Sound Transit links Seattle and the Eastside: Opening day on the Crosslake Connection

For more than 60 years, regional leaders dreamed of sending trains across Lake Washington. Today, that dream finally pulled into the station.

Sound Transit’s 2 Line opened to passengers Saturday morning. The first light rail train rolled across the I-90 floating bridge between Seattle and the Eastside. It’s a world first. No one has ever run light rail on a floating bridge before.

“I cannot overstate the significance of this connection for commuters and our economy,” Governor Bob Ferguson said at the ribbon cutting.

Two new stations opened with it: Judkins Park and Mercer Island. They complete a line stretching from downtown Redmond through Bellevue, across the lake, through Seattle and north to Lynnwood. Downtown Bellevue to Seattle’s Chinatown International District now takes about 20 minutes. The total light rail network now stretches 63 miles.

Obstacle after obstacle

On the Eastside, disputes over the route dragged on for years. Residents fought over property takings. Mercer Island leaders worried the line would bring crime.

The owner of Bellevue Square mall, Kemper Freeman, filed a lawsuit to keep light rail off the I-90 bridge entirely. It went all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court. The court ruled in Sound Transit’s favor in 2013.

Then came the engineering. Putting rails on a floating structure required brand new technology. Every component had to meet precise specifications. In 2019, Sound Transit began to understand that thousands of concrete “plinths” supporting the tracks along the I-90 bridge were poorly built.

Eventually, the contractor had to tear them out and start over. That delayed the Crosslake Connection’s opening to 2026.

Frustrated by long delays, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci lobbied for Sound Transit to open several Eastside stations early along a short and stubby line between South Bellevue and Downtown Redmond, before the 2 Line officially linked up across Lake Washington.

Needless to say, there was lots of pent-up excitement. “Everyone was cheering when we were going over the bridge,” said Lili Luna Cruz. “And then someone shouted ‘When I say light, you say rail,’ and everyone was chanting ‘Light! Rail! Light! Rail!’”

Opening day

Saturday’s celebration kicked off with a ribbon cutting and street fair at Sam Smith Park, across from Judkins Park station. The Northwest African American Museum hosted the event.

There was live music. Food trucks. Activities for kids. Long after the first train left the station around 10am, people waited an hour in a long line for their turn to get on board.

Brett Raye marveled at the thousands of people gathered there. “You know, you think trains and light rail is kind of a nerd, niche interest, but it's really popping out here,” he said.

Nerds or not, many people were definitely in a celebratory mood. Rita Tess and her friends took Jell-O shots before boarding… and again at every new station along the way (that’s three shots total).

Bruno DeMelo Batista and Shavon Hicklin had been standing in the long line to enter the station for about 40 minutes, and were about halfway through it. Hicklin said they’d chosen their apartment near Judkins Park in part to be near light rail. They both work on the Eastside, and pay about $30 a day to park their car at Hicklin’s work.

Other times they take the bus, but their old ride was a two-seat (two-bus) ride, and they would sometimes lose 20 to 30 minutes waiting for their transfer in the middle of their commute.

“It’s just gonna be so much more convenient to just get on the train and get over straight to work,” said DeMelo Batista, “And not have to worry about traffic jams, and you know, not having any emissions involved.”

At the Sound Transit merch table, all 691 Crosslink Connection- and Sound Transit-themed shirts, hoodies, tote bags and soccer-style jerseys sold out in about three hours, according to manager Kelsey Hay.

“It’s completely cleared out,” she said. “There’s nothing on the grid wall that we had for our display items. There’s absolutely nothing in the tent. We’re breaking down, and there’s about an hour and a half left of the event, and everything’s gone.”

One man, who didn’t share his name, said he’d started his journey at 7:30 AM to gather stamps on a paper map at all the stations, but had grown frustrated that the prize he coveted was out of stock by the time he reached the awards table.

“I’m pissed off,” he said. He'd been questing after the limited-edition reversible bucket hat with a 1 Line logo on one side and a 2 Line logo on the other. “Those were gonna be worth a lot of money later.”

Asked whether the bucket hats would come back in print, Kelsey Hay couldn’t say. “For now, it’s a collectors item,” she said. “But who knows?”

Community events ran into the early afternoon at stations along the 2 Line. Seattle Symphony musicians performed live at Symphony Station. Other scheduled events included a petting zoo at Spring District Station. Microsoft hosted food and coffee at Redmond Technology Station.

What’s next

The celebration comes at a complicated moment for Sound Transit. The agency faces a $34.5 billion shortfall. The taxes coming in won't cover all the projects voters approved in 2016 under Sound Transit 3. Since that ballot measure passed, construction and land costs have soared.

The board reviewed three budget scenarios at a retreat earlier this month. None of them would deliver trains all the way to Ballard or West Seattle's Alaska Junction as originally promised. The missing pieces would be officially deferred, not cancelled.

Meanwhile, the agency is preparing for hundreds of thousands of fans coming to town for the FIFA Men's World Cup. Matches come to Seattle starting in June. The 2 Line's opening was timed, in part, to help move the crush of soccer fans expected this summer.

In the fall, Sound Transit plans to restructure Eastside bus routes around the new rail service. Route 550, the express bus between Seattle and Bellevue, will go away. It's carried commuters for decades. The light rail does its job now.

For a region that's been talking about this moment since the era when Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, Saturday is the payoff. The trains are running. The lake has been crossed. And an idea more than 60 years in the making is real at last.

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