Light rail trains roll through Bellevue on overhead power during weekend of testing

In a fresh reminder that we are get­ting ever clos­er to the inau­gu­ra­tion of ser­vice on East Link/Line 2, Sound Tran­sit’s first east-west line, the agency this week­end deployed trains on the tracks in between the Spring Dis­trict, Wilbur­ton, and Belle­vue Down­town sta­tions, mark­ing the begin­ning of the test­ing phase of the light rail tran­sit expan­sion that vot­ers autho­rized back in 2008.

On sev­er­al dif­fer­ent nights over the past few days, light rail vehi­cles tra­versed the ele­vat­ed and sur­face lev­el seg­ments that are clos­est to the Belle­vue city cen­ter, includ­ing the one that spans Inter­state 405. Test­ing occurred between 9 PM and 5 AM, when auto and pedes­tri­an traf­fic on near­by roads are fair­ly light.

Video tak­en by Sound Tran­sit’s pho­tog­ra­ph­er shows trains rolling from sev­er­al angles dur­ing these night­time for­ays onto our new rapid tran­sit guide­way. You can also see what it was like to be inside the train and sta­tions dur­ing the testing:

Footage cour­tesy of Sound Transit

Chris Paslaws­ki was also able to cap­ture the action from a dif­fer­ent van­tage point.

For the past few years, East­siders have watched as Sound Tran­sit’s con­trac­tors have dug trench­es, laid gird­ers, and assem­bled sta­tion plat­forms and egress­es. Now the trains have begun to roll. Between now and the sum­mer of 2023, con­struc­tion crews will get every sta­tion ready to host riders.

And even­tu­al­ly, Sound Tran­sit will begin run­ning trains through the entire new align­ment, not just the mid­dle Belle­vue segments.

It won’t be long before East­siders run­ning errands or going to and from Seat­tle will see test trains glid­ing through Mer­cer Island, Belle­vue, and Redmond.

If watch­ing that video left you hun­gry for more, there’s good news: we’ve got more! Last autumn, we pub­lished an aer­i­al tour of all of the new East Link sta­tions, from Jud­kins Park to Red­mond Tech­nol­o­gy, and then added on a sequel fea­tur­ing the two addi­tion Red­mond sta­tions that will open a bit lat­er as part of the Down­town Link exten­sion in 2024. Those are def­i­nite­ly worth check­ing out if you haven’t seen them, as they con­tain some exquis­ite drone photography.

There’s also a post from 2019 that will give you a sense of what it looks like from up on the guide­way that now spans Inter­state 405 in Belle­vue. Sound Tran­sit kind­ly invit­ed us to go on a walk from Belle­vue Down­town to Wilbur­ton before the tracks were laid on the ele­vat­ed guide­way, and that yield­ed some great photos.

The Wilbur­ton Sta­tion is real­ly com­ing along and look­ing rather fin­ished these days, as you can see from these pho­tos tak­en by NPI.

This month, NPI’s Per­ma­nent Defense is cel­e­brat­ing its twen­ti­eth anniver­sary. There will be a spe­cial online event on Feb­ru­ary 15th that read­ers are invit­ed to attend. We have come a long way since 2002, when Sound Tran­sit and tran­sit advo­cates were fight­ing hard for Link’s sur­vival against road war­riors seek­ing to pull the plug on region­al light rail. Twen­ty years lat­er, light rail is firm­ly estab­lished in our region and extreme­ly pop­u­lar with vot­ers, accord­ing to NPI’s research.

That’s real progress!

We look for­ward to cel­e­brat­ing addi­tion­al mile­stones as we get clos­er to East Link’s debut. Con­grat­u­la­tions to Sound Tran­sit on this lat­est accomplishment!