Transit ridership in the Puget Sound region dropped 10.5% between 2015 and 2025, even as funding for the system grew from roughly $2.6 billion to over $4.7 billion, according to a new report published by the Washington Policy Center. The analysis examines multiple measures of transit performance and concludes that the region's massive investment in light rail isn't delivering the hoped-for results. Only Sound Transit showed an increase in total boardings among the five Puget Sound transit agencies, but most of that gain came from former Metro and Community Transit customers whose bus routes were eliminated or shortened to connect with rail stations.
The decline looks even steeper when measured by passenger-miles, which captures both the number of riders and the distance they travel while avoiding double-counting transfers. All transit agencies in the Puget Sound region reported fewer passenger-miles in 2024 than in 2015. Sound Transit saw a 9% decrease despite opening major light rail extensions to the University District, Northgate, Angle Lake, and between Bellevue and Redmond. Metro's passenger-miles fell 45%. Overall, total transit passenger-miles in the region dropped 31% from 2015 to 2024, a period when the region's population grew by more than half a million residents—about 14%. Transit mode share, which measures the percentage of daily trips taken on public transportation, has also declined. Transit accounted for roughly 4% of trips Puget Sound residents took in 2014, but that figure has now fallen to less than 3% of all trips. Light rail, the region's largest transportation investment by far, carries less than 1% of trips in the region.
The report finds that Metro lost nearly twice as many riders as Sound Transit gained, suggesting that building the light rail extensions in the revised ST3 plan is unlikely to increase total transit ridership very much. According to the analysis, the net increase attributable to light rail, if there is any, will likely be very small. The Puget Sound Regional Council forecasts transit mode share will rise only slightly to 4.7% by 2050, but the report notes the region isn't on track to achieve even that modest increase. In the optimistic forecast, which assumes full build-out of the ST3 plan, light rail still only accounts for a 2% mode share despite an investment estimated at over $150 billion.
Part of the ridership drop can be traced to COVID-19 and the reduction in downtown Seattle employment, the report says, but it also reflects the shift of bus riders to light rail. When longer Metro and Community Transit routes were truncated, riders who previously made a trip with one boarding now have to transfer, inflating total boarding counts even when the actual number of customers hasn't increased. This distortion makes total boardings a less reliable measure when the regional system is undergoing major change. The report notes that Sound Transit's recent "enterprise initiative" to revise the ST3 plan gave no attention to the serious implications of these trends for the increasingly costly light rail plan.
The report concludes that the ridership trend, no matter how it's measured, should concern transit agency board members and regional policy makers at the Puget Sound Regional Council. The data clearly shows the region's massive transit investment isn't producing the hoped-for results and isn't addressing the region's growing need for mobility. So far, no agency has stepped up to answer the question of how the 98% of regional trips that aren't on light rail will be accommodated on a transportation system already straining under current traffic volume.