By Nicholas Deshais / The Seattle Times
LYNNWOOD — When the region’s light rail reached Lynnwood this summer, the station’s parking garage was billed as the largest in all of Snohomish County.
With 1,670 spaces, it’s nearly double the size of the 877-stall garage at the next station down the line in Mountlake Terrace. Combined with the adjacent surface parking lot, Lynnwood boasts 1,900 spots, free of charge, waiting for riders taking the train south.
If there’s room.
Nearly two months after train service began, some Lynnwood passengers wonder if the garage is big enough. With the structure full, or nearly so on most days, some would-be riders said they’ve abandoned plans to ride light rail after circling the garage, and instead opted to hop on the freeway and join traffic.
“When I can’t get into park at this thing, I get ticked,” said Molly Jones, who lives on the Edmonds-Lynnwood border. “I think, ‘Who planned this thing?’”
Sound Transit said its garage is working as intended, and suggested people take buses to the station. Still, this spring the agency will begin charging to park at its stations all along the line to help alleviate the crush and boost ridership. A spokesperson dismissed suggestions that a lack of parking is turning people away from the train as “pretty speculative.”
To be sure, every one of the garages connected to light rail stations in the region is out of room during the morning commute, a show of how popular the form of transit is. So popular, that Snohomish County’s Community Transit reworked its bus network, and now half of its lines converge on the Lynnwood station. The agency has seen a big gain in ridership since light rail began serving the county.
Jones, a retiree who still picks up the occasional temp job at the University of Washington, said she’s gotten to the garage at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. to find the same situation. No free spaces, cars circling.
“It’s jam full. I’ve been to every nook and cranny of that parking garage and there was no space. No space,” she said, adding that “the light rail itself is wonderful. Just wonderful.”
Jones isn’t alone. Last Tuesday, the garage was full by 8:30 a.m. At any given time a handful of motorists circled the garage’s four levels, up and down again, prowling row after row of quiet cars for any movement, hoping luck would deliver a departing driver.
Melissa Jenney, who works at Serious Pie in downtown Seattle, said she’s driven behind people as they walked to their cars to ensure she got their spot. She can’t get to the garage before 9 a.m., because she has to get her kids to school. Today she was fortunate, just barely.
Debra Meyer, on the other hand, couldn’t find a spot. Instead, she parked, as she put it, “nearby,” in a space she wasn’t totally sure she was allowed to park in. Already running late, she said the garage needed more parking “if they want more people to use light rail.”
Sound Transit anticipated the Lynnwood station would see a lot of use, but David Jackson, an agency spokesperson, suggested it’s exceeded expectations.
“Lynnwood has proven to be as popular, or more popular, than we expected,” he said. “Most days it’s at 100% (capacity), or more than 100% because people are parking illegally.”
When the station’s 1,900 spaces fill up, Jackson said people have parked in spots marked off with diagonal hashes, aisles next to stalls reserved for people who use wheelchairs or have another disability.
Other motorists leave the station and park across the street in the vast lot of Lynnwood Square, a strip mall that currently hosts Spirit Halloween and Discount Deals Liquidation but is planned to transform into Northline Village with 1,400 apartments in coming years.
On a recent morning, more than 50 cars were clustered on the edge of the sprawling lot, near signs that read “No park-n-ride parking.”
To the east, across 44th Avenue West, Larisa Makarova runs the European Food Store, a specialty grocery she’s owned for 21 years.
“Once light rail just opened, the next week it started,” Makarova said of commuters overrunning the small parking lot she shares with seven other shops. She has yet to get anyone towed, and has asked the property owner to put up signs telling light rail users not to park there, but nothing yet.
“I believe just a sign will help us,” she said. “People don’t want their car towed.”
New garages, new fees
The new, end-of-the-line station had big shoes to fill. The previous terminus, 8½ miles south at Northgate, was the focus of commuters from Snohomish and northern King counties since light rail service began there in 2021, Jackson said.
“It used to be that Northgate would fill up by 8 in the morning,” Jackson said of the more than 1,500 stalls around the station. “So we’re seeing a redistribution of demand.”
The story of an at-capacity garage is pretty much the same at every light rail station that has one, Jackson said. Before this summer’s extension, there were only three — at Northgate, Tukwila International Boulevard and Angle Lake — and all regularly fill up with morning rush.
That number more than doubled with this summer’s light rail expansion, with new garages in Lynnwood, Mountlake Terrace and two in Shoreline, a 494-spot garage at the north Shoreline station and a structure with 500 stalls at the city’s southern station.
Though not as regularly as in Lynnwood, the three garages in Mountlake Terrace and Shoreline can reach 100% capacity, Jackson said, providing numbers from a recent Wednesday showing all were, or nearly, full. Sound Transit relies on workers, not technology, to manually count the vacant spaces.
Things could change this spring, when the agency rolls out a trial program to charge people $2 a day to park in spots that can be reserved ahead of time. Carpools and people who qualify for reduced transit fare programs will have discounted parking fees. There will be no charge to park after 2 p.m.
The parking permits will be linked to ORCA farecards, Jackson said.
While the daily fee could grow, the number of garages that have paid, reservation-based parking will definitely increase by the end of 2026. That’s after another light rail system expansion will connect the north-south 1 Line and the Eastside 2 Line at the International District/Chinatown station, as well as lengthen the 1 Line south to Federal Way and the 2 Line north to Marymoor Village.
At that point, 15 garages along the light rail lines will have paid parking that can be reserved, according to a Sound Transit presentation from February. The program is expected to bring in up to $6 million a year.
The goal is to increase ridership, according to Sound Transit documents describing the program, which the agency said will be done by making parking more available, or at least reserve-able, especially during rush hours. Other riders may opt to take the bus rather than pay for parking.
Ridership hasn’t been too much of an issue, for either Sound Transit or Snohomish County’s Community Transit, now that its bus service better connects its passengers to the Lynnwood station.
Following the Sept. 14 revision to its network, weekday boardings in the Lynnwood City Center area on Community Transit buses jumped 49%, said Martin Munguia, a spokesperson.
Sound Transit wouldn’t provide light rail ridership numbers, and said the numbers were taking longer to “vet and release” due to the changes related to the expansion.
While not a reflection of regular weekday ridership, the first weekend of the new service to Lynnwood had 71,000 boardings, according to spokesperson John Gallagher. By comparison, the 2 Line’s first weekend on the Eastside in April was 47,000.
Until the fee kicks in, Jackson said people should find other ways to get to Lynnwood.
“I suspect Lynnwood will be popular for the foreseeable future. … Ideally, if you’re not going to be there at the crack of dawn, I’d suggest taking transit to get there,” Jackson said. “I think when you start to charge people to park there, it’ll change.”
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