John Lovick: Light rail is an example of good public investment

Published 1:30 am Monday, June 22, 2026

On August 30, 2024, I was one of 35,000 people to board Sound Transit’s Link light rail on its first day in Snohomish County. Some rode it to work. Others were seeing where the new transit option could take them.

I spent 31 years as a Washington State Trooper and served as Snohomish County Sheriff. I know what our county’s traffic looks like. Driving between Lynnwood and downtown Seattle can easily eat an hour of your morning and another hour of your evening. Five days a week, fifty weeks a year; it adds up to something more than an inconvenience. It costs us our valuable time.

It takes about 30 minutes to get from Lynnwood City Center to Westlake Station on light rail. That’s 30 minutes, every trip, rain or shine. Riders I talk to say they save 30 to 45 minutes each way compared to driving. That is time back with your families.

The train runs every eight minutes during rush hour, and every ten minutes midday and on weekends. You walk to the station, you get on the next train, you go.

And it is not just about getting to work. Light rail takes you to the best this region has to offer. A Seahawks or Sounders game. An afternoon with the Mariners. Dinner and a concert downtown. No sitting in I-5 traffic, no circling for a parking spot, no paying downtown rates to leave your car. You ride in, you enjoy the night, you ride home.

This summer, that reach went global. As the World Cup arrived in Seattle, light rail carried some of the biggest crowds it has ever seen as fans from around the world boarded the same trains our commuters take every morning to reach the matches downtown.

For those who do not drive, or don’t have a second car, light rail is how they get where they need to go. Seniors who gave up their keys. Young workers saving for their first apartment. There are now options that did not exist two years ago.

The 1 Line now carries 90,000 riders on an average weekday. That is 90,000 trips not taken on I-5, not burning gas in stop-and-go traffic. Light rail is good public policy in action. From our environment to our roads, light rail provides for our communities.

Light rail is also an economic driver for the Puget Sound region. Yes, it moves workers to jobs, but it also moves shoppers to businesses, and visitors from the airport or cruise ship terminal to hotels and restaurants. The building boom around our stations proves it: Lynnwood has approved 6,000 new apartments, and more than 10,000 housing units are planned or under construction within walking distance of the line. For decades, cities across the country already had this kind of connection and we did not. Now communities like Everett finally have a fast, reliable, affordable link straight into the downtown core. We are catching up with the rest of the country, and our economy is stronger for it.

Snohomish County needed this. We needed a way to move people without depending on additional lanes on a highway that was overcrowded thirty years ago. We needed a connection to the rest of the region that was fast, reliable, and available to everyone, not just those who can afford to drive and park downtown.

We have that now, and we are not done. The Everett Link Extension will bring six more stations and 16 more miles of light rail north through Snohomish County. The plans are set. I will keep pushing to make sure it serves our communities the way Lynnwood Link has.

Light rail is one of the best things to happen here in a long time. It is what good public investment looks like. It looks like an extra hour at home tonight, and every night after.

John Lovick lives in Mill Creek. He is a member of the Washington State Senate, representing the 44th district since 2021.