The long wait is almost over. Transit riders will finally be able to catch light rail trains across Lake Washington between Seattle and the Eastside starting on Saturday March 28, Sound Transit announced Friday. The highly anticipated extension will include two new stations at Judkins Park and Mercer Island, along with a direct connection all the way from Downtown Redmond and Lynnwood City Center.
Inaugurating service on the 2 Line’s 7.4-mile gap will give riders a zippy 20 minute trip between Downtown Bellevue and the International District, becoming the first active light rail line to operate on a floating bridge anywhere in the world. The late March ribbon-cutting will allow Sound Transit to beat its conservative estimate of being able to open the line by May 31, well in advance of the FIFA Men’s World Cup coming to Seattle in June and July.
Interlining with the 1 Line north of SoDo will transform the 2 Line into a 30-mile line, and it will effectively double train frequency at those stations, as both 1 Line and 2 Line will operate at eight-minute peak frequencies, meaning trains will come every four minutes between Chinatown-International District and Lynnwood. The full 2 Line also brings an extended span of service on the Eastside, where trains currently stop running around 9:30pm.
Next month, Sound Transit will start simulated service on the full 2 Line, mimicking how trains will operate once everything is live without allowing any riders to travel across the bridge. But that simulated service will bring additional trains that riders can utilize between Lynnwood and the International District, alleviating overcrowding on the busiest segments of the 1 Line.
The expansion will offer a transit boost during the remainder of Revive I-5 work, provide another way to mitigate the impacts of months of lane closures on Interstate 5. Through June 5, I-5 across the Ship Canal Bridge is reduced by two lanes, leading to delays for motorists and transit riders on alternate routes. Revive I-5 work will resume after a brief World Cup hiatus.
The opening of the 2 Line has been delayed repeatedly. From local siting battles and planning snags in Mercer Island and Bellevue to issues with defects on the tracks along I-90, the opening has been pushed back repeatedly. Operating a rail line on a floating bridge is a groundbreaking engineering feat, and getting it right is crucial. Ultimately, Sound Transit’s contractor was forced to rebuild the tracks in the segment, pushing the opening back from 2023 to 2026.
Sound Transit opened the rest of East Link as a “starter line” minus the cross-lake crossing in 2024, and extended the truncated 2 Line to Downtown Redmond in 2025 as the first Sound Transit 3 project to open to the public. That terminus in Downtown Redmond, built into the city’s urban fabric like few other stations on the Eastside, has become its most popular.
The initial Eastside-only 2 Line has already beat its ridership projections, showing robust demand for light rail in Bellevue and Redmond. Even in its abridged form, the 2 Line has garnered nearly 11,000 daily riders. By 2030, Sound Transit has projected the 2 Line will attract 50,000 daily riders.
After opening the entire 2 Line, Sound Transit ribbon cuttings will become much more infrequent. Later this year, 1 Line trains will begin stopping at the Pinehurst infill station, just north of N 130th Street in Seattle. Beyond that, Sound Transit won’t open another major project until 2028, when the agency cuts the ribbon on two new Stride bus rapid transit (BRT) lines: the S1 between Bellevue and Burien, and the S3 between Shoreline and Bothell. The S2 line, between Lynnwood and Bellevue, is set to open in 2029.
Sound Transit won’t cut the ribbon on a new rail project until the Graham Street and Boeing Access Road infill stations in 2031, West Seattle Link in 2032, and Tacoma Dome Link Extension in 2035 — if those projects are able to stay on track as the agency recalibrates its financial plan.
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 BikePortland, Seattle Met, and PubliCola. They live in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle.
Doug Trumm is publisher of The Urbanist. An Urbanist writer since 2015, he dreams of pedestrian streets, bus lanes, and a mass-timber building spree to end our housing crisis. He graduated from the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Washington in 2019. He lives in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood and loves to explore the city by foot and by bike.