Sound Transit Doubles Trains for 65,000 Riders

Seattle quietly just ushered in one of the biggest transit upgrades in the country. Trains on the main line through Seattle just doubled—which means twice the trains and half the wait! More specifically, there will be four minutes between trains at peak hours, and five minutes all day, with only late-night trains spreading further out. 

65,000 passengers per weekday use the stations that will see the change. It will be a fantastic upgrade for the Davis household, that’s for sure. It will save all of us tons of time, make it much easier to avoid worrying about a late train, reduce crowding, and just generally make the train a more convenient and reliable option. 

The reason for this game-changing increase is that in about a month, Sound Transit will start carrying people across Lake Washington back and forth between Seattle and the new Eastside line. 

But ahead of that, Sound Transit has started running “simulated service”—running empty trains back and forth across the bridge. Simulated service sounds like no big deal, except it turns out that riders can use those trains running each way on the Seattle side of the lake. This doubles the number of trains on the main line in most of Seattle and all of the northern suburbs that the line reaches. Riders between the International District on the far southern end of downtown all the way up through the nose-bleeding northern stop of Lynwood will find that commuting life just got a little bit easier.

Sometimes people complain about Sound Transit. The agency has certainly been beset by delays, cost overruns (as with all infrastructure around the country), silly meddling by some of the politicians on the board, and cities using permits as a way to force bad and expensive choices by the agency. It’s easy to get frustrated, but we should also remember that our legislature could put reforms in place to fix some of the most glaring problems. Just as important, Sound Transit’s thousands of employees are hard-working public servants and their decades of work has done an immense amount to make it easier to get around our beautiful city.

Bravo! See you on the train!