September Sound Transit Ridership: Summer Hangs On

SounderBruce (Flickr)

Sound Transit released its September ridership numbers yesterday, and it was another impressive month for Link and Sounder. Average weekday Link boardings held steady at 68,358 (+76% YOY), average Saturday boardings were 51,799 (+100%, thanks Huskies!), and average Sunday boardings were 39,919 (+116%, thanks Seahawks!).

As usual, weekday Link ridership dropped slightly from August to September, but September still bested July for Link's second-best month to date. The total drop was a mere 767 weekday riders, or about 1.1%. Last year the August-September drop was 888 (and against a much smaller baseline), or 2.2%. The U-Link extension is flattening Link's traditional seasonal curve, with summer-like numbers extending into autumn. With Angle Lake's first numbers expected next month, October could be another summer-like month.

As ticket-buying tourists were replaced with UPass riding students, Link's farebox recovery fell from 60% to 37%. Sound Transit also says the "timing of outbound payments" affected the large drop as well.

Sounder ridership was up another 6% YOY, with a record-setting 16,261 weekday boardings. As we predicted back in August, the new mid-day service is performing better southbound, with 115 weekday riders on the 10:18am northbound train, and 300 riders on the 2:32pm southbound train. With 2-car trains and 150 seats per car, that means the northbound midday train is 38% full, while on the southbound train every seat is taken. Sound Transit has appropriately right-sized the capacity of the trip so far.

ST Express was up 5.1%, and for the first time in months Tacoma Link ridership didn't fall, instead edging up by 0.2%. Sometime in October, Link likely exceeded total ST Express boardings for the year, despite having nearly 3 months without ULink.