Sea-Tac Airport achieved its 2011 ridership high of 32,334 last September 2 on the occasion of a Seahawks vs. Oakland Raiders football game. Ball games in the CenturyLink and Safeco stadiums near Stadium Station are proving to be an important source of ridership on light rail. The game between the 'Hawks and Philadelphia's Eagles on December 1 drew 32,104 to light rail that day, the high for December.

But back in 2008 based on long-practiced forecasting methods, Sound Transit expected the weekday average light rail ridership across every day of 2010 to be 32,600, an average level even higher than the occasional game day highs now experienced. As indicated with the release on January 18 of complete 2011 passenger counts, the average daily boardings across all 255 non-holiday weekdays of 2011 came in at 23,535, which is 12% above the 2010 level of 21,047, but 6% below the revised lower budget target for 2011 of 25,000. The pattern of seasonal autumn ridership decline first observed in 2010 was repeated in 2011. The total ridership count for all days of 2011 was 7.8 million compared to an original budgeted 2011 annual target of 10.3 million boardings set in mid 2010, then 8.3 million boardings set April, 2011, and a further lowered target of 8 million set last October.

It's clear now that Sound Transit has given up on the forecast of 45,000 weekday average by 2020 with the present number of stations. The actual ridership results from 2010 and 2011 plus Sound Transit's own current forecasts for 2012 through 2015 form a clear trend line in the chart below that ends up in 2020 at around 36,000, not the 45,000 that was bandied about prior to 2009. A slightly lower 42,500 per day was promised to the Federal Government in the period 2001-03 in exchange for a $500 million grant to build light rail from Tukwila to Westlake Center, called "Initial Segment." That daily number translates to 12.9 million riders per year. Ironically, this earlier forecast did not include riders from either Airport Station or Stadium Station, two boarding points that are critical to the ridership that Link now actually experiences.

Sound Transit is now planning light rail line extensions by 2016 for two more stations northward to Husky Stadium and one southward to South 200th in SeaTac that the agency forecasts will expand system ridership by over 74,000 riders per weekday. What does Sound Transit's present day ridership experience compared to forecasts indicate about the quality of this agency's ridership forecasting into the future? So far, not so good.

The ridership chart below shows the first, second, and third years of light rail operation on the same time axis, with the July 20 revenue service start-up anniversary beginning each year. As the chart illustrates, ridership in the second full year of Seattle's light rail service (in red) did not grow as strongly in the first half of 2011 as was the case in 2010 (in green). The 14-day moving average of ridership on all days during late April and early May 2011 dropped briefly below the same time series one year earlier, as shown below where the thick red line drops lower than the thick green line. 

Now, PITF is charting the third year in blue month by month. As shown, the first full month of the 14-day moving average in year three of Central Link Light Rail exhibited an upward trend until August 19, 2011. At that point a downward trend started that has continued through the end of the year, similar to the pattern in 2010. So far, the blue line of the third year is staying above the red line of the second year, although there was a sharp dive at the end of 2011.  Time will tell if year 3 stays above year 2.

Thanks to Sound Transit's willingness to share data with Public Interest Transportation Forum, a unique record of day-by-day development of light rail ridership in a world class city is being established. The route of Seattle's Central Link light rail from downtown to the main regional commercial airport is shown here on a map that also depicts with dotted lines the forthcoming extensions both to the north and the south. Some history of how this line was developed is here on Seattle Transit Blog.

The continuous lowering of expectations in 2011 mirrors the disappointing experience of 2010, when the actual ridership of 7 million all year was more than one million below the forecast of 8.1 million. That forecast was made in fall 2009, a year after the beginning of the recession in 2008 that was incorrectly blamed by Sound Transit Board Member Larry Phillips for the ridership being below forecast in 2010.

The alignment and stations of Seattle light rail line this year are the same as last year, with the terminus points at Westlake Center in downtown and the Sea-Tac Airport south of the city limits, and eleven stations in between. In February 2010, King County Metro reduced bus services that ran parallel to light rail in the same corridor and deployed more bus trips to serve light rail stations. In 2011, King County Metro had enough funding to maintain bus service to and from light rail stations and thus support Sound Transit's goal of increasing ridership.

The Mariners, the Sounders, the Seahawks, Sound Transit, and Port of Seattle all promote light rail use for attending baseball, soccer, and NFL football games. Mariners baseball with frequent games has been the biggest contributor to Central Link light rail ridership of all the SODO stadium sports. The photo shows a 2010 scene on a Link rail car before the opening day game.

Seattle Seahawks games also bring a surge of light rail ridership. December 1, 2011 had the highest ridership in that entire month (32,104) because there was a Thursday night football game that day. The Seahawks also played a Monday night game on December 12, when Central Link enjoyed its second-highest ridership in December. A year earlier, in December 2010, the Seahawks only two home games were both on Sundays, so in that month football provided no contribution to weekday ridership. Without the two weekdays having Seahawks home games, December 2011 would have seen a drop in average weekday ridership from November like seen in 2010 from November to December.

The Seattle Sounders soccer team also plays games at CenturyLink Field (formerly Qwest) near Stadium Station. During July 2010, the average ridership on 16 game days (baseball or soccer) was 23,152, while on 15 days with no game the average was 21,988. Multiplying the differential of 1,164 by 16 game days yields 18,624, providing a rough estimate of the ridership gain brought to this system in July by stadium access, about 2.6% of the total for the month. 

As another example of stadium game day attendance boosting ridership, two Sundays in November 2010 with Seahawks games came in at 16,989 and 17,333, while non-game Sundays had ridership of 11,762 and 10,089.  The difference shows that Seahawks football bring about 6,000 extra riders on a day when the team plays at home.

One way of understanding the importance of weekend game day attendance to light rail ridership is to look at the relationship between the average weekday ridership and total annual ridership, a number called the annualization factor. In its forecasting work, Sound Transit expected this annualization factor to be 304. The agency forecast 26,600 average weekday ridership in 2010 and multiplied by 304 to reach the annual forecast of 8.1 million.  Instead, Sound Transit experienced 7 million annual riders with a weekday average ridership of 21,000. You have to multiply 21,000 by 333 to get a 7 million annual number. This means that Sound Transit light rail so far has had a greater reliance on weekend riders than expected.

For the 2011 revised forecast, Sound Transit had 8.3 million annual riders equivalent to 25,000 per weekday average.  The ratio implies an annualization factor of 332, which means the agency is learning from and embracing its real world ridership experience. The 2012 budget forecast for Seattle light rail is 8.4 million annual riders equivalent to 25,455 per weekday average, revealing an annualization factor of 330, coming down a bit but still way above 304 because weekend ridership is so important.

All train rides were free over a year ago on the opening weekend July 18-19, 2009, and the ridership estimate counted by hand for these first two days of light rail was 92,397, with a machine count of 66,792. These two free days -- with boarding levels similar to the 45,000 per day forecast for 2020 even if further line extensions were not completed by then -- are not included on the charts.  Regular adult fares are $2.00 to $2.75, depending on distance traveled, up by 25 cents as of June 1, an increase that was expected to dampen ridership by 1.2%, according to the Sound Transit analysis results from 2010 posted here. Passenger loads during the opening fare-free weekend showed Seattle's light rail certainly has the capacity to deal with the original 45,000 forecast ridership in a day.

The pie chart shown next provides a comparison of Link Light Rail ridership for its best month of 2010 with the ridership for other modes in the same month, July 2010. King County Metro clearly dominates the transit patronage picture. The comparison is somewhat unfair, because light rail and most other rail services run on a single line, while the Metro Bus network covers all of urbanized King County. On the other hand, the $2.5 billion Sound Transit capital expenditure over a decade to construct and buy vehicles and equipment for the light rail line has vastly exceeded the approximately $100 million per year capital expenditure for Metro Bus equipment and facilities over a comparable time period.  Coming soon, an update of this chart to cover July 2011.

The next chart shows how monthly light rail ridership in Seattle evolved in its first months of life compared to ridership on the Tacoma Link streetcar and the South Lake Union streetcar. As one can see, Central Link light rail carries far more people than the streetcar lines shown, and is also showing very wide variations from month to month. The summer tourist surge is visible on the graph line for the Seattle streetcar of the present day (green line to the right), as well as on the former waterfront trolley car, now discontinued (green line to the left).  Coming soon, an additional year of data.

The blue line on the last chart below shows non-holiday weekday ridership day by day on Central Link light rail since July 2010. Friday is often the best day for weekday ridership.

Counting only normal weekdays shows less variation than when weekends and holidays are included. Most light rail riders are people commuting to work, and thus there is a focus by Sound Transit and Federal Transit Administration on weekday ridership. The red line on the weekday ridership chart shows a 15 day moving average -- amounting to three weeks -- that smoothes out the daily fluctuations and allows detection of up or down trends in the weekday ridership. 

26,600 is the weekday daily average that Sound Transit in late 2009 expected to reach and maintain during 2010. That number was met and exceeded on 11 separate days between June 18 and September 3 in 2010, and then again on the three snow days, November 22 to 24. The weekday daily average measured monthly peaked out in July at 24,145.  The weekday daily average fell the rest of the year, reaching 20,968 in December. The average weekday ridership for all of 2010 was 21,026, which is 21% below the forecast. 

The revised weekday average forecast for all of 2011 was 25,000.  For the 255 weekdays of 2011, the ridership achieved averaged 23,535. In reviewing the year, we see that March 2011 was the start of the seasonal upturn that was seen to begin earlier in 2010. The ridership growth trend flattened somewhat during July and August, but a new moving average high of 26,970 was reached on August 18, 2011. September saw fewer weekday boardings than August, and October came in below the 25,000 weekday target, not surprising based on 2010 experience. The moving average continued downward in November and early December, with an uptick around Christmas weekend, probably reflecting holiday travelers in and out of Airport Station.

In 2012 the expected weekday average is set in the approved budget as 25,455, to be shown on future versions of the above weekday chart.

In considering the weekday ridership, note that rail ridership on a new line in any U.S. city typically rises within 18 months to its ultimate level until more stations are opened or the line is extended. William Millar, head of the American Public Transportation Association, noted this pattern in an interview in 2009, reported by the P-I. Tacoma Link, open since 2003, illustrates this reaching of a plateau in the previous chart, red line. As noted earlier, the 2020 forecast -- ultimate ridership -- for the Airport to Downtown segment in Seattle -- considered by itself separately from future extensions -- was 45,000 average daily boardings per weekday. The Sound Transit trend line noted earlier appears to reach 36,000 in 2020, but PITF's reading of the numbers leads us to believe that for Central Link the ultimate ridership prior to its extensions north and south may be settling in at around half of the original 45,000 forecast. Oscillation between 20,000 and 27,000 average per weekday is what PITF believe seems likely until the next two stations open for service in 2016. This has been the case since May 2010 through the end of 2011.