Light rail comes to the U district

I suspect that if I went back over past blog posts, I'd discover several posts discussing the extension of Seattle's light rail from downtown to the University of Washington's Husky Stadium. 

Probably, sarcastic posts.  Ones noting that it took the primitive Egyptians ten or fifteen years to build the Great Pyramid at Giza, using only manual slave labor, but that it's taken about eight years -- using all the best modern technology -- to extend light rail by 3.15 miles.

But let bygones be bygones.  A week ago, SoundTransit announced that the extension would be up and running by the end of March.  The UW station has been virtually completed for several months, awaiting only, I gather, some work on other portions of the line.

I'm a public transit nut -- note all my posts delighting in New York's subways.  I'm also delighted by this extension.  Once the station is open, we will be able to travel underground -- under the ship canal and under Capitol Hill -- from the UW to downtown's Westlake Center, with a single stop at Broadway and John on Capitol Hill, all in eight minutes. 

At present, Seattle has only the one light rail line.  Students will be able to travel directly, with no change of trains, from the Stadium to Sea-Tac airport.  More to the point, your fearless publisher will be able to travel directly to the airport, once he books the mile from his house to the Stadium station.  It's an easy walk without baggage, or with a light bag or daypack.  With anything bulkier, I'll have to catch the No. 43 or 48 bus north to the Stadium.

Either way, getting to the airport -- just downtown, for that matter -- will be a simpler matter than it has been in the past.  The temptation to pay exorbitant airport parking fees on short trips out of town will be much less. 

The line will be further extended beyond the Stadium to Northgate by 2021, an extension already well under construction.  And a second line from the Chinatown station, across the I-90 bridge, through Bellevue, to Redmond is in the final planning stages.

Forty-six years after voters made the disastrous decision to turn down plans for a heavy rail subway system -- largely provoked by the opposition of a Bellevue shopping center owner who didn't want to make it easy for Eastside shoppers to shop in Seattle -- we finally have the beginnings of an urban rail system.  Not as comfortable as heavy rail, not as comprehensive as then planned, and with costs for property rights and construction that are much higher than they would have been in 1969.

But it's a start!  Thank you SoundTransit.