Link Boardings Exceed All Other ST Services Combined

photo by SounderBruce / flickr

Link Light Rail continues to knock down milestones rapidly as ridership grows.

• January-March was the first quarter in which Link had more boardings than all Washington State Ferries combined. However, WSF outpaced Link for the second quarter (April-June) with 6,470,781 boardings to Link's 5,997,005 for the same period.
• May was the first month in which Link had over 2 million boardings. Matt managed to bury the lead on that one.
• In June, Link had more boardings than the rest of Sound Transit services combined, for the first time ever, 2,113,450 to 2,070,377. Given the smaller area from which Link draws, this is a testament to the power of frequent, legible, congestion-free transit.

If Link were its own transit agency, it would have been the fifth-highest ridership agency in the state before UW Station and Capitol Hill Station opened. Now, it is well on its way to becoming the second-highest ridership agency in the state, if counted separately from the rest of ST.

Link has had a clear supermajority of weekend ST boardings since those stations opened. On weekdays, it has also moved well ahead of ST Express on boardings, but has a ways to go before becoming ST's weekday majority ridership carrier. For June, ST Express had 65,719 average weekday boardings (a slight decrease from 2016). Link had 76,954 average weekday boardings, up a whopping 18.5% since 2016, well beyond whatever bump Angle Lake Station has provided. ST average weekday boardings in June were 163,053.