As many people worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of the region’s park-and-ride stalls sat empty. Before the pandemic, about 76% of park-and-ride spaces were full. In 2020 that number tumbled to 24%.
PSRC looked at the changes in the use of these lots for a recent Puget Sound Trend.
As the chart below illustrates vividly, park-and-ride use plummeted to the lowest levels we’ve seen since we started tracking this data nearly two decades ago.
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The number of park-and-ride lots grew slightly last year. Link light rail construction has caused some shuffling in parking areas over the last couple of years. Four King County lots that were closed in 2019 for light rail construction were brought back in 2020, and two interim lots were added in Snohomish as part of the East Link project.
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Trends in Transit Ridership
Since park-and-rides are used mostly by transit riders, we also looked at changes in transit ridership using WSDOT’s handy transit dashboard.
Overall, ridership in the region was down 58% compared with the base year (March 2019 to February 2020).
After taking a nosedive at the beginning of the pandemic, transit ridership numbers have improved slightly. In March 2021, Community Transit, King County Metro, and Kitsap Transit started seeing upticks in ridership. Sound Transit and Pierce Transit have not seen ridership go up since the precipitous drops in March 2020.
WSDOT is still collecting data on how transit use has changed since the pandemic started—and how much ridership will change as more of the population is fully vaccinated.
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There’s more analysis of park-and-ride and transit changes in the latest Puget Sound Trend. Or view the data with PSRC’s new park-and-ride dashboard.
When more workplaces fully open, it’s likely that park-and-ride lots will start filling up again as more people follow more traditional commute patterns, at least a few days a week. PSRC will continue to track trends in transit ridership and share information when it’s available.