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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Seattle's LINK Extension
Exciting changes are on the horizon for Seattle's light rail system, with significant expansions aimed at connecting isolated lines and enhancing commuter experiences. The episode highlights the current state of the light rail network and the promising developments that will redefine urban transit in the region.
• Overview of upcoming light rail expansions in Seattle
• Current state and geography of Seattle's light rail system
• Recent expansions and developments in suburban areas
• Future plans connecting key regions and communities
Doors are closing. Public transit that's my way to roll On the metro. I'm taking control. Bus stops, train tracks it's my daily grind. Public transit, it's the rhythm of my life.
Speaker 2:This week we're taking a look at the Pacific Northwest and the upcoming light rail expansions connecting Seattle, bellevue and Tacoma Washington. Learn how this mega region is setting the standard for West Coast urbanism on this episode of Transit Tangents.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and welcome to the new year. Today we are going to be covering a topic that was heavily commented on and requested during our New Year's Eve episode, which was the top 10 new transit projects opening in 2025. A lot of upset folks in the Pacific Northwest, specifically in Seattle, for not mentioning the extensions to the Seattle White Rail that are currently going on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was really impressed by the amount of viewership we got and also just the engagement on that particular episode.
Speaker 1:people love like top 10 yeah, like the day we put top 10 into something people love to like check it out.
Speaker 2:So I'm very sorry to anybody in seattle if we disappointed you.
Speaker 1:Yes, um, but because of that disappointment that you got last week, uh, this week, uh, we're gonna make it up to you with an episode specifically about your light rail network. So it's pretty exciting. I haven't looked specifically at Seattle in a long time it's been a long time since I've been there personally but they're doing really big things as far as transit goes. If you were to look at a map of Seattle's light rail network right now, it looks a little odd. If I'm being honest. It's a couple disjointed lines in Seattle and Bellevue and Tacoma that aren't currently connected at all.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and all those areas also geographically, are fairly distant from each other. I mean, you have Seattle in the middle, you have Bellevue across the lake, and I'm already messing up.
Speaker 1:The water, the body of water?
Speaker 2:I don't know the name of the lake in between Seattle and Bellevue. Yeah, the body of water, Lake Washington.
Speaker 1:Lake Washington. Yes, yeah, it just wasn't coming to me, I don't know why. Yeah, there are. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, as I say, but there is a significant geographic distance. So you have Seattle in the middle, you have Lake Washington, bellevue on the other side and then you have Tacoma, which Tacoma is pretty far south of Seattle. So when you're looking at a map, these three transit systems, they all sort of exist in their own bubble Right.
Speaker 1:And they are connected to via buses and there are it's not the main point of this episode, but there are two they call them the sounder trains which are the kind of commuter rails that run through the area, so it's not like they're fully disconnected.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, I mean these are separate, distinct areas that just have a lot of travel going back and forth between them, uh, as it's a kind of growing metro area, um, but yeah, I mean, it's really interesting to look at, uh, what is there now and what's coming. So let's first just kind of like dive into the existing lines that are there, just so you get an idea of what is currently existing in Seattle. So we'll start off with the first light rail line that opened in Seattle, which was the green line or the one. I'm seeing it listed as both. I'm not from Seattle. So, folks, seattleites, seattleites, seattleites, let us, let us know if you is the green line, the one, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Before we go any further with this, we want to take a second and really thank everyone who did comment and participate in our last video, where we did the top 10 transit projects to pay attention to in 2025.
Speaker 1:yeah, we is by far exceeded the number of views and listens we've gotten in a week before, so a big thanks there. Apparently, people really liked the topic. We gained some new members on Patreon. We also got a big donation on Buy Me A Coffee. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2:Huge Thank you for that. About $125 on Buy Me A Coffee, which is absolutely huge, thank you. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it will go directly towards us being on the ground in more places across the country. We've already done six, I think, city in a day using only public transit. We've got another one coming very soon. We're going to be leaving in a couple days.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're leaving in a couple days. This video will come out well before this city, but we are headed to DC in a couple days and it's going to be quite cold. So your donations not only get us there, but maybe it buys us a nice warm coffee to survive the cold.
Speaker 1:Yes, but with all that being said, again, thank you all so much, and we'll jump right back into the video about the Seattle Transit Expansions. So to start off, we're going to just overview what the existing light rail lines in the area are today. So we'll start off first with the green line, which presently runs from Linwood all the way up in the north, through Seattle, to Angle Lake in the south of Seattle. That line's been extended a couple of times, which we'll talk about in a second here. The second line is the blue line. Second here, the second line is the blue line which kind of runs from the Redmond area to South Bellevue, that's on the other side of Lake Washington.
Speaker 2:Other side of Lake Washington?
Speaker 1:Yes, and then, finally, we have a smaller light rail line, the orange line, that currently runs in Tacoma.
Speaker 2:Which is down the East Passage, which I knew, that one, the East Passage. There you go In the sound. Yes, that's all I got.
Speaker 1:But it's pretty interesting because when you look and see a lot of the extensions to this network have opened just in the last few years, kind of basically since 2021.
Speaker 2:I've been to Seattle quite a few times and I've seen this under construction for quite a few years. We have some friends who live really far north, in the suburbs north of Seattle, and they've been building this light rail for a couple years now and it's pretty awesome to see. And the Green Line especially, I believe it runs sort of following the highway through Seattle. So there's maybe some pros and cons to that, but this one really sort of bisects the main artery of the city and then of course the other two sort of do the same for their respective cities Totally.
Speaker 1:And when we kind of look at the specific extensions too, the first to the Green Line, took the main Green Line and went about four miles further north, adding three new stations to the Northgate area. What was really impressive about this to me especially for something that just opened in 2021, was it took the section of the Seattle light rail that was already underground and added this section of four miles completely underground until the final station on that extension, which I feel like we don't see that much of anymore. I I mean, we were just talking about in the top 10 list before that like it's really impressive that la is building all these subways. I feel like it's maybe I wasn't paying attention as much as this stuff in 2021, which is true, yeah, but that's impressive to have four miles of underground, yeah it really is, and also with the fact that tunneling in the us is so much more expensive than other countries.
Speaker 2:We've talked a little bit about what was the, what was the or the islands, the Faroe Islands and their tunneling project, and how they're spending this crazy amount to tunnel between their islands, but you don't see things like that in the US that often, so the fact that we are looking at not only new rail line, but new rail line underground is incredibly, incredibly impressive, totally Especially for Seattle.
Speaker 1:Yep, and that extension too. I mean it covered a little bit more of the area just north of the University of Washington, as well as a bit of transit-oriented development and some park and ride. And then eventually opening just this past August was the Linwood extension. This one's going to sound really impressive. Sound, sound, wow, isn't it like Beep? No, it's going to sound really impressive. It added eight miles of additional track with four new stations. This section to me, though, is a little less impressive because it literally just now jumps right into I-5. It goes above ground here, which is fine, you know. Once you get out of the really dense areas, I think it makes sense to have the line running above ground, but it's Scrolling through Google Maps. A lot of parking lots, single-family homes. Maybe it will get some park-and-ride ridership if you run some good feeder buses and whatnot as well, but I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think it's at a point where the rail line is expanding in a way that future TOD can be developed, so more transit-oriented development can spring up around these lines. And if any of that's going to happen, it's probably going to be near the highway, especially for these suburban areas. Because, as you're saying, this whole extra area, this extension of the line I've been in that area plenty of times. It is very suburban, exactly what you would think of as being very suburban, which also makes it really difficult to not just follow the highway. So you need to find a major corridor for this rail line to run through. They found that with, I think it's I-5. Yep, and now there's opportunity for more development, more little town centers and that kind of thing. So I think, I think it's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I and I agree, I agree, and it's like in the areas where you're going to get the most ridership. It seems like they were kind of following the places where it makes the most sense and then, as you get further out, it's never going to be as you know. Uh, you're not never going to have as much ridership further out like that.
Speaker 2:And I do think you see this in other cities too um, where you start hitting these suburban areas Now, the rail lines do tend to follow, you know, highways. We see that in DC. There's the silver line that runs from DC out to the Dulles international airport, and then, I think, one stop beyond that and it follows a highway for the vast majority of its run, because you're now in suburban DC. It just makes the most sense.
Speaker 1:I know it's similar in Chicago too I don't know which line, and I mean there's all sorts of pros and cons with that. Obviously, you already have the right-of-way, but when your station, in a lot of cases, is in the middle of a highway, you lose a lot of the convenience as far as walking. Walking goes, I mean, your whole catchment area of people who could live there goes down quite a bit, although, spoiler.
Speaker 2:we have some stuff that we want to look at in DC, but there's some good transit oriented development that spans the highway, so there are models that could work. It's also maybe a good marketing tactic. You know, you're sitting in your car and you're stuck in traffic for an hour and you look up and the train just keeps going past you and you're like man, if I had just parked three exits back, I could have taken the train.
Speaker 1:I think that that's actually like a yeah, I think that that's positive. I agree, I think that's yes, marketing. I like it.
Speaker 2:The extensions are actually really good timing because there's a huge interstate project on I-5 that's actually going to happen relatively soon. It's about an eight mile sort of redevelopment of the highway where they're doing some expansion and some improvements. So there's gonna be a lot of disruption in the area and as long as these rail lines are open and running, then you give passengers a new way to get into town.
Speaker 1:Totally. It's a great reason to try transit and maybe those highway lanes will be wasted in the end anyway. We're gonna jump right back into this episode in just a second, but first, if you have not liked this video or subscribed, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. Also, leave a comment. We love reading them Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And if you don't have time to watch YouTube videos every time we release, you can always catch us on your favorite podcasting platform, from Spotify to Apple to anywhere podcasts are available.
Speaker 1:And if you want to support the show, we are available. And if you want to support the show, we now have a Patreon launched. You get lots of additional benefits for being a member on Patreon. All the information for that is in the description. But without further ado, let's jump back into the episode. Yeah, one other thing I just want to mention on this before we get into kind of an exciting development. They had a new line actually opened this year as it was the one over in Bellevue. But the fact that we're seeing like extensions with tunnels just makes me so sad about where things are in Austin at the moment.
Speaker 2:Oh, I was going to say the tunnels made you sad. No, the tunnels didn't make me sad.
Speaker 1:It's just like I wish that we could see extensions or even any light rail being built with tunnels in Austin. We did an episode on Project Connect a couple months back that we'll leave a link that you can go check out and it at one point was going to have a tunneled section through downtown and then slowly it kind of got watered down a bit more. And I mean, I'm still very excited about Project Connect and I think that you know currently there are really big things happening and it's moving in the right direction, but sad to see the loss of the tunnels here.
Speaker 2:I would guess that what's happening in seattle, bellevue and tacoma is being heavily supported by the state of washington. They just have a more positive outlook on public transit. They're going to put more money towards it, way more than texas, what do you mean, where we are constitutionally required to send 90 of of our funding to roads.
Speaker 1:Higher than 90. I forget the exact. I think it was like 98% or something. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which you know. You dig up the road and then you put the rail line in and then you use those funds to rebuild the road. That's fair. But yeah, it is disappointing to see sort of the watered down project connects plan in Austin. I'm still very excited for us to have light rail, for us to have light rail. Let's build it. Maybe there's a future where you can put it below grade Probably not, but let's just get it built.
Speaker 1:We'll take what we can get when we can get it Exactly.
Speaker 2:But it is super exciting to see this in the Seattle area, and so we'll definitely have to make a trip there at some point to actually get a chance to ride these things. The one thing I'm not seeing connected no monorail interconnect.
Speaker 1:Ooh, there might be.
Speaker 2:I didn't actually look, I haven't seen it.
Speaker 1:All right, we'll see. We'll see. So in addition to these extensions, we did have a whole new line open this year, which we previously mentioned here, but it's the line that opened kind of from the south end of Redmond to just south of Bellevue. So currently this is kind of a standalone line in Bellevue. Just looking around on Google Maps, it connects quite a few different kind of business centers. You've got some definite transit-oriented development and housing and whatnot, some park and ride kind of more. You know less dense stations, and it also has a tunneled section. It's got some above-grade, some at-grade, so it's a real mix. It covers 6.6 miles with eight new stations throughout the city of Bellevue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, very impressive it is, and what's really Very impressive.
Speaker 2:Very impressive. I haven't spent any time in Bellevue so I'm trying to really grasp what it would look like, and I haven't seen many images from this line in Bellevue but I don't know what a commuter pattern looks like there, but it does sound very impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so what will be extra interesting? So I spent the afternoon kind of scrolling around Google Maps, and you can already see the connection that it will have over the lake Lake Washington into Seattle, and that's going to be really exciting and it's going to be happening really soon. One other thing to note about the line over in Bellevue currently, some of the stops are served by kind of sprawly strip malls and things like that, but, to quote myself, where you see service parking lots, I see potential A lot of those strip malls. In the long run, it's just like a perfect blueprint to make some transit-oriented development in those areas without really causing much of a fuss. No one's going to be upset to see the back spaces at a Target disappear and be redeveloped into a nicer area with housing and restaurants. Somebody can find a reason to be upset. Yes, it's a historic parking spot, yeah, so that's one other thing to note about Bellevue, and yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:The exciting stuff, though, is what comes next. So, as we've mentioned a couple of times, these lines are disjointed presently, and that is about to not be the case. So we're going to see kind of two major extensions in 2025, one of them much more major than the other. I'll start with a less exciting one. The line over in Bellevue is going to gain a couple stations. Going to the north, into Redmond, that'll be two new stations.
Speaker 2:The more exciting of the two extensions for the Blue Line, or Line 2, as some people in Seattle, some of the Seattleites, would call it, is the fact that it's going to connect Bellevue to Seattle and that's going to cross Lake Washington. It's going to hit Mercer Island along the way, and what's really cool about this is that it's going to be on a floating bridge, which Seattle has. Several of these really long floating bridges, some of the longest in the world, and it's just really impressive Like the idea that one the bridge is floating blows my mind, but also that the light rail is going to be able to just be sort of added to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's really impressive and, like you can currently go and look at this on Google Maps right now and kind of see the tracks are already built and kind of running through this whole section. So, yeah, I mean it sounds like there have probably been some disruptions to service with this extension, you know, being under construction, which is to be expected, as you'd imagine. I mean, the construction and planning nightmare of all this has got to be so hard.
Speaker 2:One of my local folks on the ground in Seattle I was just texting with before this episode and they were saying asked if some of the delays had been resolved and he said absolutely not.
Speaker 1:So they're still working out some of the kinks that come with combining these two lines Right, but I mean the finished project of this is going to make such a huge difference for folks kind of commuting or just like traveling throughout the region to make such a huge difference for folks kind of commuting or just like traveling throughout the region. They've done a good job of like showing on a map of you know, areas that are currently open. And then the plan for the future, and we're not even covering all of the plan for the future in this. We're really just kind of covering the things that folks were complaining were not in the video last week, but there's a whole lot more coming down the line. I actually just watched a video by City Beautiful. I'm sure you've seen them on YouTube at some point. They talk about further extension to the Green Line and some of the transit-oriented development and potential for transit-oriented development that is coming there. I'd encourage you to check that out if you're interested in seeing more about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that Green Line, I believe, is going to be the connection to Tacoma.
Speaker 1:No, no, just kidding. Yes, the green line does go to Tacoma. This video is more so about the northern end that goes towards Ballard Gotcha.
Speaker 2:But the future state of transit in Seattle means the green line is going to extend down to Tacoma. So similarly you have the extension between Bellevue and Seattle. Now we'll also have this connection from Seattle to Tacoma to Federal Way. Is the station yes, when it will connect?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, exactly, but yeah, I mean a lot of exciting stuff coming in Seattle in 2025 and 2026 and beyond. I'd love to see the vision. Honestly, it's really fun playing, like I was saying, with the maps and seeing where it is now and where it will be and how stark the changes are.
Speaker 2:So, with all that being said, if you are from the Seattle, bellevue or Tacoma area and you have some more insight on these projects, please, please, please, please, reach out to us. Put it in the comments, send us an email, reach out to us on social media. However you want to talk to us and let us know what you think about the projects, how excited you are. Maybe you hate the projects. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably don't hate the projects.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would guess not.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you're interested in us coming to Seattle, which I would love to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, let us know that you want to meet up. We'd love to meet up and take a ride on the new trains.
Speaker 1:Totally. If you haven't liked this video. If you're watching, please consider doing so. Also, subscribing both of those help us out quite a bit. Also, if you're able to support us directly, patreon is the best way to do so. The link is in the description, but it is patreoncom slash transit tangents. If you want to do a one-time donation, we also have options for that as well on Buy Me a Coffee. But with all that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit.
Speaker 2:Tangents Tuesday.