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:
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.
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Looks like I just missed you at the downtown Bellevue location. I got there at about 3:45 and left shortly after 4 pm.