Thursday/ ten years of light rail in Seattle

Today marks ten years since the opening of the Seattle light rail transit system. I was one of the 45,000 riders that boarded the light rail train for the first time, on July 18, 2009.

The initial line ran from downtown to Tukwila International Boulevard (close to Seattle-Tacoma airport). Four more stops have opened since then (Seattle-Tacoma airport & Angle Lake to the south, Capitol Hill and University of Washington to the north). The next extension of three more stops to the north, will open in 2021.

I made a run to the downtown station today, to buy this 10-year anniversary transit card. There’s the train in the background. There are currently 62 train cars in the system. They are made by a train car manufacturer called Kinkisharyo, in Osaka, Japan.

2 Replies to “Thursday/ ten years of light rail in Seattle”

  1. The initial line ran from Westlake station in downtown Seattle to Tukwila International Boulevard station. SeaTac/Airport station opened five months later in December, 2009.

    1. Thanks for the correction.
      I had forgotten that the line first ran to Tukwila only!
      I corrected the text in the blog post. 🙂

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