University Link can get you from the UW to Capitol Hill in about four minutes or less

Sound Transit built University Link with the promise that trains would offer a speedy underground ride between Westlake Center, Capitol Hill, and the University of Washington. Now that U-Link is open to the public to ride, we’ve been timing trains to see how well they do in actual service.

This post will chronicle the results of our tests.

Tests between single stations

• UW to Capitol Hill, southbound: 3 minutes, 47 seconds
• Westlake to Capitol Hill, northbound: 2 minutes, 31 seconds
• Capitol Hill to UW, northbound: 4 minutes, 19 seconds
• Capitol Hill to Westlake, southbound: 2 minutes, 53 seconds

In these tests, the stopwatch was started the moment the doors closed at the station of departure and stopped when the doors opened at the station of arrival.

Tests between the northern and southern terminuses

• UW to SeaTac Airport, southbound: 46 minutes, 34 seconds

Note that the test included time spent on dwells at stations in between, not just the amount of time the trains were in motion.