WA: Light rail carried over 200K riders on Seahawks Super Bowl parade day
Sound Transit recorded more than 200,000 passengers Wednesday, as fans at the Seahawks victory parade filled railcars and set a local ridership record, according to Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine.
He called it the biggest day in our region's transit history" on social media, and also said Thursday the number is likely to rise as the staff makes a more precise count.
The numbers reflect how fans heeded advice to avoid driving into downtown. Interstate 5 flowed faster than this year's average, as regional drivers bypassed the city or played hooky from work.
If the ridership estimate holds up, the 1 Line would surpass the 160,000 train boardings Sept. 27, when the Huskies football team hosted then-No. 1 Ohio State, the Los Angeles Dodgers visited the Mariners, and Sounders FC played at home against the Vancouver Whitecaps. Before that, 137,000 riders took the 1 Line on July 23, 2023, when a Taylor Swift concert, Mariners game against the Toronto Blue Jays, the Capitol Hill Block Party and Bite of Seattle attracted riders.
Light rail passengers are tallied by laser devices over the train doors. They take a while to be downloaded and analyzed. Neither fare income nor ORCA fare card taps figure into the official ridership count; almost nobody bought tickets or flashed ORCA cards around noon when crowds poured into Stadium Station, the first wave of people heading home.
A count like 200,000 boardings means perhaps 100,000 individuals made one ride downtown and then a second ride home. However, many shuttled across downtown to meet friends or angle for better viewpoints. Students who couldn't squeeze into packed railcars at UW Station made an extra trip backtracking north to Roosevelt or Northgate, looking for room to board.
Sound Transit doesn’t typically share ridership data so quickly. For instance, the agency has declined to share even estimated numbers from January, when drivers first confronted the repaving work on the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge, data that could help illuminate how many people are opting to take transit during the newfound congestion.
As for other transit, Washington State Ferries reported 46,321 passengers Wednesday, or 25% higher than usual this time of year. Kitsap Transit walk-on ferries carried 2,474 passengers into Seattle before the parade began, filling a record 14 of their 16 morning runs, and 1,856 back to Kitsap County in the afternoon.
Sounder commuter rail, which added some late-morning fan trains, served about 20,000 boardings, triple an ordinary day, Constantine said.
King County Metro, which rerouted many buses to avoid downtown, is still compiling ridership data, and had nothing yet to share.
Constantine praised light rail staff and security teams, who managed to reunite a child lost at Symphony Station with their parents, who wound up at Westlake Station. "Thank you to everyone, and to our passengers, who approached the day with joyous attitudes and made it fun for everyone.
The largely successful day did include a couple of snafus. A copper-wire theft halted trips between Federal Way and Angle Lake during the 5 a.m. hour, while a suspicious-looking box prompted officials to temporarily close Lynnwood City Center Station before 5 p.m.
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