North Seattle’s Getting Linked This Fall

Remember all of them Light rail expansion projects? The ones who promised to make commuting easier in the office, even though that meant more than wandering from the coffee maker to the couch?

Well, one of them will be completed by the time some staff return to the offices. On October 2, the link will add three more stops north of the University of Washington: one in the U District, one in Roosevelt, and one that rises above Northgate Mall. In an announcement last Friday, Sound Transit announced a 14-minute drive from Northgate to downtown, which will be hard to beat for I-5 lane hoppers and pelotons of programmers, even with full wait between trains.

The 4.3-mile Northgate Link extension is one of many light rail extensions planned as Seattle seeks to convert a major mass transit system into a city that grew faster than any other in the 2010s. The number of tram drivers increased along with the population; By 2019, the Link carried around 80,000 drivers a day.

But with Covid-19 there was a slump in public transport trips and the office space became empty. The city center has not been so empty for a long time. Amazon recently promised a return to a “office-centric culture” for early fall, and Google and Facebook also have limited back-to-office plans in the core of the city. Whether these big tech commitments will encourage smaller employers to land leases in the center of town remains to be seen. Many workers want some version of a hybrid schedule that could affect ORCA card sales.

Others, however, may benefit from a northbound commute to Northgate. The Nordstrom Rack and Bed Bath and Beyond outposts now share the site with the Seattle Kraken headquarters and training facility. While wealthy NHL players may not carry their hockey bags on the train, other team members can certainly use them.

Voters approved the extension of the Northgate link back in 2008. Further additions are expected to bring the train to Eastside in 2023 and to Lynnwood and Federal Way in 2024. For an overview of these routes, click here.