Friday Roundtable: 2025 Ridership Data

Sound Transit Route 550 crossing Lake Washington. Route 550 is the most searched for route on the Seattle Transit Ridership dashboard.

The Seattle Transit Ridership dashboard has been updated to include 2025 ridership data for King County Metro routes and Sound Transit routes operated by Metro. In March 2025, Metro only updated a few routes, mostly with frequency adjustments from Seattle Transit Measure funding. In August 2025, Metro introduced four routes and adjusted various other routes on the Eastside as part of its East Link Connections restructure. Of the new routes (203, 222, 223, and 256), Route 223 had the highest ridership with about 1,000 passengers every weekday.

Average Weekday Ridership per Route 223 Trip: August 2025 to March 2026. Inbound" is toward Downtown Redmond station, Outbound" is toward Eastgate Park & Ride. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.South King County

In South King County, Sound Transit opened the Federal Way Link Extension in December 2025. Metro has not implemented its corresponding South Link Connections restructure yet, those changes will be rolled out in Fall 2026. The FWLE opening was in the middle of the Fall 2025 service change, but it has already made an impact on the ridership patterns for some routes. On the A Line, ridership at stops near Link stations has dropped as some passengers have switched to Link. The A Line stop at 200th St (near Angle Lake station), used to see about 500 weekday boardings on outbound trips. Now about 300 people board outbound trips from this stop each weekday. Ridership patterns for the Federal Way Link Extension were discussed in a previous post.

Average A Line Weekday Boarding and Alighting Counts: August 2025 to March 2026. Inbound" is toward Tukwila International Blvd Station; Outbound" is toward Federal Way Transit Center. Click the plot to view at full-resolution in a new tab.

In south and east King County, the 2025 ridership data represent a snapshot of a rapidly changing transit network. Ridership patterns for all Eastside routes have already changed significantly since the full 2 Line opening in March 2026. The ridership patterns on many more routes will change dramatically in the Fall when King County Metro and Sound Transit implement the rest of their Link restructure updates. We will update the Seattle Transit Ridership dashboard when new ridership data is available. Until then, share any surprising ridership patterns from the 2025 data in the comments below.

This is an open thread.