EVERETT — Sound Transit started construction Tuesday on a massive, 360,000-square-foot bus facility in Bothell, set to become a hub for the agency’s new bus rapid transit system.
The facility, known as the Bus Operations and Maintenance Facility, will include a new maintenance building and parking structures for Sound Transit buses, including room for existing express buses and new buses built for the yet-to-open Stride bus rapid transit network. It will also include charging infrastructure for the Stride buses, which are set to be battery-electric.
The new facility will be located near the Canyon Park park and ride in Bothell. In May, Sound Transit set aside $274 million to build it.
“In the short term, the construction of this state-of-the-art, sustainably built facility will boost economic and workforce development in the area,” Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers wrote in a release Tuesday. “Longer term, Sound Transit’s Stride network will knit together major transportation corridors so either light rail or bus rapid transit are available all along the I-5 and I-405 corridors between Everett and Tacoma.”
Voters approved the construction of the facility, along with the 45-mile Stride bus rapid transit network, as part of the $54 billion Sound Transit 3 ballot measure passed in 2016. That new network will utilize three lines connecting Burien to Bellevue, Bellevue to Lynnwood and Shoreline to Bothell with buses running daily every 10 to 15 minutes.
It could be a big boost to Snohomish County travelers making the trip to Bellevue. The current bus connecting the two cities runs every 30 minutes on weekdays, once per hour hour on Saturdays and does not operate on Sundays. The new service will also cut down on commute times, the agency has said, turning a current 53-minute bus trip from Lynnwood to Bellevue into one that could take 33 to 38 minutes.
Bus rapid transit mimics some qualities of rail service without the larger overhead costs of building new trains. Community Transit’s popular Swift bus rapid transit lines already operate in Snohomish County, with more set to arrive in the coming years.
“This operations and maintenance facility will be the anchor for our upcoming 45-mile Stride bus rapid transit network, connecting 11 cities all along I-405 and SR 522 to Link light rail and to each other,” Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine wrote in a release Tuesday. “It will bring dozens of living-wage jobs to Canyon Park and Snohomish County, operating and maintaining a first-in-the-nation fleet of fast, reliable, all-electric buses.”
Stride bus rapid transit service is expected to begin by 2028. Fourteen of the system’s buses at that point are expected to be electric.
Sound Transit is also expected to expand its Link light rail system north to Everett by 2037.
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
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