Light rail could be oper­a­tional in NPI’s home­town of Red­mond as ear­ly as next spring under a plan approved yes­ter­day by the Sound Tran­sit Board of Directors.

Tak­ing up a rec­om­men­da­tion from ST’s Sys­tem Expan­sion Com­mit­tee, the Board of Direc­tors autho­rized staff to inau­gu­rate rev­enue ser­vice on an East­side-only por­tion of the East Link exten­sion in 2024, which means trains could be run­ning between Red­mond and Belle­vue (and vice ver­sa) with­in a year.

The East Link exten­sion, approved as part of Sound Tran­sit Phase II in 2008, will con­nect Belle­vue and Red­mond to Mer­cer Island and Seat­tle when com­plete. Defec­tive con­struc­tion on the cross-lake seg­ment (which is neces­si­tat­ing a do-over of some work) prompt­ed the agency to rethink the orig­i­nal open­ing plans.

Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci has cham­pi­oned, with NPI’s sup­port, a “starter line,” to get the Red­mond-to-Belle­vue seg­ments online and car­ry­ing rid­ers soon­er than the time­frame for when the cross-lake track rebuild is expect­ed to be fin­ished. Agency staff were recep­tive and con­clud­ed the idea was feasible.

“Almost exact­ly one year ago, when we first learned that East Link light rail would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly delayed due to work­man­ship issues on the I‑90 bridge, I pro­posed that we open an East­side-only starter line. Today, I was pleased that the Board unan­i­mous­ly decid­ed to approve this plan,” said Bal­duc­ci fol­low­ing the vote.

“This piv­ot from a long-estab­lished plan to adapt to chang­ing cir­cum­stances is a tes­ta­ment to hard work, cre­ativ­i­ty and nim­ble action by agency staff, as well as the over­whelm­ing enthu­si­asm by cities and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers from across the East­side who know how trans­for­ma­tion­al these gen­er­a­tional tran­sit oppor­tu­ni­ties will be and how impor­tant it is to open them as soon as possible.”

“It’s an excit­ing step to con­nect more com­mu­ni­ties via fast, [pollution]-free Link light rail, and open­ing these sta­tions on the East­side is the open­ing act of the 2 Line,” agreeed Sound Tran­sit Board Chair and King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine. “From Red­mond to Belle­vue, peo­ple have a new option to get to work, school, and all the things that make this com­mu­ni­ty spe­cial, and I’m excit­ed to see what’s next when the 2 Line cross­es Lake Wash­ing­ton in 2025.”

The “2 Line” is what East Link will be called by riders.

As a pub­lic works project, it has been known as the East Link exten­sion for the bet­ter part of twen­ty years, but once it is a light rail line, it needs a des­ig­na­tion. After ini­tial­ly plan­ning on using col­ors (“Red Line, Blue Line”) to dis­tin­guish its lines, Sound Tran­sit decid­ed to use num­bers instead. The cur­rent main­line run­ning north/south was dubbed the 1 Line; the Taco­ma Link street­car became the T‑Line, and cross-lake ser­vice will be known as the 2 Line.

“This incred­i­ble accom­plish­ment required sig­nif­i­cant com­mit­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion across the entire Sound Tran­sit Team, with King Coun­ty Metro who hires for and oper­ates our ser­vice, and by our fed­er­al, state, and local part­ners for every required review and approval,” said Sound Tran­sit CEO Julie Timm.

“It was seri­ous­ly hard work to assess and then remove the bar­ri­ers to accel­er­ate open­ing of light rail on the East­side by Spring 2024, and there were many moments where it looked like this would be an impos­si­ble task in the time avail­able to us. I am proud of the team’s unwa­ver­ing ded­i­ca­tion as Sound Tran­sit con­tin­ues to make his­to­ry with the open­ing of each exten­sion con­nect­ing the region through the largest tran­sit expan­sion pro­gram in the country.”

Timm suc­ceed­ed Peter Rogoff as the agen­cy’s chief exec­u­tive last year. She is known for shar­ing pho­tos of her­self and agency employ­ees in action, espe­cial­ly when tour­ing con­struc­tion sites or Sound Tran­sit facilities.

Trains will run between eight sta­tions on the starter line.

These are, from east to west:

1. Red­mond Technology
2. Over­lake Village
3. Bel-Red/130th
4. Spring District/120th
5. Wilbur­ton
6. Belle­vue Downtown
7. East Main
8. South Belle­vue

Here’s a map:

A map of the East Link exten­sion (Graph­ic cre­at­ed by Sound Transit)

This aer­i­al tour, cre­at­ed by NPI, will give you a bird’s eye view of the sta­tions.

And here you can see videos of night­time train test­ing in Belle­vue.

It is pos­si­ble for Sound Tran­sit to run trains on the Red­mond-to-Belle­vue seg­ments despite their (tem­po­rary) iso­la­tion from the rest of the sys­tem because of OMF East. That’s the train yard and main­te­nance facil­i­ty the agency wise­ly con­struct­ed here on the East­side despite reluc­tance and even out­right oppo­si­tion from some peo­ple in Belle­vue, includ­ing city coun­cilmem­bers. OMF East is locat­ed near the Spring Dis­trict; here’s an aer­i­al pho­to tak­en by NPI:

The biggest build­ing in the OMF East com­plex serves as a train garage, with bays where Sound Tran­sit main­te­nance crews can ser­vice light rail vehi­cles from above and below. Note the solar pan­els on the roof. (Pho­to: Andrew Villeneuve/NPI)

Those who fore­saw what an asset OMF East would be — Coun­cilmem­ber Bal­duc­ci includ­ed — can take great sat­is­fac­tion in know­ing that it proved be the key to get­ting Red­mond-to-Belle­vue ser­vice going despite the prob­lems on the cross-lake seg­ment. Sound Tran­sit has been accept­ing deliv­er­ies of new light rail vehi­cles (LRVs) from Siemens for a while now at OMF East.

“Ser­vice on the 2 Line is pro­posed to run with two-car trains every 10 min­utes, 16 hours a day,” the agency said in a news release.

“The final ser­vice lev­el will be approved by the Sound Tran­sit Board as part of the 2024 Ser­vice Plan. This action is expect­ed in October.”

The agency also needs the feds to sign off on the plans.

How­ev­er, if all goes well, we’ll hope­ful­ly be able to cel­e­brate the begin­ning of a new era for mobil­i­ty on the East­side some­time next March.