Metro Update on Ridership Recovery and Service Planning

On May 15, King County Metro staff briefed the County Council's Regional Transit Committee, (presentation pdf download here) focusing on ridership trends and the agency's capacity to return to 100% of planned service.

Ridership Trends

First, the good news: Metro ridership continued to grow across almost all modes between 2022 and 2023; Water Taxi service ridership was similar.

Slide from Metro's Ridership and Service Planning presentation.

Focusing on fixed-route bus service, Metro presented an interesting chart showing how in March 2024, just 20 of the approximately 108 active routes carried half of Metro's bus ridership. The 20 busiest routes were 2, 7, 8, 14, 36, 40, 44, 45, 60, 62, 70, 160, 372, and the A, B, C, D, E, F, and H RapidRide Lines.

Chart of average weekday boardings by route in March 2024.
Note: not all bars are labelled with the corresponding route number.

Metro also demonstrated that while there are still peaks during the typical peak hours (approximately 7 to 9am and 3 to 6pm), increases in ridership between Fall 2021 and Fall 2023 have been relatively similar across the board, with additional ridership increasing fairly consistently (~40%) across all hours of the day.

Chart of change in weekday bus ridership by time of day between Fall 2021 and Fall 2023.
I would be interested in a similar chart for weekend ridership.

Metro's staff report for the presentation notes that ridership recovery has been higher during off-peak than during peak hours, and routes with the smallest ridership declines during the pandemic were generally frequent, all-day routes, routes serving South Seattle and South King County, and RapidRide routes."

Additionally, the report notes that their most recent countywide survey of Metro riders and non-riders indicated that service quality, specifically on-time performance, is the largest barrier to taking transit more often, followed by safety, availability, convenience, and cost."

Operational Capacity

Metro continues to experiencing a labor shortage and vehicle reliability issues impacting their ability to return to 100% of planned service.

Per the presentation, last year Metro operated 83% of the service hours it did in 2019 (a reduction of over 500,000 hours), and ridership in 2023 was 62% of that in 2019. Due to continued headwinds in staffing (both bus operators and mechanics) and vehicle recalls, total service hours in 2023 dropped 4% from 2022.

Metro reported that as of April of this year, they are making good headway on fleet availability and mechanic staffing, but are behind on bus operator workforce.

Per the briefing report:

• Fleet availability is 973 coaches, above the target of 967 (target is 995 coaches available by August 2024)
• Mechanic workforce is 257 full-time equivalents (FTEs), just below the target of 260 FTEs (target is 281 by September 2024)
• Bus operator workforce is 2,222 FTEs, below the target of 3,000 but higher than Metro has experienced since December 2022 (Metro is addressing the shortfall in part through use of overtime, will also be promoting 200 part-time operators to full-time)

Future Services Changes

The briefing report highlighted six mobility projects" identified in the 2023 Service Recovery plan that are in the works: service restructures for the three link extensions (Lynnwood Link, East Link, and Federal Way South" Link), the opening of RapidRide G (Madison BRT) this Fall, integration with Sound Transit's Stride BRT lines along I-405, and a restructure/restoration of service on Vashon Island.

Metro also mentioned it is focused on stabilizing and growing transit service" with projects to improve speed and reliability for several of their busiest routes (namely routes 5, 36, 40, 44, 48, 165, and 181), RapidRide expansions, and considering changes in ridership patterns (less peak travel, more all-day and weekend travel) in their upcoming service changes.