Lynnwood Link extension slated to open to the public on August 30th, 2024, Sound Transit announces

Long-await­ed light rail ser­vice to Shore­line, Mount­lake Ter­race, and Lyn­nwood will begin short­ly before Labor Day this year, Sound Tran­sit announced today.

“The 8.5‑mile seg­ment will add four new sta­tions: Shore­line South/148th St., Shore­line North/185th St., Mount­lake Ter­race, and Lyn­nwood City Cen­ter,” agency staff not­ed in a news release. “Dur­ing peak hours, trains will run approx­i­mate­ly every eight minutes.”

“Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit and King Coun­ty Metro have agreed to revise the date for bus ser­vice upgrades and improve­ments orig­i­nal­ly planned to take effect August 31st, the news release went on to say. “Bus changes will instead take place Sep­tem­ber 14th, allow­ing a smooth launch of extend­ed 1 Line ser­vice before bus rout­ing changes occur.”

“Open­ing the 1 Line to Lyn­nwood is a major mile­stone in the growth of light rail,” said King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive and Sound Tran­sit Board Chair Dow Con­stan­tine. (Con­stan­tine also chaired the board when the last sys­tem expan­sion pro­pos­al was on the bal­lot in 2016.)

“For the first time, the light rail sys­tem is join­ing two coun­ties, bring­ing vot­ers’ vision for our region’s inte­grat­ed tran­sit sys­tem one step clos­er to real­i­ty. Thanks to the col­lab­o­ra­tion between our region’s tran­sit agen­cies, we are ready for the start of ser­vice, with increased capac­i­ty for Link rid­ers and a smooth ser­vice tran­si­tion for oth­er riders.”

“The open­ing of light rail to Lyn­nwood will be trans­for­ma­tion­al for Sno­homish Coun­ty,” said Sound Tran­sit Board Vice Chair and Sno­homish Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dave Somers.

“Light rail is essen­tial for sup­port­ing our pro­ject­ed growth in the years to come, allow­ing res­i­dents to trav­el reli­ably, safe­ly, and effi­cient­ly to down­town Seat­tle, Sea-Tac Air­port, and beyond with­out hav­ing to con­tend with high­way traf­fic. This is a game-chang­er. I’m look­ing for­ward to the next phase in Link’s growth in Sno­homish Coun­ty, as we work toward extend­ing ser­vice to Everett.”

(The ST3 Everett exten­sion is not cur­rent­ly antic­i­pat­ed to open to the pub­lic until the end of the 2030s, unfor­tu­nate­ly… more than fif­teen years from now. The Sound Tran­sit Board still has­n’t cho­sen a final align­ment for the Lyn­nwood to Everett segments.)

“The Link light rail extend­ing into Lyn­nwood her­alds the start of a new era for our city and the rest of Sno­homish Coun­ty,” said Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber and Lyn­nwood May­or Chris­tine Frizzell. “Light rail is num­ber one in our list of strate­gic pri­or­i­ties as we ful­fill our Com­mu­ni­ty Vision for a sus­tain­able and vibrant com­mu­ni­ty. We are eager for the day at long last when we can be part of help­ing peo­ple get from where they are to where they want to be through­out the Puget Sound region!”

 “The Biden-Har­ris Admin­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to expand­ing tran­sit across the coun­try, includ­ing the Puget Sound Region,” said FTA Region­al Admin­is­tra­tor Susan Fletcher.

“By open­ing Lyn­nwood Link, Sound Tran­sit takes anoth­er step to ensur­ing that peo­ple through­out Sno­homish Coun­ty and our entire region have access to fast, reli­able trans­porta­tion that avoids high­way con­ges­tion while get­ting them where they need to go safe­ly and effi­cient­ly. FTA is proud to have been a part­ner with Sound Tran­sit in this crit­i­cal project.”

Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, the Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tion announced today that it is pro­vid­ing $20.5 bil­lion in fed­er­al fund­ing to sup­port tran­sit sys­tems and boost com­mu­ni­ties. Puget Sound is one of the metro regions that will be get­ting a slice of that mon­ey. The com­mu­ni­ties receiv­ing the most fund­ing, based on pop­u­la­tion and ser­vice data, include:

• New York-Jer­sey City-Newark, NY-NJ: $2.8 billion
• Chica­go, IL-IN: $765.1 million
• Wash­ing­ton-Arling­ton, DC-VA-MD: $665 million
• Los Ange­les-Long Beach-Ana­heim, CA: $603.4 million
• Boston, MA-NH: $454.9 million
• Philadel­phia, PA-NJ-DE-MD: $448 million
• San Fran­cis­co-Oak­land, CA: $432.4 million
• Mia­mi-Ft Laud­erdale, FL: $272.4 million
• Seat­tle-Taco­ma, WA: $267 million
• Bal­ti­more, MD: $202.8 million

The FTA’s news release does­n’t spec­i­fy which agen­cies will get that mon­ey, but pre­sum­ably Metro and Sound Tran­sit will be among the recipients.

 “Today’s announce­ment is the cul­mi­na­tion of years of com­mit­ment and hard work on the part of Sound Transit’s project team, our con­trac­tors, and the con­struc­tion work­ers,” said Sound Tran­sit CEO Goran Spar­rman, who recent­ly took over from Julie Timm. “They deserve our thanks for main­tain­ing their focus on this project despite the COVID pan­dem­ic and the months-long con­crete strike.”

“I also want to thank our part­ners at King Coun­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit for their ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion in ensur­ing that we will have addi­tion­al train capac­i­ty and tran­sit options for rid­ers when the Lyn­nwood exten­sion opens.”

“Light rail ser­vice reach­ing Lyn­nwood and Mount­lake Ter­race trans­lates direct­ly to more bus ser­vice and bet­ter con­nec­tions for peo­ple all over Sno­homish Coun­ty,” said Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit CEO Ric Ilgen­fritz, a Sound Tran­sit alum.

“Start­ing Sep­tem­ber 14th, we will shift Com­mu­ni­ty Tran­sit resources off I‑5 and rede­ploy more ser­vice local­ly, includ­ing great con­nec­tions to light rail at Lyn­nwood, Mount­lake Ter­race, and Shore­line. Sno­homish Coun­ty res­i­dents can look for­ward to dra­mat­ic improve­ments to both local and region­al trav­el options.”

“We’re excit­ed to trans­form and improve bus ser­vice con­nec­tions for rid­ers as they trav­el between com­mu­ni­ties, the new light rail sta­tions and the new RapidRide G Line,” said King Coun­ty Metro Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Michelle Alli­son. “As the 1 Line expands north­ward, we’re ensur­ing a smooth and suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion for tens of thou­sands of dai­ly rid­ers as they explore the upgrad­ed tran­sit network.”

The Lyn­nwood Link exten­sion con­sists pri­mar­i­ly of aer­i­al seg­ments, mean­ing ele­vat­ed tracks. It stretch­es from North­gate (the cur­rent north­ern ter­mi­nus of the 1 Line) up to Lyn­nwood City Cen­ter, near Inter­state 5’s 196th Avenue exit (Exit 181B).

Here’s a map:

The fol­low­ing sta­tions are part of the exten­sion (descrip­tions cour­tesy of Sound Transit):

• Shore­line South/148th Sta­tion. Locat­ed just north­east of I‑5 at the NE 145th Street exit, the ele­vat­ed Shore­line South/148th Sta­tion includes a park­ing garage with approx­i­mate­ly 500 new spaces as part of the project.
• Shore­line North/185th Sta­tion. Locat­ed on the east side of I‑5, Shore­line North/185th Sta­tion serves Shore­line Sta­di­um, the Shore­line Con­fer­ence Cen­ter and the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hoods. Improved pedes­tri­an path­ways con­nect the sta­tion to the west side of I‑5. A park­ing garage with approx­i­mate­ly 500 new spaces is part of the project.
• Mount­lake Ter­race Sta­tion. Locat­ed east of I‑5 at the Mount­lake Ter­race Tran­sit Cen­ter just north of 236th Street South­west, west of Vet­er­ans Memo­r­i­al Park, the ele­vat­ed Mount­lake Ter­race Sta­tion strad­dles 236th Street South­west and is a short walk from the Mount­lake Ter­race Library, new City Hall, and the future Gate­way tran­sit-ori­ent­ed devel­op­ment neigh­bor­hood. There are 890 exist­ing park­ing spaces at the station.
• Lyn­nwood City Cen­ter. Locat­ed at the Lyn­nwood Tran­sit Cen­ter, this ele­vat­ed sta­tion serves one of the busiest tran­sit cen­ters in the region, with exten­sive con­nec­tions to local and region­al ser­vice. A new garage con­tain­ing 1,670 park­ing stalls in a five-sto­ry struc­ture opened last year.

August 30th, 2024 is a Fri­day — the Fri­day of Labor Day Week­end 2024.

When the 1 Line (Cen­tral Link) ini­tial­ly opened in 2009, Sound Tran­sit offered a week­end of free rides. It is unlike­ly to do so for the Lyn­nwood Link exten­sion since these new sta­tions are being added to a high­ly used exist­ing sys­tem. How­ev­er, there will be cel­e­bra­to­ry activ­i­ties on August 30th and pos­si­bly con­tin­u­ing through the rest of the weekend.

This is the sec­ond light rail open­ing Sound Tran­sit has planned for this year. The first will be the East Link / Line 2 exten­sion, which is set to inau­gu­rate ser­vice on Sat­ur­day, April 27th.

NPI will bring you cov­er­age of both open­ings right here on The Cas­ca­dia Advocate.