Yes­ter­day after­noon, as rays of sun­light broke through the cloudy skies above our region, Sound Tran­sit invit­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of region­al and local media out­lets to join agency lead­er­ship for a spe­cial Uni­ver­si­ty Link light rail pre­view ride and tour of the new Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and Capi­tol Hill stations.

Uni­ver­si­ty Link opens to the pub­lic this Sat­ur­day, March 19th, at 10 AM, six months ahead of sched­ule and two hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars under bud­get. It is a vital, much-antic­i­pat­ed north­ward expan­sion of Cen­tral Link, which cur­rent­ly con­nects West­lake Cen­ter to Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port in Seatac.

The entire seg­ment runs under­ground, like the sub­ways of New York, Boston, D.C., or Philadel­phia, and is there­fore not sus­cep­ti­ble to get­ting stuck in traffic.

Rid­ing Uni­ver­si­ty Link is an incred­i­ble expe­ri­ence. The sta­tions are beau­ti­ful and thought­ful­ly designed, from the entrances to the mez­za­nines to the plat­forms. The pub­lic art you’ll see is mes­mer­iz­ing. But the best part of all is being able to step onto a train and zoom between neigh­bor­hoods in the span of just a few minutes.

Going from the UW to Capi­tol Hill in three hun­dred sec­onds, bypass­ing all the traf­fic con­ges­tion above ground, is quite the sen­sa­tion. It’s nev­er been pos­si­ble before now due to our lack of a sub­way. Above ground, you can walk, bike, take a bus, hail a taxi­cab, or sum­mon a rideshar­ing ser­vice to get between neighborhoods.

But you can’t get between Capi­tol Hill and the UW cam­pus in four min­utes on any of those modes. Espe­cial­ly not at rush hour, as writ­ing staff of The Stranger dis­cov­ered in Octo­ber of 2014 when eight of them com­pet­ed with each oth­er to go from the week­ly’s offices on Capi­tol Hill to the Col­lege Inn.

A Link light rail train exits a tun­nel, enter­ing the Capi­tol Hill Sta­tion (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Uni­ver­si­ty Link is going to fun­da­men­tal­ly reshape mobil­i­ty in Seat­tle and beyond. The addi­tion of these new sta­tions will like­ly result in a huge rid­er­ship boom. A week after open­ing day, Metro and Sound Tran­sit will intro­duce revised bus rout­ing to pro­vide bet­ter con­nec­tions with the new stations.

There will be new routes, too, like the 541, which will run between Red­mond’s Over­lake neigh­bor­hood and the new Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Station.

Uni­ver­si­ty Link is going to sim­pli­fy get­ting around for a lot of Seat­tleites and vis­i­tors to Seat­tle. It means more one seat rides for more peo­ple, and sim­pler trips for still oth­ers. For instance, a Rainier Val­ley res­i­dent who wants to get to a Huskies game at Hec Ed or Husky Sta­di­um can now get there using their own two feet and the train. A prospec­tive vis­i­tor to the UW cam­pus can use Link to get from the air­port or Amtrak to a hotel and to cam­pus, so as not to have to both­er with a car.

Get­ting this sys­tem built was­n’t easy. Sound Tran­sit had to over­come a lot of hos­til­i­ty and cyn­i­cism, as I explained to KING5’s Josh Green for his sto­ry on the pre­view ride. The agency dug itself into a hole in its ear­ly years due to project mis­man­age­ment and became a tar­get of Tim Eyman. For­tu­nate­ly, Sound Tran­sit’s board found the per­fect per­son to turn every­thing around: Joni Earl.

Joni has now been suc­ceed­ed as Sound Tran­sit CEO Peter Rogoff, but she remains involved as CEO Emer­i­tus. Rogoff pays trib­ute to her at pret­ty much every oppor­tu­ni­ty, which is appro­pri­ate, since it was her lead­er­ship that trans­formed Sound Tran­sit into the high per­form­ing agency it is today.

ST’s recent track record of suc­cess has most­ly silenced the naysay­ers of yes­ter­year, who used to con­stant­ly trash light rail as a bad investment.

Occa­sion­al­ly, a crit­ic will pop up and com­plain that the sys­tem should have already been built out to North­gate by now. These same anti-rail crit­ics are the ones who vocif­er­ous­ly argued that Link should be can­celed alto­geth­er back at the turn of the cen­tu­ry, when Sound Tran­sit con­ced­ed it need­ed to restart its plan­ning process.

It’s worth keep­ing in mind that had those crit­ics got­ten their way, light rail nev­er would have been built at all. Link would have suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate to that of For­ward Thrust. We’d still have an all “rub­ber tire” tran­sit sys­tem run­ning on roads, and we’d be lament­ing our fail­ure to invest in a rail spine to com­ple­ment our bus net­work and pro­vide reli­able trans­porta­tion through our con­gest­ed corridors.

Thank­ful­ly, wis­er heads pre­vailed and ensured that Cen­tral Link got built. That was fol­lowed by Air­port Link. Now we have Uni­ver­si­ty Link open­ing, which is a huge mile­stone, and that’ll be fol­lowed by Angle Lake Link lat­er this year.

Fed­er­al assis­tance secured by Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray was cru­cial in mak­ing Link a real­i­ty. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment stepped up to pro­vide most of the mon­ey for Uni­ver­si­ty Link, and is very hap­py with its invest­ment. (U.S. Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Antho­ny Foxx will be here Fri­day to help ded­i­cate the new extension.)

If you would like to try out Uni­ver­si­ty Link for your­self, you may do so begin­ning Sat­ur­day morn­ing, when the new exten­sion will be open to the pub­lic. Lead­ing up to that, Sound Tran­sit has spe­cial launch and com­mem­o­ra­tion events planned. We will bring you exten­sive cov­er­age of those events as we cel­e­brate the inau­gu­ra­tion of ser­vice to our region’s two newest light rail stations.