Sound Transit selects contractor to extend Link light rail into south SeaTac

Sound Tran­sit’s board of direc­tors have select­ed a con­trac­tor to expand Link light rail south from Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to the inter­sec­tion of South 200th St and 28th Avenue South, the agency announced today.

PCL Civ­il Con­struc­tors, Inc. has been award­ed a con­tract to bring Link’s south­ern ter­mi­nus into the south­ern part of SeaT­ac, with ser­vice to begin just four years from now, in Sep­tem­ber of 2016. PCL’s bid came in at $169 mil­lion, which is less than the $170 to $190 mil­lion cost Sound Tran­sit had projected.

Over the next four years, PCL will design and build the guide­way for the 1.6 mile exten­sion (which I’m going to call Angle Lake Link for the sake of brevi­ty and clar­i­ty) as well as the sta­tion, which does not yet have a final name. (It will be either South SeaT­ac, S. 200th Street, or Angle Lake; I per­son­al­ly pre­fer Angle Lake).

“After review­ing tech­ni­cal and cost pro­pos­als from four pre­vi­ous­ly-qual­i­fied pro­posers, Sound Tran­sit iden­ti­fied PCL as the high­est rank­ing firm with demon­strat­ed exper­tise in design-build meth­ods,” said Ahmad Fazel, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Design, Engi­neer­ing, and Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment in a news release.

“The impor­tant work PCL and Sound Tran­sit will accom­plish togeth­er will enable the agency to deliv­er the South 200th Link Exten­sion project on an accel­er­at­ed schedule.”

The words accel­er­at­ed sched­ule are an under­state­ment, if you ask me. What Sound Tran­sit has accom­plished over the last year is real­ly sig­nif­i­cant. They’ve moved up the com­ple­tion date for this com­po­nent of Link’s expan­sion from 2020 to 2016. For real. That’s huge. It means that in 2016, Link will be expand­ing in two direc­tions simul­ta­ne­ous­ly — north (to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton) and south (to Angle Lake in SeaT­ac) — adding a total of three new stations.

Plans for the Angle Lake sta­tion call for a park­ing garage with sev­en hun­dred stalls, though that will be built sep­a­rate­ly under a dif­fer­ent con­tract than the agree­ment approved today. Sound Tran­sit is also look­ing at adding sev­er­al hun­dred addi­tion­al park­ing spaces to accom­mo­date peo­ple who want to park and ride.

Here’s an overview of what peo­ple can expect from the new station:

The ele­vat­ed sta­tion will include pas­sen­ger plat­forms with cov­ered wait­ing areas, a trans­fer area for local and rapid ride bus con­nec­tions, ded­i­cat­ed areas for pas­sen­ger pick­up and drop off, and van­pool park­ing. Secured bicy­cle stor­age, street improve­ments to accom­mo­date traf­fic cir­cu­la­tion, bicy­cle and pedes­tri­an access, land­scap­ing and pub­lic art are also ele­ments of the project.

Sounds good. It sounds like the Tuk­wila Inter­na­tion­al Boule­vard Sta­tion, actu­al­ly, which was the south­ern ter­mi­nus of Link for the six months in between open­ing week­end and the com­ple­tion of the air­port exten­sion.

Angle Lake Link will also bring light rail one step clos­er to Fed­er­al Way, whose lead­ers have been upset with Sound Tran­sit ever since the agency dis­closed that the South King sub­area just isn’t gen­er­at­ing enough rev­enue for the agency to expand Link to Fed­er­al Way by 2023 as orig­i­nal­ly planned. Link could still get to Fed­er­al Way with­in the next fif­teen years if mon­ey is found, but at the moment, Sound Tran­sit only has funds for plan­ning work.

Red­mond, NPI’s home­town, is in the same boat. Sound Tran­sit is com­mit­ted to get­ting East Link to Over­lake, but light rail won’t reach down­town Red­mond until more mon­ey is found. The city has incor­po­rat­ed the arrival of light rail into its trans­porta­tion plan­ning so con­struc­tion does­n’t have to be need­less­ly delayed once mon­ey is avail­able. Red­mond is doing its best to be patient; Fed­er­al Way’s elect­ed offi­cials would be wise to fol­low Red­mond’s example.

We encour­age Sound Tran­sit to keep hunt­ing for dol­lars to get light rail to more com­mu­ni­ties. Each new exten­sion boosts rid­er­ship and makes the sys­tem acces­si­ble to more peo­ple. Our region bad­ly needs more light rail and street­cars to give peo­ple trans­porta­tion choic­es so they’re not forced to dri­ve to get around.