This morning, a gaggle of elected glad handers and reporters piled onboard a Sound Transit light-rail train for the first complete preview trip from the bus tunnel in downtown Seattle to the Tukwila station. Mayor Greg Nickels served as our tour director:
There were some weird issues with the sound system. We heard Nickels as he spoke into a microphone, then over the loud speaker in the front car, and then again from the rear car—making him sound, as Jonah puts it, like the Great and Powerful Oz… “It’s a test run, so unexpected things should be expected… expected… expected…” Nickels echoed.
Beginning July 18, the train will run from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. on weekdays, with slightly restricted hours on weekends, arriving every ten minutes. “I am very proud. I am busting,” said Nickels on the ride back. And again, he said, “I am busting.” But it wasn’t an echo the second time.
The train controls traffic lights along MLK, Jr Way, says Larry Phillips, county council member and Sound Transit board member. “Not 100 percent of the time,” he says, “but most of the time the train gets the right of way.” But that could be a mixed blessing: “People aren’t used to trains in Seattle,” says Nickels. “This is a very quiet train. If kids don’t look both ways, things will not be good.” When Nickels isn’t speaking, it is quiet. The train ride is generally smooth—until you’re moving swiftly with traffic parallel to the freeway, and then it wobbles a bit. The train also jerks when accelerating out of stations.
Three Sounds Transit board members on the train—Nickels and county council members Phillips and Dow Constantine—talked about how long they’ve worked on the light rail and how thrilled they are that it’s finally here. Phillips recalled how voters rejected the Forward Thrust ballot measure in the autumn of 1812.
Here’s the tunnel heading to the Beacon Hill station, 170 feet below the surface of the earth. It’s decorated with “poly-carbon underwater life forms,” says Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray.
More after the jump.
This is public art in the Tukwila station. Jonah… couldn’t stop talking about it.
The Basics: By December, the tracks will reach the airport (in the meantime, a shuttle bus will finish the connection from the Tukwila station). Fares range from $1.75 to $2.50, depending on how far you travel.
The Analysis: Light rail has arrived. And it is fucking great.
Two teensy criticisms: There’s nowhere to put a bike without blocking an entrance, an aisle, or the handicapped seating. (UPDATE: Sound Transit’s Gray emails me to say there are hooks to hang your bike. However, at the risk of sounding like a pessimist, I doubt riders will realize they can hang their bikes, they won’t want to lift their bikes, and, if they do lift them, moving bikes around people’s heads on a moving train sounds frankly dangerous.) The Tukwila station is surrounded by nothing. Considering the potential for economic and housing development around the light-rail stops, this location—surrounded by freeway overpasses and a hill—misses an opportunity.
A question: What will we call this thing? Sound Transit Link Light Rain makes a fun acronym (STLLR). Stellar! Catching the “light rail” sounds gay. Nickels proposed that people call it the “Link.” Which is kinda gay and kinda Zelda-y, which is kinda cool. Do we call it “the train”? “I think people are going to say that ‘I’m going to catch the train,’” says Sound Transit’s Gray.
What’s next: Phillips thinks that Sound Transit should build the next link extension on the Eastside, connecting Auburn to Woodinville. Phillips, who is running for King County Executive, says, “That is appealing to voters on the Eastside.”
@48
Yeah CM’ers, why not cork the track? That would be aaaaaawe-some!
Hiawatha line- 12 miles 17 stations – Groundbreaking for the line took place on January 17, 2001. Regular service began on the first phase of the line on June 26, 2004, with the second phase opening later that year on December 4.
The line’s cost is expected to total $715 million, with $424 million coming from the federal government.
“Fares range from $1.75 to $2.50, depending on how far you travel.”
Lots of people are going to be confused (at least initially) by the fare aspect. Especially in the tunnel and transferring to/from buses.
two words: fucking. sweet.
This was a really neat preview, Dominic. I find this really encouraging and can’t wait for the rollout in July.
I think we’ve all been calling it Link and/or Light Rail for a while. I’ve been calling it Link, so I figured we were just going to call it Link.
@53: Right, in open cuts, flat land and railway ROWs. Sounds pretty easy to me.
@ 35
Wrong. Tukwila DESPERATELY wanted light rail to reach the Mall. In fact, Tukwila city council delayed light rail and wouldn’t approve of the plans until ST agreed to have the train go to Southcenter.
But the $300m extra cost and the extra 7 minutes it’d take to get the mall didn’t fare well with ST or any other non-Tukwila politicians. So Tukwila Intl BLVD station was a “compromise.”
So no hatin’ on Tukwila for a sucky station. It’s not their fault. They’re now demanding that Southcenter somehow be connected with a future link line.
They dug more tunnel mileage than we did for our first 14 miles. We already had the bus tunnel and most of the route is on flat land. They also built 17 stations while we only added about 8.
There are two stretches where tunnels are used on the line. A short tunnel parallel to Hiawatha Avenue travels under Minnehaha Parkway just north of the 50th Street station. At the airport, twin tunnels (one each for the northbound and southbound trains) go underground for 1.7 miles (2.7 km) to reach the Lindbergh Terminal station, the only stop that is totally underground—70 feet (20 m) below the surface. Trains return to the surface as they near Humphrey Terminal. Some of the sections under the airport required the use of a tunnel boring machine.
I do believe the walkway for Link leads directly to Skybridge 3 or 4. Either way, it would be in-between the terminals whilst the buses are on the far south of the International terminals. Walking time will be basically the same. It’s took me a good 5-10 minutes to walk to the Alaska Airlines check in from the 194 stop but it also took me 5 minutes just to get off the bus.
ST estimated it will be about 3-5 minutes (depending on age I suppose?) to walk from the train to the “middle of the terminal”
@58 – Your correct! There was at one time a proposal for a streetcar that would run from Burien Transit Center to Tukwila Sounder Station. It must’ve died though as there hasn’t been anything said about it in ages.
@45: NYC is not (totally) unique-
The Hamburg, Germany U-bahn (subways) run through the night on Friday & Saturday nights. They started this (every 20/30-min) service two or three years ago, and it is VERY well-used. So much better than the night buses I used to have to take.
In the daytime it is rare to wait more than 3 minutes….
@3 @51 I thought I was the only one. I don’t think the noise is ‘unbelievably’ loud, it is more noise than I expected with the light rail. I’ve been living near the VA for more than 15 years now and have learned to tune out the airplanes flying overhead and the sometimes extra loud Metro buses running along MLK. I’m near the Cheasty Greenspace and so there aren’t a lot of houses between me and the rail. The noise certainly travels up the hill, much like the noise from Seattle Center carries up to Capitol Hill and especially Queen Anne on certain nights. I’m hoping that the noise of the light rail will fade for me like the planes did, however the noise is more high pitched and therefore draws attention to itself. sigh. life in the city I guess.
so many comments…first of which is why did it take seattle over a decade to build something that portland did in less than half that time? secondly, why would you run the first one to rainier beach and not the airport? thirdly, i am totally with the shitty after hours transit in this city, the buses and public transit stop running regularly around 1am. So how does that help those of us who work in or frequent bars but dont want to drive drunk? theres a lot of cool things about seattle but the public transit is retarded!
Look, I don’t Nickels either but that picture just isn’t fair.
@24 @35 I think the benefit of having a large Tukwila station with a bunch of parking lots around it is getting people off the interstate there and taking Link rather than driving into downtown.
@46 SODO Station has a ton of cora bike racks. Maybe six or eight of them. You are definitely supposed to take your bikes to the station and leave them there, this increases the area that each station can serve.
http://www.soundtransit.org/documents/pd…
Using the handicapped spaces for bikes is a great idea – if a handicapped person needs it then you can lift it up to the hanging racks or just get off and catch the next train a few minutes later.
Dominic, if you ever use a picture of Nickels close to the word “bursting” again I will personally come down there and see that Savage licks you like a Gary Bauer doorknob.
Secondly, the art Jonah can’t seem to start talking about looks like Prince William’s testicles descending into the crown. Or maybe the Queen’s.
One of the worst things about the train in Boston was that it stopped at 12:45am, making it useless if you needed to get home from a bar or club at night. I was hoping Seattle would be a little better than that, and at least run the train until 2:30 or 3am on the weekends.
If they can do it in Cleveland, they ought to be able to do it here.
At least in Boston, I always thought the “maintenance” idea was just a cover for them not wanting different socio-economic groups moving easily between different parts of the city late at night.
@68: I figure it’s because they don’t want to be constantly cleaning up puke in and around the trains.
@69
Yeah. Cleaning up guts on the freeway is easier.
NYC built the subway with extra track, such that they can shut down an entire track at a time for work and have a buffer *and* keep running trains. They’re one of the only places in the world with that much capacity.
While LINK has passing tracks in various places, most of its length is just two tracks, making it very difficult if not impossible to run all-night service.
Why would anyone on the northside ever use this train? I mean I know we all paid for it, but it’s not like I’m gonna want to take a run down the Rainier Valley like some kind of human gangsta safari.
Did you fail to notice all the apartments down the hill from the Tukwila(Seatac) station? Also, beyond the pancake chef (which is across the street-ish – max one city-block walk away) are about three thousand houses within walking distance of the station. I don’t live close enough to walk, I’m afraid, but others do at least.
Link beats 194 hands down even with the walk, which is good for all of us!!
Level boarding beats the bus – you can roll your suitcase onto Link instead of hauling it up the bus steps, and best of all, LINK is air conditioned!
Accident on I-5, no problem, you’ll get to view it from LINK.
Yawn….the reason the train stops running from 1AM to 5AM is for those of us, where the train barrels through @ 55 MPH, can get 4 hours of sleep…OK?
Now gd’nite…