Jan 2016 ST Ridership – Rumors of a growth slowdown are greatly exaggerated.
January's Link weekday ridership was 15.6% higher than the year before. In the last 4 months (Oct 15 - Jan 16) Link has averaged 13.9% growth.
It's becoming quite apparent that the October 2014 to September 2015 'slowdown' (for the first time ever Link wasn't growing by double digits) was in fact simply a reaction to the massive growth rate of the prior year. From October 2013 to September 2014, Link grew an incredible 15.9%. A significant portion of that was likely due to the Mariners having a great season boosting weekday ridership on game days. When the Mariners quickly returned to form the next year those 'lost riders' partially masked the sustained steady growth of Link that was still chugging along underneath. Link has now returned to its regular double digit growth.
January's Link Weekday/Saturday/Sunday average boardings were 34,956 / 21,237 / 19,472, growth of 15.6%, -1.3%, and 3.4% respectively over January 2015. Sounder's weekday boardings were up 16%. Tacoma Link's weekday ridership decreased 3.7%. Weekday ST Express ridership was up 2.4%. System wide weekday boardings were up 7.6%, and all boardings were up 2.4%. The complete January Ridership Summary is here.
My charts and some commentary below the fold.
Someone asked me what the 12 month moving average is, so I realized I've never really gone into what some of my charts mean. The 12 month moving average is the average of the last twelve months' weekday ridership. So for instance the 12 month moving average for January 2016 is the weekday ridership average of all the months from February 2015 through January 2016. With ridership being so seasonal its what I came up with to see real trends over time.This is something new, the same 12 month moving average data but sliced into years. Is it helpful?
This chart is just plotting out the difference between one 12 month moving average and the one from the year proceeding it. For example the 12 month weekday ridership moving average for the months of February 2013 through January 2014 was 33,234 riders. The 12 month weekday ridership moving average for the months of February 2014 through January 2015 was 35,998 riders. That's a difference (or growth) of 2,764 daily riders.