Good after­noon from SeaT­ac! Near­ly eight years ago, I had the great priv­i­lege of join­ing fel­low activists, elect­ed lead­ers, and media for a pre­view ride on Sound Tran­sit’s Link light rail sys­tem, which at the time was under­go­ing test­ing in prepa­ra­tion for its grand open­ing nine months later.

Today, Sound Tran­sit has once again invit­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of NPI to par­tic­i­pate in a pre­view ride — this time from SeaTac/Airport Sta­tion to the brand new Angle Lake Sta­tion, which will become the new south­ern ter­mi­nus of our grow­ing light rail sys­tem when it opens for busi­ness this Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24th.

Though we stepped aboard the train only moments ago, we’re already almost at our des­ti­na­tion — it takes almost no time at all to glide between SeaTac/Airport and Angle Lake. Once we detrain, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine and King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Dave Upthe­grove will offer brief remarks at the new sta­tion, and then we’ll board a north­bound train to return to SeaTac/Airport.

This post will be updat­ed as this spe­cial event progresses.

Locat­ed at South 200th Street and 28th Avenue South in SeaT­ac, Angle Lake Sta­tion is an ele­vat­ed sta­tion, sim­i­lar to SeaTac/Airport and Tuk­wila Inter­na­tion­al Boule­vard Sta­tions. Unlike those sta­tions, how­ev­er, it was designed as a true park and ride to help entice south coun­ty auto­mo­bile own­ers to try out light rail.

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

The sta­tion garage can accom­mo­date more than a thou­sand vehi­cles, and there are even more park­ing stalls locat­ed on the sur­face around the station.

Because Angle Lake is an ele­vat­ed sta­tion, we have the abil­i­ty to live­blog from Link again, just like we did all those years ago when Sound Tran­sit invit­ed us to try out Cen­tral Link (and lat­er, Air­port Link) before it was open. We weren’t able to live­blog the Uni­ver­si­ty Link pre­view ride back in March pri­or to Open­ing Day because that seg­ment of the line is all under­ground and did not have cel­lu­lar con­nec­tiv­i­ty at the time (it does now) but we did pub­lish pho­tos imme­di­ate­ly afterwards.

UPDATE: We detrained and were treat­ed to brief remarks on the sta­tion plat­form by Coun­cilmem­ber Upthe­grove and Exec­u­tive Con­stan­tine. Upthe­grove says his days of reg­u­lar­ly fight­ing traf­fic on I‑5 are over. Start­ing on Mon­day, he’ll be com­mut­ing to and from down­town Seat­tle using the new Angle Lake Station.

Con­stan­tine tout­ed the ear­ly project deliv­ery date and stressed the impor­tance of fur­ther sys­tem expan­sion with ST3, which is on the autumn ballot.

After fin­ish­ing their remarks, Upthe­grove, Con­stan­tine, and Sound Tran­sit CEO Peter Rogoff took ques­tions from reporters.

Media were giv­en an oppor­tu­ni­ty to walk around the sta­tion plat­form a bit, then we board­ed a train for the return jour­ney to SeaTac/Airport Sta­tion. As men­tioned, it’s a quick trip. The moment we pulled up to the SeaTac/Airport plat­form, our train went into ser­vice and became a reg­u­lar train to Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton Station.

As we exit­ed, we got some fun­ny looks from bemused rid­ers who were not expect­ing the train that was pulling up to have any peo­ple on it. After this week­end, though, SeaTac/Airport Sta­tion will cease to be the south­ern ter­mi­nus of the line, and that dis­tinc­tion will pass to Angle Lake for the next few years.

A num­ber of high qual­i­ty pho­tos from today’s pre­view ride and sta­tion walk­a­bout have been post­ed to In Brief for your view­ing enjoy­ment.