Sound Transit opens East Link / 2 Line to high interest and enthusiastic ridership

Light rail has final­ly arrived on the Eastside!

Six­teen years of plan­ning, design, con­struct­ing, and test­ing came to an end today as thou­sands of peo­ple flocked to the East­side’s eight new 2 Line sta­tions to try out a new way to get around Red­mond and Belle­vue. Trains opened their doors to rid­ers a lit­tle before noon, after about a one hour speak­ing pro­gram at the Belle­vue Down­town Sta­tion’s plaza that fea­tured Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, U.S. Sen­a­tors Pat­ty Mur­ray and Maria Cantwell, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from key part­ners, and King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci. The turnout was tru­ly impres­sive — a hap­py sight for tran­sit advocates. 

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the crowd hop­ing to get on one of the two inau­gur­al trains was enor­mous. I suc­cess­ful­ly board­ed the very first train to Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy Sta­tion and was pleased to do so in the com­pa­ny of Coun­cilmem­bers Gir­may Zahi­lay and Osman Salahud­din of the King Coun­ty Coun­cil and Red­mond City Coun­cil, respectively. 

We have Coun­cilmem­ber Bal­duc­ci to thank, more than any­one else, for today’s grand open­ing. From her seat on the Sound Tran­sit Board, she sug­gest­ed and pur­sued the idea of open­ing the eight 2 Line sta­tions locat­ed to the east of cross-lake align­ment as a stand­alone “starter line” so that peo­ple on the East­side could start using the Link light rail they’ve been pay­ing for since the pas­sage of the ST2 sys­tem expan­sion propo­si­tion in 2008. The 2 Line does­n’t con­nect to the 1 Line yet, but Bal­duc­ci was spot on in per­ceiv­ing that peo­ple would still want to check it out if it could be safe­ly opened to riders. 

Sound Tran­sit tried hard to make the expe­ri­ence wel­com­ing and mem­o­rable, and the response from the pub­lic was over­whelm­ing­ly pos­i­tive. The agency did the following:

• Heav­i­ly staffed every sta­tion, with wel­come ambas­sadors, secu­ri­ty guards, and roam­ing agency lead­er­ship to help with wayfind­ing and ensure peo­ple were safe 
• Part­nered with Microsoft, Ama­zon, local gov­ern­ments, and com­mu­ni­ty groups to have booths and exhibits at every sta­tion, like the Port of Seat­tle firetruck at South Belle­vue Sta­tion, or the mod­el Lego train at Belle­vue Downtown 
• Arranged for sev­er­al sta­tions to have food trucks (i.e. Famous Dav­e’s and Isidro’s Authen­tic Mex­i­can Food) so that hun­gry rid­ers could get a bite to eat
• Pro­vid­ed large poster maps of the 2 Line and cre­at­ed a raf­fle that peo­ple could enter by vis­it­ing every sta­tion and col­lect­ing a series of eight stamps (a lot of peo­ple took up the chal­lenge — I saw a very full raf­fle drum when I stopped at Belle­vue Down­town Sta­tion around 4 PM, the dead­line to turn in entries) 
• Played announce­ments at the new 2 Line sta­tions to let peo­ple near­by know that they’re now open and able to accept riders

A notice­able per­cent­age of Open­ing Day rid­ers were tech work­ers and their fam­i­lies, many sport­ing appar­el embla­zoned with cor­po­rate logos. Some of the biggest names in tech, like Microsoft, Ama­zon, and Meta, have cam­pus­es locat­ed adja­cent to the East­side’s new light rail sta­tions, while oth­ers, like Google, have cam­pus­es that aren’t very far away. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Microsoft and Ama­zon par­tic­i­pat­ed in the speak­ing pro­gram that pre­ced­ed the rib­bon-cut­ting cer­e­mo­ny at Belle­vue Down­town Station. 

For the most part, peo­ple I spoke were either reg­u­lar 1 Line rid­ers or had at least tried the 1 Line out before and were thus famil­iar with get­ting around on light rail and using ORCA. The con­sen­sus on the 2 Line was that it offers a smooth ride, is fast, espe­cial­ly com­pared to Metro’s RapidRide Line B, and pleas­ant to use. (“What a smooth ride” was the top com­ment — I heard it over and over and over again.) 

The new ser­vice saw its biggest crowds from 11 AM — 2 PM. After that, there was still plen­ty of foot traf­fic through the sta­tions and onboard the trains, but it was less con­gest­ed. Reg­u­lar dai­ly rid­er­ship is unlike­ly to be any­thing like what we saw right after the rib­bon cut­ting for a while — there’ll be plen­ty of room for peo­ple com­mut­ing on Mon­day morn­ing. How­ev­er, over time, the sys­tem will see more usage, and once the remain­ing sta­tions open, there could be a rid­er­ship boom. That was the case with the 1 Line: as time went on and the sys­tem expand­ed, reg­u­lar usage went up, up, and up. 

It is won­der­ful to have reached this mile­stone. Almost six­teen years after the peo­ple of urban and sub­ur­ban Puget Sound vot­ed to autho­rize a sec­ond set of cap­i­tal projects through the Sound Tran­sit Phase II sys­tem expan­sion propo­si­tion, trains are now car­ry­ing rid­ers in between neigh­bor­hoods on the East­side. It’s a big moment for Belle­vue and Red­mond and their sib­ling cities east of Lake Washington. 

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Sound Tran­sit on pulling off the logis­ti­cal­ly com­plex grand open­ing, and cheers to every­one who turned out! The 2 Line runs every ten min­utes between 5:10 AM and 9:52 PM dai­ly if you’d like to try it out and haven’t got­ten a chance to yet.