SEATTLE — The Sound Transit board of directors unanimously approved a route Thursday to take Link light rail to Lynnwood and Mountlake Terrace by 2023.
The 8.5-mile addition would extend service to the Lynnwood park-and-ride lot from Northgate. Trains would stop along the way at the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center, and in Shoreline at NE 185th Street and 145th Street.
The whole addition would open at once, rather than in stages.
Edmonds Mayor Dave Earling, a Sound Transit board member, called the project “a vital lifeline for commuters tired of dealing with traffic and congestion along I-5.”
“We’re finally fixing the alignment, which has been a long-waited event,” Earling said.
Voters in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties first voted in 1996 to authorize Sound Transit to build a transit system that would one day bring light rail to regional population centers, including Everett. The funding mechanism is the Regional Transit Authority, which collects taxes on retail sales, motor vehicle excise and rental car sales.
Voters in 2008 authorized a separate $17 billion sales-tax measure that includes the extension now being planned to Lynnwood. It’s also paying to extend light rail service east to Bellevue and Redmond’s Overlake neighborhood and south to Kent and Des Moines.
It’s likely to take nearly 20 years or longer from now for light rail to reach Everett — some 40 years after the original vote. That schedule depends in part on whether voters approve an expansion proposal called Sound Transit 3 or ST3 that could reach the ballot in 2016.
Construction on the Lynnwood extension is expected to start in 2018 and cost up to $1.7 billion.
When complete, a light-rail commute from Lynnwood to downtown Seattle should take 28 minutes, Sound Transit estimates. By 2035, up to 74,000 riders are expected to use the line each weekday.
The route approved Thursday would run along the east side of I-5 from Northgate through Shoreline. It would cross to the west side of the freeway after the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center, where an elevated light-rail station would be built over 236th Street SW.
The board favored a design to accommodate two future stations along I-5 at 220th Street SW in Mountlake Terrace and at NE 130th Street in Seattle, without impacting service during construction. With no money available, it’s unclear when those stations would get built.
The plan calls for building an elevated light-rail station and a 1,300-stall parking garage at the Lynnwood park-and-ride lot at 20100 48th Ave. W.
The route would take up parts of three Edmonds School District properties, including two where old schools were torn down in Mountlake Terrace: the Evergreen Elementary site, south of the transit center, and the Melody Hill Elementary site, on 220th Street.
The train tracks also would cross over a portion of property on 52 Avenue West where the school district plans to build a new bus maintenance and parking facility. District and Sound Transit staff have been cooperating to avoid conflicts on the property, said Amanda Ralston, a district community relations specialist.
The route also could affect three residential properties at 212th Street SW and five more south of the former Melody Hill school site, according to an environmental impact statement released in early April. In Lynnwood, the project would likely displace nine businesses with approximately 60 employees, but no homes. It would affect wetlands near Scriber Creek, but avoid Lynnwood’s Scriber Creek Park.
Sound Transit has notified all of the property owners who could be affected, agency spokesman Bruce Gray said.
Construction crews are now building the light-rail segment between Husky Stadium and Northgate, scheduled to open in 2021.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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