Today Sound Transit revealed the opening day of service for the two-station Downtown Redmond Link light rail extension: Saturday, May 10. In addition to serving Downtown Redmond, the 2 Line expansion includes a stop at Marymoor Village, close to King County’s 640-acre Marymoor Park. Two-car trains will run every 10 minutes from 5:30am to 9:30pm.
This extension will mark the first Sound Transit 3 (ST3) rail project to start carrying passengers, just under nine years after the funding package was approved by voters in 2016. Current plans put Downtown Redmond as the 2 Line’s final eastern terminus, with no plans on the books to extend beyond Redmond.
Sound Transit teased an opening day celebration for Downtown Redmond Link: “Everyone is invited to celebrate opening day with Sound Transit and its partners on Saturday, May 10. More details about opening day will be provided in the coming weeks.” The City of Redmond is certainly going to pull out all the stops for the opening day of its flagship light rail station.
Downtown Redmond Link’s opening sets the stage for the full extension of the 2 Line across Lake Washington into Seattle and up to Lynnwood, which Sound Transit still aims to achieve in 2025. Originally set to open in 2023, defective work on the tracks in the I-90 section (including the tricky floating bridge span) has delayed the opening significantly. Initially, repair work was going to mean a delay of the entire 2 Line, but transit advocates pushed for an earlier opening in the non-defective section, and King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, who chairs Sound Transit’s Systems Expansion Committee, championed the cause.
Last spring, Sound Transit opened an abbreviated segment of the 2 Line between South Bellevue and Redmond Technology Station, on the doorstep of Microsoft’s campus. Ridership on that short line peaked last October at around 5,600 average weekday daily riders, but declined around the holidays. Sound Transit projects ridership will jump exponentially once the full line opens.
“As we celebrate this monumental step forward and the extension of light rail, with two more stations set to open in Redmond, we see a more connected future for our city,” said Redmond Mayor and Sound Transit Board Member Angela Birney. “This extension will continue to ease travel for our residents and visitors, as well as provide a cleaner, more sustainable way to move through our region. I’m extremely grateful for our dedicated partners and community members who made this possible. Together, we’re building a stronger, more vibrant city for everyone.”
King County Executive Dow Constantine, who also sits on the Sound Transit Board, stressed the significance of the Marymoor Park connection in his statement.
“This is a transformative moment for the Eastside as Sound Transit continues to expand light rail service on the 2 Line,” Constantine said. “These two new stations in Redmond will not only open up more jobs, housing and opportunity for people throughout the region, but will also bring the crown jewel of the King County Parks, Marymoor Park, a car-free light rail ride away.”
While light rail will let riders off steps from Marymoor Park in practice, actually gaining access to the park is more complicated, with a circuitous route for parkgoers that includes backtracking to 176th Avenue NE. That route may see improvements in the coming years.
The urbanization of Redmond around light rail
Opening a light rail station in Downtown Redmond is a culmination of years of work in the city of Redmond to get ready for light rail, including a significant transformation of the downtown core over the past decade. With robust plans to continue to add density around all four of its light rail stations, Redmond is strongly touting its transformation “from a suburb to a city.”
However, builders have warned that burdensome affordability and sustainability requirements may slow future growth in station areas — and the City’s zoning update largely kept the suburban form outside of them.
Travel time between Downtown Redmond and Downtown Bellevue stations is expected to be 18 minutes, allowing 2 Line riders to beat travel times on the existing RapidRide B Line by around 50% at most times of day. When the full 2 Line opens, riders can get to Downtown Seattle in 42 minutes, to the University of Washington within 50 minutes, and to the stadium district in about 45 minutes with a transfer at International District-Chinatown. Getting to the airport will be much less competitive with driving, at an hour and 12 minutes.
Finding a route for light rail through Downtown Redmond was much less contentious than the debate over a final alignment for trains through Downtown Bellevue. Planned in 2011 as part of the initial design for East Link, the original locations for both Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond were fairly similar to what will open this year, but were slightly refined after funding to build the two stations was unlocked in 2016 with the passage of ST3.
How we got here
Downtown Redmond station was originally envisioned as being approximately 1,600 feet further northwest, with tail track that extended almost to Redmond Way. This at-grade alignment would have replicated issues that Sound Transit encounters elsewhere in the system, requiring crossing gates through some of the busiest sections of the city. While the final elevated alignment is slightly further away from what might be considered the heart of downtown Redmond, there are fewer conflicts and less impact on Redmond’s Central Connector Park and its well-used mutiuse path.
Marymoor Village, meanwhile, was not originally envisioned to be an at-grade station, but the project budget was not set large enough to accommodate two elevated stations, and the City of Redmond pushed hard to elevate the downtown station. The final alignment utilizes a unique design that sends the train through the new 1,400-stall parking garage.
Despite calls from some of Sound Transit’s more forward-thinking board members suggesting a rethink of an emphasis on parking near stations, a park-and-ride mentality still dominates the design of many new stations, and the 1,400 parking stalls epitomize this. But Downtown Redmond’s station doesn’t include any parking component, more fitting of an area that is rapidly densifying.
Sure to be overshadowed by questions about when Sound Transit will finally start service across the lake, the launch of Downtown Redmond Link is a big milestone for the region in its own right, and one of the reasons that The Urbanist christened 2025 as the “Year of the Eastside.”
Ryan Packer has been writing for The Urbanist since 2015, and currently reports full-time as Contributing Editor. Their beats are transportation, land use, public space, traffic safety, and obscure community meetings. Packer has also reported for other regional outlets including Capitol Hill Seattle, BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.