REDMOND, Wash. — Redmond’s Sound Transit line, approved by voters in ST3, will open on Saturday before ST2 is finished.
It will only connect Redmond to Bellevue, because the cross-lake span promised to voters in ST2back in 2008, is still not close to being completed.
Yet, that doesn’t stop people like Guillermo Chavez of Kirkland from cheering. “I can’t wait, I’m pretty excited about it,” he said on Monday, noting he’s been driving to Lynnwood to take that line into Seattle.
Redmond Mayor Angela Birney is fired up too. “You don’t have to park, you don’t have to deal with all the other headaches of like 405,” said the Mayor. “I’m waiting for that day when I can get on this station and get into downtown Seattle to go to Mariners game, or a Sounders game, or switch onto the one line and go all the way to the airport.”
So when will that be? While Redmond’s line opens on Saturday the 10th, there is no date on the stretch between Judkins Park, Mercer Island and Bellevue.
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Voters approved the funding for that stretch as part of ST2 in 2008, and projections keep slipping on completion, from 2022, to 2023, 2024, and then at least by the end of this year.
Now King County Councilmember and Sound Transit Board Member Claudia Balducci isn’t so sure.
“I am not comfortable saying it absolutely will be any date right now, I’m going to believe it when I see some testing,” said Balducci in an interview on Monday. She pressed the agency last year to open the Bellevue link when it became clear that the central spine connecting east and west would not be done anytime soon.
Balducci says contractors had to start over a couple of years ago, and noting there were some issues with “concrete cracking” on the cross-lake portion and now, “nylon sleeves that cover up parts in order to connect the rails”.
“Testing has to start. It hasn’t started yet. I mean, we’ve done electrical testing, but train testing, actually running trains or dragging them across the bridge,” she said. While Balducci suggests it could happen this summer, having passengers on board would be months after that.
That means the pressure builds to actually deliver the project before the World Cup comes to Seattle in 2026, which is expected to bring hundreds of thousands of international travelers to the city likely staying all over the region and relying on light rail for transit to the stadium.
“I do hope it will be quite a bit sooner. I hope it will not be summer of 2026,” said Balducci.
“Otherwise it’s going to be a lot of busses for World Cup. It would be very challenging to not have light rail for the World Cup,” she said.
In the interim, both Birney and Chavez say they’ll enjoy the new link that is more than three miles long and connects Marymoor Park to Downtown Bellevue in 15 minutes.
Chavez says he’ll use it eventually to go to Seahawks games, although maybe not this year.
Sound Transit says it is on schedule to open service to Federal Way next year.
