Washington State Ferries ridership, July 2026
Washington State Ferries carried 2,317,416 passengers in July 2026, up 0.6% from a year earlier. The system swings hard with the season — from 522,473 in April 2020 to 2,803,031 in August 2002 — so the year-over-year figure is the one that means anything.
It is the largest ferry system in the United States and, unlike every other service charted here, it is simultaneously a commuter railway and a tourist attraction: the winter floor is people going to work on Bainbridge and Vashon, and the summer peak is everyone else. That is what makes the seasonal amplitude worth watching in its own right — a summer that runs below the usual multiple of its winter is a tourism signal, not a commuting one.
The constraint on this system is increasingly boats and crews rather than demand: sailings have been cancelled or reduced in recent years for vessel availability and staffing, and a cancelled sailing shows up here as fewer riders. Read a fall as service before reading it as demand. Boardings, not journeys; not seasonally adjusted.
Source: Federal Transit Administration, National Transit Database monthly module, Washington State Ferries unlinked passenger trips. Auto-generated each build.