As many of you all learned last week, Sound Transit is facing significant cost projections for its Sound Transit 3 projects. Over the next few months, the Sound Transit Board will have to have some hard conversations about the future of light rail expansion in our region. Whether that means deferring projects, station consolidation, or pulling existing levers to find revenue, there is a lot to unpack. The Sound Transit Board will need to make tough decisions on what projects to prioritize, as well as ways to cut costs to deliver the projects promised to voters.
Transportation Choices Coalition (TCC), along with community partners, have organized a series of town halls across the region to help educate the public on what is happening with Sound Transit. These events will feature Sound Transit board members and staff – the folks who make decisions about the future of light rail – answering questions in a structured format. The events are open to all.
On the same day the March service change will go into effect. King County Metro, Sound Transit, and Community Transit will change some of their routes on Saturday. Pierce Transit will follow on Sunday. Metro has a list of route changes and which Link stations they will serve.
Also on Saturday there’s a large No Kings march, and the Mariners opening weekend. Here’s the total large events list:
9am: Crosslake Link speeches and ribbon cutting, Sam Smith Park at Judkins Park station.
10am: Crosslake Link service and the full 2 Line start.
10am-2pm: Crosslake Link celebrations at several stations. (Schedule link above.)
12pm-4pm: No Kings march from Cal Anderson Park at Capitol Hill station.
6:40pm: Mariners first pitch at T-Mobile Stadium near Stadium and CID stations.
To get to Judkins Park station for the speeches before Crosslake service starts, Sound Transit will have shuttle buses running from South Bellevue and Mount Baker stations from 7-10am every 15 minutes. The City of Seattle has a page on getting to Judkins Park station from the surrounding neighborhoods and bus routes. Seattle residents have Metro routes 4, 7, 8, 48, and 106. Route 7 comes from downtown every 10-12 minutes. Route 4 also comes from downtown but is half-hourly and the stop is a few blocks further away on MLK. Route 8 will be on its service-change alignment so it will stop on 23rd at the station.
Go early in case the trains are full and you have to wait a couple trains to get on. From past experience full trains are most likely:
10am-12pm Crosslake (CID through Bellevue Downtown) for the Link opening.
`10am-11am Eastside (South Bellevue through Redmond) for the Link opening.
11am-1:30pm Capitol Hill (U-District through downtown) for No Kings.
3-5pm downtown for going home from No Kings.
5:30-7pm Stadium (starting in the U-District, Eastside, and south Seattle) for the Mariners.
I don’t want to overstate the problem. In the first and last half hour you’re likely to be able to get on the first train but you may have to wait for the second. At the height of it you may be able to get on but you’ll likely have to wait one or more trains within a couple stations of the target. The crowds could be as expected or they could be larger. And tens of thousands of people will want to board Link at Judkins Park after the ribbon-cutting and VIP ride.
Over-the-shoulder shot of the operator cab in the Mount Baker tunnel (Nathan Dickey)
Yesterday, Seattle Transit Blog writers had the opportunity to join local media outlets to tour the highly anticipated 2 Line cross-lake connection, which is the final piece that will fully unify both the 1 and 2 Lines as it was envisioned in ST2. The connection will fully open to the public this Saturday, March 28th with ribbon-cutting at 9am and revenue service starting around 10am.
The media preview started at South Bellevue Station, which has already been open for Eastside-only revenue service since Spring of 2024. Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine opened his welcoming remarks with a lofty prediction: Saturday’s opening is expected to be the “biggest” in Sound Transit history. Longtime board member and King County councilmember Claudia Balducci followed up by highlighting East Link’s long history, both as a “political project” in Bellevue as well as its technical challenges.
According to Craig Delalla, director of engineering and operations at Sound Transit, the agency is well prepared for the opening given the many learnings from simulated 2 Line service. Delalla also noted that revenue service will see a mix of 2 and 3-car consists, with 3-car sets more reliably going out during peak periods.
When did you start riding public transit independently? Were there certain pivotal trips that made you more of a transit enthusiast and shaped your viewpoint? What’s the youngest people you see now taking transit independently? The full 2 Line opens tomorrow, which many be a similar pivot point for many people. That makes it a good time to reflect on how we all got into transit.
I started riding Metro in 7th grade in 1979 when I chose to go to an alternative junior high school on the other side of Bellevue that didn’t have school buses. At first my parents drove me and I was afraid to take the bus because I’d never been on public transit before. Would I be able to reach the stop cord and activate it, or would the bus sail past my stop? After several months, I took Metro home from school, and saw how easy it was and and other people from my school were taking it. I started taking it to school every day. My first trip to Seattle was to the Record Library (a record-rental shop) at Broadway & Denny. Then I started taking it to the downtown library, and the U-District for its used record shops and bookstores and friends who hung out there.
The Sound Transit Board just voted to pass the ST Express 2026 restructure, which will be implemented this fall. There are little or no changes from the last proposal. The vote was unanimous.
Until then the ST Express routes will remain unchanged, even though Crosslake Link will open in two days and Federal Way Link opened last December. ST says this is to provide “resiliency” through the World Cup period. I take this to mean if Link breaks down or gets overcrowded during the World Cup, these routes will remain as a backup, and the routes are widely known so residents can help visitors find them and tell them when they run.
There was extensive public testimony at the beginning of the board meeting, though most of it wasn’t about ST Express. The meeting livestream should be on ST’s YouTube channel within a couple days. I listened to bits of the testimony: most of what I heard was advocating for ST3 Link extensions not to be dropped, and there were a few ST Express comments.
We have reservations about parts of the restructure, missed opportunities for further restructuring, and the way public input was handled. The online survey had no text field to suggest changes to other routes or other alternatives for these routes. I sent my feedback in an email to ST, but most people wouldn’t think of that or get around to it or realize other changes were even possible.
On Monday, the Move All Seattle Sustainably (MASS) Coalition published an open letter calling on Mayor Wilson to advance high-impact transportation, accessibility, livability, and climate priorities. Seattle Transit Blog is a proud member of the MASS Coalition, and we endorse this letter. It reads:
Dear Mayor Wilson,
We, the MASS (Move All Seattle Sustainably) Coalition, write to request your administration take action on a set of high-impact, near-term actions that respond to public priorities and accelerate visible results for city residents, while preserving capacity for longer-term reforms.
Your recent electoral victory creates a historic mandate and an opportunity to translate progressive campaign commitments into real results for Seattle. Your leadership—built through years of grassroots organizing and coalition‐building, and long record as a transit advocate provide the momentum and responsibility to act swiftly on the transit and sustainability priorities you have espoused. Indeed, you co-founded the MASS Coalition in 2018 to connect Seattle’s diverse and vibrant neighborhoods, minimize reliance on private vehicles, achieve Vision Zero, make Seattle carbon-neutral, create walkable communities, and ensure equitable access to transportation for all people. As such, our coalition has a duty to call on you to pursue tangible progress on expanded service, equity‐centered planning, and durable funding strategies during your first year in office, when visible well‐executed actions will reinforce the core values of your platform and build political capital for deeper reforms.
The highly anticipated full East Link extension will open this Saturday, March 28, finally connecting the Eastside to Seattle and the rest of the metro area. Two new stations will open at the same time, Judkins Park and Mercer Island stations.
The Mercer Island light rail station, located in the median of I-90 just north of the city’s Town Center, will help connect Mercer Island residents to Seattle, Bellevue, and the wider metro area.
A view of a Link light rail test train on the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge with Mount Rainier in the background. (Bruce Englehardt / CC-BY-SA 4.0)
Sound Transit’s 2 Line light rail service will carry it’s first passengers across Lake Washington in just a few days. Puget Sound residents have long envisioned a passenger rail connection between Seattle and the Eastside. In 1968 and 1970, voters failed to approve Forward Thrust rapid transit propositions. Less than a decade later, work began on what would eventually be the Crosslake Connection opening on Saturday.
Essential Groundwork: 1976-1993
In December 1976, a Memorandum Agreement was signed that outlined the construction of an “improved I-90 facility between I-405 and I-5”. The agreement, signed by Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue, King County, Metro Transit, and the Washington State Highway Commission, outlined a new I-90 roadway that should include reversible lanes dedicated for buses, carpools, and Mercer Island residents. The document also stated the new “facility shall be designed and constructed so that conversion of all or part of the transit roadway to fixed guideway is possible”. This language was optimistic at the time, but vital a few decades later.
