Sound Transit’s Link light rail system turns ten today: Relive the magic of opening weekend

One. Decade.

That’s how long Sound Tran­sit’s rev­o­lu­tion­ary, high capac­i­ty Link light rail sys­tem has been in oper­a­tion and car­ry­ing rid­ers, as of today.

It was a beau­ti­ful, sun­ny sum­mer morn­ing on July 18th, 2009, when then Seat­tle May­or Greg Nick­els and then Tuk­wila May­or Jim Hag­ger­ton cut the rib­bon to inau­gu­rate ser­vice between West­lake Cen­ter and Tuk­wila Inter­na­tion­al Boule­vard at the Mount Bak­er Sta­tion. Flanked by elect­ed lead­ers from across the region, they declared that a trans­porta­tion rev­o­lu­tion in Puget Sound had begun.

And indeed, it had.

In ten years, Link has seen over 134 mil­lion board­ings. Rid­er­ship has increased  from an aver­age of just over 15,000 week­day board­ings to about 77,000 now.

“In the past ten years, more and more rid­ers in the region have learned that Link is a depend­able option to arrive at their des­ti­na­tion,” said Sound Tran­sit Board Chair and Red­mond May­or John Mar­chione in a Sound Tran­sit press release.

“I want to thank the mil­lions of rid­ers who have made Link so suc­cess­ful and the vot­ers in our region who con­tin­ue to sup­port the expan­sion of the system.”

“Because of Link, rid­ers have been spared count­less hours sit­ting in ever-wors­en­ing traf­fic,” said Sound Tran­sit CEO and for­mer FTA Admin­is­tra­tor Peter Rogoff, who suc­ceed­ed Lynn Allen Award hon­oree Joni Earl as Sound Tran­sit’s leader.

“Link’s tenth anniver­sary comes at a time when we are expand­ing the net­work to the North, South and East. By the time Link’s fif­teenth anniver­sary comes around, we expect that more than twice as many rid­ers as we have today will have dis­cov­ered the advan­tages of fast, effec­tive light rail.”

Here at NPI, the open­ing of Link light rail was a water­shed event that was cov­ered live at inter­vals over the course of forty-eight hours, begin­ning with the pre­view events on Fri­day and con­clud­ing with the end of free rides on Sunday.

• Fri­day, July 17, 2009 
  • LIVE from Link: Let the cel­e­bra­tion begin!
  • T‑Minus twelve hours and count­ing.… till the open­ing of Sound Tran­sit Cen­tral Link!
• Sat­ur­day, July 18th, 2009 
  • Trav­el Light… The jour­ney begins!
  • Trav­el Light… A few things to keep in mind
  • Trav­el Light… Reac­tions to light rail opening
• Sun­day, July 19th, 2009 
  • Trav­el Light… Link is here to stay

NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense was found­ed in 2002 with the aim of pro­vid­ing vig­or­ous oppo­si­tion to Tim Eyman’s ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry and defend­ing Sound Tran­sit, which at the time was try­ing to obtain fed­er­al fund­ing to begin con­struc­tion of Cen­tral Link. Despite the nar­row pas­sage of Eyman’s I‑776 that autumn, the agency was able to break ground the fol­low­ing year, just a few weeks after NPI was founded.

Eyman had thought that I‑776 would put the kibosh on Cen­tral Link.

When it did­n’t — and when the then Repub­li­can-con­trolled Con­gress and the Bush admin­is­tra­tion approved the pro­vi­sion of fed­er­al funds for Cen­tral Link — Eyman was left utter­ly shocked and con­fused. He had failed, and Sound Tran­sit had won.

Under the lead­er­ship of Joni Earl, Sound Tran­sit deft­ly nav­i­gat­ed around treach­er­ous polit­i­cal and legal obsta­cles (Eyman includ­ed) to get Link light rail back on track and ready for con­struc­tion dur­ing a crit­i­cal two year peri­od stretch­ing from 2001 into 2003. This work cul­mi­nat­ed in a ground­break­ing cer­e­mo­ny held in the Rainier Val­ley in Novem­ber of 2003 with Sound Tran­sit boardmembers.

Light rail con­struc­tion has been con­tin­u­ous­ly under­way ever since.

At the time Cen­tral Link opened, Sound Tran­sit con­trac­tors were already at work extend­ing light rail into SeaT­ac Air­port and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington.

Air­port Link opened in Decem­ber of 2009; U‑Link opened in March of 2016. Angle Lake Link fol­lowed in Sep­tem­ber of 2016. By the time those new­er sta­tions opened, con­struc­tion had begun on fur­ther exten­sions of the Link system.

The next sta­tions to open will be U Dis­trict, Roo­sevelt, and North­gate, all in 2021.

Sound Tran­sit is now almost twen­ty-three years old, hav­ing been estab­lished when vot­ers approved Sound Move in 1996. After spend­ing a few years try­ing to find its way, the agency set­tled into a groove under Joni Earl and began rolling along.

The actu­al build­out of Link has now been going on for twice as long as the peri­od that Sound Tran­sit spent try­ing to get its act together.

When the North­gate sta­tions open in 2021, the Sound Move vision of 1996 will have been real­ized… lat­er than antic­i­pat­ed, but real­ized nonetheless.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Sound Tran­sit and to every­one who uses Link on ten years of light rail. Here’s to anoth­er decade of strong rid­er­ship growth and the lib­er­a­tion of com­muters from grid­locked high­ways and streets.