Everett Transit Ridership & Service

Transit is a Department of the
City of Everett

Everett Transit is a municipally owned and operated transit system of the City of Everett. It provides both fixed-route (bus) and paratransit services. 
The Mayor is the Chief Executive Officer of the City. The Everett Municipal Code gives the Mayor authority to modify service and adjust schedules. The Everett City Council has the authority to establish fares and recommend tax rates, subject to voter approval. 
A volunteer citizen advisory board, the Transportation Advisory Committee (TAC), provides input and advisory direction to city staff and administration for transit service and other transportation-related matters.
Learn more about Everett Transit's history here: History | Everett Transit, WA - Official Website. 

Planning for Future Service

Everett Transit adopted its Long Range Plan in 2018, which serves as the guiding document for service for the next 20 years, in order to accommodate future population and job growth in Everett and plan for the resources needed to provide that service.
The long range plan aligns with the Transportation Element of the City's Comprehensive Plan, along with Puget Sound Regional Council's Regional Transportation Plan. 
Everett Transit also produces an annual report and a five-year outlook, which is a Washington state requirement. The Transit Development Plan aligns current resources and short-term outlook with the long range plan. 

2023 Ridership Overview

In 2023, Everett Transit's buses provided an average of 110,800 rides a month, for a total of 1,329,885. Annual ridership increased by more than 30% from 2022.  Routes 7 and 29 combined still account for over 70% of our ridership. (If you hover over the graph lines below, you will see the ridership details for each month in 2022, by route, and the percentage that route carried of the total for the month.)
Everett Para Transit provided an average of 5,500 rides a month, for a total of 66,885 for the year (up 4% from 2022). Paratransit is the on-demand, door-to-door service available for customers with disabilities and seniors.

5 Year History - Bus Monthly Ridership

Bus ridership in 2018 totaled 1.8 million, dipping to 800,000 during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
In 2022 ridership started to recover, seeing a 25% increase over 2021, with a continuous upward trend in 2023.
Everett Transit has been adding back the service hours reduced during the pandemic, and in June 2023, service will return to the pre-pandemic levels of 2019, though not necessarily on the same routes. Along with reinstated frequency on popular existing routes, some service hours added take note of the post-pandemic ridership trends and demand, and include new service, such as Route 19, serving Everett Station and Everett Community College via Colby Ave. 

5 Year History - Paratransit Monthly Ridership

Ridership on Everett Para Transit follows the bus service trends, though not at the same rate. In 2018, the monthly average was about 10,700 boardings, with a low in 2020-2021, and then slowly recovering in 2022, up to 5,700 rides in January 2023. 

Everett Transit in the Regional Context

Transit agencies are required to submit an annual report to the Federal Transit Administration, and their data is available on the National Transit Database (NTD) website. The following three graphs use that data to show how Everett Transit compares with its peers in the region in terms of ridership (boardings), amount of service provided (revenue hours) and productivity (boardings per revenue hour).

Of note, the primary revenue source for transit is sales tax revenue, and each agency has a different percentage of sales tax in their area of service, as approved by voters in their jurisdiction. Everett Transit collects six tenths of one percent of the sales tax within Everett - 60 cents on a $100 purchase. 
The service area population size for each agency also varies:
  • Community Transit                                613,289
  • Everett Transit                                        110,629
  • Pierce Transit                                          575,963
  • Skagit Transit                                          116,627
  • Whatcom Transportation Authority   225,928

Regional Bus Annual Ridership - 10 Year History

Regional Bus Annual Revenue Hours - 10 Year History

Revenue hours are defined by NTD as service hours (when the bus is on a particular route) plus layover/recovery time. Ideally, we would look primarily at service hours, since this is the actual time provided by agencies to the public on various routes. Though agencies do provide that data to their customers in various forms, the data is not consistently available. We therefore look at the revenue hours reported to the NTD as a consistent measure of service provided, and then to boardings per revenue hour as a measure of productivity for that service. 

Regional Bus Annual Productivity - 10 Year History

Boardings per revenue hour measure the productivity of service provided.
Even though Everett Transit does not have commuter or bus rapid transit (BRT) services, its post-pandemic productivity is nearly that of agencies that do.  Typically, commuter and BRT services are most productive, since they tend to be directionally limited to peak demand or have 10–12-minute frequency of service on high density arterials. In reporting, agencies show their bus service by type -commuter, BRT, or local.
Since Everett Transit only provides local service, we should keep in mind that the data below looks at total fixed-route service, showing the average productivity of all bus service provided by the different agencies.

Everett Transit System Map 

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