Light Rail with Becca

Light Rail is open in Seattle!

It's been a long, long, long, long wait.  Three years of voting (and 20 more before i moved here) and then 15 years of political delays and glacial construction.  So i'm pretty excited that it's finally ready to run.  The first run to was on the weekend; i didn't go the first day because i wanted to avoid the fanfare.  So today seemed a great time for a first look.

My friend Becca, who is also a long time transit advocate, went along with me.  Becca hasn't cycled a great deal around here, so we decided to do a bike ride after the light rail ride and i could show her some cycling routes.

Becca prepares to board LINK light rail for the first time!

We met at the stop where her bus arrived in downtown and since we were both interested in some breakfast, we stopped for crepes at a little place in Belltown. Then we pedaled the few blocks to Westlake Station.

I've been down into Westlake Station many times, the tunnel has been there since 1988 running express buses under downtown. But this was exciting as it was the first time that i would be able to ride light rail in Seattle. We carried the bikes down the stairs and got to the platform right as a train arrived.


We were both very excited.

Becca is excited.

I took a photo of Becca taking a photo of the new light rail.

The train was comfortable, and the ride was smooth and we were both thrilled to finally get to ride it. I love rail and i think it is an enormously important part of any transit system. I was quite disappointed that they spent a over a billion extra dollars and 12 extra years putting it underground to make sure it never slowed down a car. Still the system is very nice. The fare payment (ORCA card) was easy, the seats were comfortable, although too many were sideways. The bike rack was strangely oriented perpendicular to the wall instead of parallel. It looked like they could've gotten double the bikes in if the had turned it 90 degrees, and with the bike perpendicular to the wall it wobbled A LOT more than if it was done right.

It was great fun riding along MLK Blvd S because you could see the interesting, active neighborhoods -- neighborhoods that have been pretty invisible to folks in north Seattle until now. That was my favorite part.

There are two tunnels and several elevated sections of rail as well as the street level section.  I  took an elevation profile of the route from the map (below) and drew on by hand the tracks, so you can see the different sections, as well as the actual grades.

The ride was so comfortable and so much fun that it seemed to go very quickly.  We couldn't believe it had been 35 minutes.  We rode the full route to Tukwila, currently the end of the line. The last leg to the airport won't open until December.

The multi level maze like Tukwila station was a little strange. I must say.

 There was some very nice public artwork. I particularly like this one.

The ticketing was all on a Mezzanine level, down an escalator. With the bikes we took the elevator, but were completely baffled by the labels on the buttons. We're both pretty smart, and have quite a bit of experience with transit, but we both stood dumfounded, unsure which button to push. Finally we only figured it out because we must want to go to the floor we were NOT on, so the light, not the label showed us. How hard is it to put a word or an icon on the panel? M for Mezzanine and T for train i guess.  But really unnecessarily unclear.

The next elevator, from the Ticketing Mezzanine to the Exit on the ground floor was even worse.  There is no possible way to figure this one out, you just have to ignore the crazy secret labels.  We actually wondered if they installed them wrong!  P could maybe possibly stand for platform, but it's hard to figure out how that could be Exit.

This is in contrast to the wonderful geological themed elevators at the Zoo stop in Portland that are labeled (full words): Present day (surface) and 16 million years ago (tunnel) in addition to street and train icons.

Overall it was a comfortable, easy, fun transit ride. We were both very excited to finally ride it. We were impressed that the system, only three days old, was getting pretty heavy use.  There was a couple from out of town heading to the airport who didn't know this was the first week of the system!  And The Tukwila station parking lot was completely full.




Once we found our way out of the unmarked, maze like parking lot we went fast down a long (1 mile) hill, which had a narrow, but very much appreciated bike lane.  We had to cross some nasty traffic for a half a mile or so at the bottom, before we found our way to the Green River Trail.   Even though i know the trail really well, i turned the wrong way, and we started heading south a bit before i figured it out and headed north.  The trail down through Fort Dent and Allentown is very nice, and excpet for one section, it is entirely separated from the road, running through the trees along the river. It was a very hot summer day, and we appreciated the shade.

I finally got to test my camera.  I've had it 2 years (almost to the day) and i have never dropped it.  The specs say you can drop it from 10 feet with no problem.  I didn't feel like dropping it on purpose, but i knew it would eventually happen.  Today i was riding, as i often do, with the camera in my shirt pocket ; when i hit a big bump and did a little bunny hop, the camera rocketed out of my pocket and over my head, landing on the asphalt trail behind me.  Becca laughed and picked it up, but the camera was just fine.  I wasn't surprised, but i was quite relieved.

We zigged and zagged through South Park.  I almost always get lost trying to find my way through here, but i didn't today.  It's a really nice little neighborhood.  I like it.

North of South Park we picked up the Duwamish trail which runs along the railroad tracks.   As we were pedaling along looking at the trains, Becca was talking about how her dad (a train engineer) talked about train buffs watching trains, calling them foamers.


At one point we came to a train parked across the trail!  It's not supposed to do that!  We were a little worried, and felt a little stranded.  Right after i took this photo Becca turned to me and said, "I'm a foamer now!"

But after only about 90 seconds, the engineer looked back out the window, saw us standing there forlornly and moved the train for us!

The ride up to Alki beach was pleasant and went quickly.  We stopped for lunch and since we had worked up a good sweat on the hot day, we jumped in the cold salt water of Puget Sound for a few minutes.  It was a great way to cool off.  

We decided to cut off some of the more industrial sections of the ride by taking the Water Taxi across Elliot Bay -- yes a FOURTH method of transportation for the day (bus, rail, bike, boat).  That was quite fun and i always enjoy the skyline views.


Once back downtown we rode up to Becca's  house via the really cool Pier 91 trail, which she had never seen. All told we rode 31 miles together -- that's really good for someone who rarely rides.  She struggled just a little on the last hill up to her neighborhood, but that's all.  It was an exciting day and a fun ride and i really enjoyed spending time with Becca.

On the map, the new light rail line is in green our rides are in red, the ferry in blue dashes and my ride home in purple.  Without the light rail, our ride would've been at least 45 miles!