A major day of progress for Sound Transit

Near­ly six years to the day after Cen­tral Link opened to the pub­lic, crews work­ing on behalf of Sound Tran­sit have fin­ished two major phas­es of con­struc­tion on forth­com­ing bad­ly-need­ed exten­sions of our light rail system.

In SeaT­ac, Angle Lake Link got one step clos­er to com­ple­tion with the hoist­ing of the last thir­ty-five ton con­crete seg­ments for the ele­vat­ed guide­way, which extends the tracks south from the air­port and towards a new ter­mi­nus at South 200th Street. The sta­tion there will host a large park and ride with 1,050 park­ing stalls.

“Fin­ish­ing the guide­way moves us one step clos­er to extend­ing light rail to the Angle Lake com­mu­ni­ty,” said Sound Tran­sit Board Chair and King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine. “By next fall, Link rid­ers will be able to board one stop south of the air­port and ride con­ges­tion-free all the way to the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.”

Sound Tran­sit is cur­rent­ly test­ing trains on the Uni­ver­si­ty Link exten­sion, which will link West­lake Cen­ter with Husky Sta­di­um via Capi­tol Hill. U‑Link is all under­ground and will offer reli­able trans­porta­tion between two of the city’s dens­est neigh­bor­hoods no mat­ter what the weath­er or traf­fic. It opens next year.

Like Uni­ver­si­ty Link, Angle Lake Link is under bud­get (by $20 mil­lion) and ahead of sched­ule. The total price tag for the exten­sion is $383 mil­lion. Work has gone smooth­ly and the sta­tion should be open by the fall of 2016… just in time for the pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, when Puget Sound vot­ers will be like­ly be giv­en the chance to approve financ­ing for Link’s fur­ther expan­sion north, south, and east.

“When light rail reach­es South 200th Street next year, thou­sands of folks in South King Coun­ty will have access to job cen­ters and oth­er des­ti­na­tions,” said Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber and King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Dave Upthe­grove. “We appre­ci­ate the part­ner­ship of the Port of Seat­tle, the City of SeaT­ac, and the state Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion as project con­struc­tion continues.”

Mean­while, north of the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict, the tun­nel bor­ing machine Pamela broke through to the shaft that will even­tu­al­ly house the Roo­sevelt sta­tion. I was onsite ear­li­er today to watch crews at work, and it was a won­der­ful sight to see.

Crews were clear­ly excit­ed about the big accom­plish­ment, as you can see here:

Here’s a clos­er view of Pamela:

“Our sec­ond North­gate Link tun­nel machine has reached the Roo­sevelt Sta­tion, halfway from the North Por­tal to the U Dis­trict,” said Constantine.

“This keeps Sound Tran­sit right on sched­ule to get the dig­ging done by mid-2016 and North­gate Link in oper­a­tion by 2021.”

Watch Pamela break though by play­ing the video above.

Pame­la’s com­pan­ion tun­nel bor­ing machine Bren­da already fin­ished dig­ging the oth­er North­gate-to-Roo­sevelt tun­nel (break­through was in March), and is present­ly head­ing towards the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

Pamela will do like­wise after it is refur­bished in the shaft.

By 2018, North Link tun­nel­ing should be com­plete, set­ting the stage for inau­gu­ra­tion of ser­vice to North­gate in 2021.

Some facts about the TBMs from Sound Transit:

• Each tun­nel bor­ing machine weighs six hun­dred tons and is more than three hun­dred feet long with trail­ing gear
• The cut­ter­heads (the rotat­ing faces of the machine that bore under­ground) are twen­ty one and half feet in diameter
• By the time tun­nel­ing is fin­ished, more than 500,000 cubic yards of soil will have been exca­vat­ed and over 7,200 con­crete rings used to line the tunnels

The North­gate seg­ments have a total cost of $2.1 billion.

Traf­fic between North­gate and down­town Seat­tle tends to be bru­tal dur­ing rush hour, and slug­gish even dur­ing oth­er times of the day, so Link’s arrival there will be a huge bless­ing for the region, offer­ing a much-need­ed alter­na­tive to Inter­state 5.

It’s too bad it won’t open soon­er, but build­ing rail infra­struc­ture (par­tic­u­lar­ly under­ground rail infra­struc­ture) takes time.

We had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to start build­ing a rail spine for Puget Sound in the 1960s with For­ward Thrust, and we chose not to. We’re still liv­ing with the con­se­quences of that deci­sion today. Thank­ful­ly, we’ve learned from that mistake.

Tonight, the NPI team will raise glass­es in a toast to Sound Tran­sit’s most recent suc­cess­es. May there be many more in the months and years ahead. Our region needs Link light rail extend­ed in all direc­tions with­out delay. Every new seg­ment and sta­tion that Sound Tran­sit gets built will put reli­able rapid tran­sit with­in the reach of more Wash­ing­to­ni­ans, adding to the val­ue of the exist­ing system.