On a glo­ri­ous spring Fri­day, a lit­tle extra excite­ment was to be had aboard Link light rail last week as rid­ers com­plet­ed their rou­tine after­noon tran­sit journeys.

At eight sta­tions (SoDo, Sta­di­um, Inter­na­tion­al District/Chinatown, Pio­neer Square, Uni­ver­si­ty Street, West­lake, Capi­tol Hill, Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton) rid­ers who hap­pened to be on a plat­form at vary­ing points between 1 and 2 PM Pacif­ic were greet­ed by a three-car light rail vehi­cle (LRV) coat­ed with Sound Tran­sit’s famil­iar teal-and-navy wave liv­ery, just like any oth­er Friday.

Yet once aboard, they could see that this was a dif­fer­ent kind of Link train. It was new­er. It was roomi­er. Much brighter. There were many more bike racks.

And lots of cam­eras cap­tur­ing the moment. The first of many big upgrades to light rail ser­vice in the Puget Sound region had arrived.

Sound Tran­sit offi­cials, joined by mem­bers of the media and a few Link rid­ers, enjoy the first trip of a Siemens S700 in rev­enue ser­vice (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Mem­bers of the media and Sound Tran­sit offi­cials were among the pas­sen­gers that a three car con­sist of Siemens S700 light rail vehi­cles car­ried north­bound towards the cur­rent Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton terminus.

This was the first time a Siemens S700 Series 2 LRV, seen below, had been in “rev­enue ser­vice” — jar­gon for tran­sit ser­vice open to the gen­er­al public.

A close­up view of the Siemens S700 that was the first LRV of its type to enter rev­enue ser­vice (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Since 2009, when Link opened to the pub­lic, rid­ers have board­ed one of six­ty-two Kink­isharyo light rail vehi­cles to trans­port them to their destination.

With unprece­dent­ed sys­tem expan­sion on the hori­zon, Sound Tran­sit has ordered a total of 152 new Series 2 LRVs, to be deliv­ered over the next few years.

The Siemens rolling stock will slow­ly replace the Series 1 Kink­isharyo vehi­cles as they are deliv­ered. For now, rid­ers will be served by both types of vehicles.

With the net­work poised to expand rapid­ly in the com­ing months, the agency has unveiled its next gen­er­a­tion of vehi­cles just in time.

The Siemens S700 LRVs fea­ture over­head elec­tron­ic sig­nage sim­i­lar to what rid­ers of the Seat­tle Street­car are used to, dis­play­ing the pre­vi­ous stop, the cur­rent stop, and the next two stops, as well as which side to exit from when the train is at a sta­tion (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

On Octo­ber 2nd, 2021, Link will extend from its cur­rent ter­mi­nus at Husky Sta­di­um to North­gate Mall.

And before the end of 2024, Lines 1 and 2 of the Link light rail sys­tem will con­nect Down­town Seat­tle to Lyn­nwood, Red­mond, and Fed­er­al Way.

By that point, the net­work will near­ly triple in length — which is why the agency need­ed to rough­ly triple the size of its light rail fleet.

Sound Tran­sit Board Chair Kent Keel address­es the media before the debut of the Siemens S700 in rev­enue ser­vice (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Siemens has deliv­ered forty-one Series 2 LRVs to Sound Tran­sit already. They are stored and main­tained at the Oper­a­tions and Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty (OMF) between SoDo and Bea­con Hill sta­tions in Seattle.

A new Oper­a­tions and Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty in Belle­vue’s Spring Dis­trict is also most­ly com­plete. It has the capac­i­ty to store up to nine­ty-six LRVs, serv­ing Line 2 (Red­mond-Down­town-Lyn­nwood).

For its inau­gur­al ride, this Siemens S700 took on VIP pas­sen­gers at Sound Tran­sit’s Oper­a­tions and Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty, then made stops at SoDo, Sta­di­um, Inter­na­tion­al District/Chinatown, Pio­neer Square, Uni­ver­si­ty Street, West­lake, Capi­tol Hill, and Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The Siemens vehi­cles were assem­bled in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia. They have been test­ed exten­sive­ly along exist­ing and future track­age; the first vehi­cle has accu­mu­lat­ed more than 1,000 miles since its deliv­ery in June 2019.

The Siemens S700 vehi­cles are roomi­er than their Kink­isharyo coun­ter­parts, espe­cial­ly in the mid­dle seg­ment, where a rid­er’s dog was able to set­tle down com­fort­ably dur­ing the ride from West­lake to Capi­tol Hill (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

That first vehi­cle was exhib­it­ed to the press at a mini open-house in June of 2019.

A dri­ver’s seat view out the front win­dow of a Siemens S700, tak­en from a LRV parked in Sound Tran­sit’s Oper­a­tions and Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

The excite­ment sur­round­ing the Series 2 vehi­cles gives us a taste of what is to come. Our light rail sys­tem will triple in length.

For many com­muters, car jour­neys will become much less appeal­ing when high qual­i­ty, high capac­i­ty rail tran­sit becomes available.

After return­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, the Siemens S700 LRV car­ry­ing Sound Tran­sit offi­cials and mem­bers of the media smooth­ly rolled back to its depar­ture point at the Oper­a­tions & Main­te­nance Facil­i­ty (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

New tran­sit-ori­ent­ed devel­op­ments will enable more peo­ple to struc­ture their lives around tran­sit infra­struc­ture in a way bus ser­vice does not ade­quate­ly incentivize.

And even if your cur­rent jour­ney will not be served by light rail, every­body ben­e­fits from hav­ing less traf­fic on the roads. As our region grad­u­al­ly moves past the acute health emer­gency the pan­dem­ic has cre­at­ed, how we get around our region will be fun­da­men­tal­ly trans­formed for the bet­ter. With respect to mobil­i­ty in our region, there will be no going back to what we pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered normal.