Seattle Transit Ridership is a tool for learning how transit routes in Puget Sound are used. Since 2011, Seattle Transit Blog has shared a detailed look into the ridership patterns of various King County Metro, Sound Transit, and Community Transit routes. While the Blog will continue to publish these articles, it cannot cover every route. Seattle Transit Ridership will share the detailed data for all routes available. This tool is not affiliated with the City of Seattle nor a transit agency.
Stops are listed on the left axis; passenger counts along the bottom. For each color-coded time period, the bars represent how
many people got on or off the bus at each stop. Centered on zero, the right-hand bar shows boardings as positive passenger count
and the left-hand bar shows de-boardings as negative passenger count. The dots represent how people were on the bus when it
departed the stop. From these data, we can see where along the route the bus is busiest, where riders are mostly getting on or off,
and where most riders are simply passing through.
Each plot will have up to 5 values per stop, one per time of day: morning (“AM”; 5am to 9am), midday (“MID”; 9am to 3pm),
evening (“PM”, 3pm to 7pm), late evening (“XEV”; 7pm to 10pm), and overnight (“XNT”; 10pm to 5am). Some stops will not have data
for all time periods. This can occur when a route only runs during peak hours or if the route uses slightly modified paths based
on time of day.
The data are split into “inbound” and “outbound” directions. This is a direction value determined by the agency. For most routes, inbound
trips travel towards the primary destination (eg: downtown Seattle or UW). In the plots shared for each route, inbound trips travel
from top to bottom, while outbound trips travel from bottom to top.
The charts displayed for each route are interactive. Simply hover the cursor over a part of the graph to see the specific value. If the
lines are too small to read, click and drag over a second of the plot to zoom in. The graphing library, Plotly, offers additional tools
in the top right corner of each chart.
Initially, most King County Metro and some Sound Transit routes will be supported. Seattle Transit Ridership can only share the ridership data for routes that use vehicles equiped with Automatic Passenger Counters (APC). We are working to add support for other transit agencies in Puget Sound.
A service change is the period of time between changes in a transit agency's network. King County Metro typically has three service changes per year. Their Spring service change is between March and June, the Summer service change is between June and September, and the Fall service change is between September and the following March. The agency may add, remove, or revise routes between service changes. Information on Metro's current service change is available here.
Some routes are through-routed with others. This means the bus changes routes in the middle of its trip, usually before passing through the main destination. For example, northbound Route 14 trips switch to Route 1 at 12th Ave & Jackson St, meaning these trips run south through downtown as Route 1. In the reverse direction, southbound Route 1 trips switch to Route 14 at 3rd Ave & Cedar St and travel south through downtown as Route 14. As a result, passengers on the bus when the route switches are counted as passengers on the new route. Examples of this practice in King County Metro's network include routes 1/14, 2/13, 5/21, 24+33/124, 28/131+132, 45/75, and 65/67.
Many transit agencies track ridership using Automatic Passenger Counters (APC) in their vehicles. Although there is potential for error with APC data, the large number of trips over the duration of a service change absorbs the impact of one-off errors or missing values.
Yes. The charts can be downloaded as a .png image by clicking the camera icon on the top right of the graph. For commericial uses, please credit the plot to Seattle Transit Blog and make a generous donation to one (or more) of the incredible local media or advocacy organizations below.
Thank you for helping make Seattle Transit Ridership better. Please share issues and feature requests as a Github Issue or send me a message on Bluesky.