The 25 is probably the most infrequent bus to run through Capitol Hill during daylight hours, and is also very likely the one with the best views of Lake Union and the Olympic mountains.

Never heard of the 25? It runs between downtown and northeast Seattle, and it takes a meandering route between there and Eastlake Avenue via Lakeview Boulevard and very north Capitol Hill. It runs every hour, until early evening, 12 times per weekday.

With only 8 trips per day, the 25 doesn’t have a very high ridership, only about 25 people per trip will hop on for any amount of time along its route. This low ridership makes it an easy target for Metro in their upcoming restructure proposals: Alternative 1, which Bus Stop wrote about last month, would delete the 25 entirely and Alternative 2, a more modest restructure idea, would split it in two with a separate bus route continuing between the U District and Laurelhurst.

“Who rides the 25?” was the question I set about to answer on an afternoon this week, heading into rush hour.

The bulk of ridership appears to be between Children’s Hospital and the University District, but Bus Stop did run into a rider boarding the 25 along Lakeview Boulevard. Brandon, a house painter by trade, was finishing up a job on the Hill and checked his phone for the fastest bus to get him down to SoDo, to watch the NFL draft with some friends. The once-an-hour timing of the 25 just happened to work with his schedule, so off he went.

If the same house needs painting next year, he might need a different bus. Whether the edge of Capitol Hill the 25 serves will be worse off is a harder question to answer.