The Friday 13th Seattle Times ,Traffic Lab article, “Light rail carried over 200,000 riders on Seahawks Super Bowl parade day” began with Sound Transit CEO claiming it set “a local ridership record”. That “light rail riders are tallied by laser devices over the train doors.” That “ neither fare income nor ORCA fare card taps figure into the ridership count”. The likely reason, “almost nobody bought tickets or flashed ORCA cards around noon when crowds poured into Stadium Station, the first wave of people heading home”. Presumably reflecting the lack of fare revenue from the “ridership record”.
Dow Constantine's “ridership record” was another example of a Sound Transit more concerned with the appearance of success during special occasions rather than day-to-day results. The lazer-device results should be readily available. However, the claim for 200,000 riders seems rather “optimistic”.
Sound Transit claims their 74-seat light rail car can accommodate up to 200 riders. Assuming 1 Line train’s normal schedule of 10 minutes between trains, the 6 trains per hour can accommodate 4800 riders. If half the 200,000 riders were inbound and outbound from north of Seattle and half from the south, it would take 20.8 hours to accommodate the 100,000 riders in the two directions.
One can only speculate on why Sound Transit “doesn’t typically share ridership data so quickly”. (Again the lazer results should be readily available.) Their latest “Ridership-Ridership” data available, December, 2025, for the four Federal Way Link and Lynnwood extensions was 7096 and 8539 average weekday riders respectively. Both small fractions of Sound Transit pre-debut projections. While both are influenced by seasonal conditions, the results should influence any future ST3 decision.
The bottom line is future Sound Transit ST3 decisions should be based on available ridership data, not on clearly dubious assumptions.
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