Finally! Light rail is here

Light rail is here. How many future riders will it have?

The 14-mile line from downtown Seattle to Tukwila opened to the public Satuday to a sizable crowd, sunny weather and the first of two free-ride days that drew the curious along with the advocates.

“We just decided to experience the light rail,” said Helen, a Bainbridge Island resident who wouldn’t give her last name.  “It’s great.”

Some who took the ride were weighing how often they’d return after Monday, when the system will start charging fares. “I want to see how long it will take and how much it will cost,” said Ricardo Olivares, who works in downtown Seattle. “Maybe I could use it for my job.”

Sound Transit estimated there were 45,000 boardings of its trains, traveling to any one of a dozen stations along the route Saturday. The agency had prepared for a crowd as large as 100,000.

Experienced rail riders interviewed along the line were generally happy that one of their favorite travel modes was now running here again.

“We’ve been waiting for this for a lifetime,” said Jennifer Kogut, a North Seattle resident who rode to Tukwila with husband Jeff. Both have ridden trains in Europe, and she said they’ll both ride it to the airport, which will be linked Monday to the Tuwila station by shuttle bus. They also said they’re considering moving closer to the line so they can use it more often. Several riders with downtown jobs said they’ll take up riding the trains. “I’ll be taking this every day to work,” said Matt Russell, a Beacon Hill resident with a rail station in his neighborhood. “I’m going to the airport in August, so I’l see how that works. It’s nice. It’ll get me out more.”

Others, such as Scott Seedorf, also said they’ll take the trains to the airport but aren’t sure how many other places they’ll ride because their homes aren’t on the line.

“It’s not on my regular route,” said Santeri Voutilainen, a Jackson Park resident who came with his family to try the trains. Wife Mariah said she’ll ride the train “occasionally, to kind of explore other neighborhoods” but is eager for the day the trains will get to Northgate, closer to her home.

That’s scheduled to happen by 2020 as part of extensions of the system north of the University District. Des Moines resident Don McLeod isn’t sure he’ll use the trains because they’re also off his normal Metro bus commuting route. Now “I take one bus that takes me downtown from near my place. If I took (light rail), it would take two” trips, he said, because he’d have to transfer from the bus to the trains.

The agency has predicted that the initial opening-day riding crowd would shrink once fares were imposed, to 21,000 per day by year-end and rise to 26,600 per day by mid-2010. The biggest numbers of riders are expected to occur when the line is extended to the University of Washington in 2016. The opening-day crowds were big at the Westlake, Othello and Tukwila stations. Westlake and Tukwila were major boarding points at the ends of the line. The Othello station had daylong festivities that included music, children’s activities and even Chinese dragon dancing to draw a crowd.

By midday, hundreds were lining up at a time in Tukwila, and event staffers were gathering them on parts of two floors at the three-level station, releasing them in groups of 200 to board departing northbound trains. Occasionally the cars were so full that people such as Nick Chavez and his family waited for later trains in order to get a seat.

“When you have to pay (fares), I’m sure these crowds will dissipate,” Chavez said. Waits at Tukwila ran as long as 30 minutes; Sound Transit hired a mime and a juggler to entertain the lined-up crowds. The throngs thinned as the afternoon progressed, but staffers limited the numbers boarding trains at intermediate points on the line to make sure they didn’t get overcrowded. That meant others had to wait. “It’s not very efficient,” said Michael Phillips, who gave up waiting for a train with friend Trevor Iwaszuk at the stadium station after a Sounders FC game.  They walked to the Pioneer Square station but had another wait before boarding. Iwaszuk said, hopefully, “Once some of the novelty wears off, it’ll become quicker.”

Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray said the agency added another train to handle the Sounder-game crowd, “but it took awhile to clear out,” and that was likely what the two men encountered. The weekend crowd control measures will be gone when fare-paying service starts Monday. Saturday began with a ceremony at the Mount Baker station, where dignitaries cut a ribbon and two mayors – Greg Nickels of Seattle and Jim Haggerton of Tukwila – both used the opening to promote shopping in their cities. 

Richard Borkowski, a former Seattleite now living in New York, attended the ceremony and said his former pro-light-rail group, People for Modern Transit, has disbanded now that Seattle-area voters approved an expansion of the rail system in November.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., said the push for light rail had gone on for decades, and he joked that, at the age of 72, “I got my ticket while I was still alive.”