Sound Tran­sit’s newest Link light rail exten­sion will open on Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24th, just thir­ty-one days from now, CEO Peter Rogoff and Board Chair Dow Con­stan­tine announced at a press con­fer­ence this morning.

“Open­ing the Angle Lake Sta­tion marks anoth­er mile­stone in build­ing a vibrant, region­al light rail sys­tem,” said Con­stan­tine. “Trains run­ning every six min­utes will give thou­sands of rid­ers fast, reli­able ser­vice to jobs, schools, and Huskies, Sea­hawks, Sounders and Mariners games.”

The Angle Lake Sta­tion is locat­ed at South 200th Street and 28th Avenue, a lit­tle more than one and a half miles south of the SeaTac/Airport Sta­tion. It is an ele­vat­ed sta­tion, grace­ful­ly loom­ing above the inter­sec­tion. From the sta­tion plat­form, rid­ers will be treat­ed to excel­lent views of Mount Rainier on clear days.

Sound Tran­sit’s Angle Lake Link Light Rail Sta­tion as seen from South 200th Street (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly notable about the sta­tion is that it has been designed as a park and ride, with a mas­sive 1,050 stall park­ing garage and an addi­tion­al sev­en­ty spaces in a sur­face lot. There’s also ded­i­cat­ed space for van­pools to park and bicy­cle lock­ers for bicy­clists, plus a pas­sen­ger pick­up and dropoff area.

The SeaTac/Airport Sta­tion, which has been the south­ern ter­mi­nus of the line since Decem­ber of 2009, when Air­port Link opened, does not have the capac­i­ty for vans, cars, or bikes that Angle Lake will offer. It will be inter­est­ing to see if Sound Tran­sit’s crit­ics will give it any cred­it for hav­ing accel­er­at­ed devel­op­ment and con­struc­tion of a new south­ern ter­mi­nus for Link that has ample park­ing and bicy­cle storage.

For peo­ple liv­ing in the area, the Angle Lake Sta­tion will pro­vide a con­ve­nient con­nec­tion to many des­ti­na­tions: Safe­co Field, Cen­tu­ryLink Field, Husky Sta­di­um, the UW Med­ical Cen­ter, West­lake Cen­ter, the Inter­na­tion­al Dis­trict, Colum­bia City, bars and night­clubs on Capi­tol Hill, and count­less oth­er places with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the oth­er sta­tions served by Cen­tral Link.

Antic­i­pat­ed trav­el times, cour­tesy of Sound Transit:

• To SeaT­ac Air­port: Four minutes
• To West­lake Cen­ter: Forty-one minutes
• To UW Sta­tion at Husky Sta­di­um: Forty-eight minutes

By 2018, the sta­tion is fore­cast to have 5,400 board­ings every weekday.

The art­work at the sta­tion is fab­u­lous. The theme for the art is ele­ments in motion, and one of the cen­ter­pieces is Lau­ra Had­dad’s “Cloud”.

“The sculp­ture, installed on the ele­vat­ed plat­form strad­dling South 200th Street, con­sists of 6,000 hang­ing disks that change appear­ance in response to fluc­tu­a­tions in light, weath­er, or at the approach of a train,” not­ed Sound Tran­sit’s press team in a news release sent to NPI and oth­er media outlets.

Angle Lake Link cost $383 mil­lion to build. The project, part of the Sound Tran­sit 2 pack­age approved in 2008, is $40 mil­lion under bud­get and sched­uled to open four years ear­li­er than planned — a remark­able accom­plish­ment, aid­ed by fed­er­al fund­ing secured by Wash­ing­ton’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor, Pat­ty Murray.

(Those with long mem­o­ries will recall that a light rail sta­tion in this area was promised as part of the Sound Move plan in 1996. That orig­i­nal plan had to scrapped because it was unre­al­is­tic. How­ev­er, Sound Tran­sit has most cer­tain­ly kept its promise to get the sta­tion built as part of ST2.)

Sound Tran­sit’s recent track record (no pun intend­ed) shows it is capa­ble of deliv­er­ing high qual­i­ty tran­sit expan­sion projects on time or ahead of sched­ule and under bud­get. The agency is giv­ing vot­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty this autumn to choose whether to expand Link fur­ther north, south, and east with Sound Tran­sit 3, an ambi­tious pack­age that would also add more express bus and com­muter rail ser­vice. NPI strong­ly sup­ports Sound Tran­sit 3 and urges a “yes” vote.

We’ve pub­lished a num­ber of high qual­i­ty snaps show­ing today’s press event and the new sta­tion to NPI’s In Brief. Take a look and enjoy the pic­tures.

After Angle Lake Link opens, it will many years before we are able to cel­e­brate anoth­er light rail sta­tion open­ing, as U Dis­trict, Roo­sevelt, and North­gate aren’t due to be com­plet­ed until 2021. So, rail­fans, be sure to show up to enjoy the fes­tiv­i­ties as new light rail ser­vice comes online next month!