Lynnwood Link 60% Design
Aerial view of NE 145th Street Station (Sound Transit)
Lynnwood Link, which we last saw in 30% design last November, has now reached 60% design. An open house for 145th and 185th Stations was held on May 24. Mountlake Terrace Station will have an open house June 28th, and Lynnwood Station sometime in the fall. Travel times from Lynnwood are featured on the project page: 20 minutes to UW, 28 minutes to downtown, 60 minutes to Sea-Tac airport, and 60 minutes to Overlake Transit Center. The rest of this article will focus on 145th and 185th Stations.
ST has a new kind of online open house site at lynnwoodlink.participate.online. Each page has renderings above and a comment form below so you can refer to the information as you type. There's a row of circles below the image; be sure to click all the circles to page through all the renderings. The comment period will be open through the Lynnwood open house. Unfortunately the site doesn't have all the information that was on the slides and posters in the Shoreline open house. That should be motivation to attend future open houses.
145th Station still has the bus turnaround loop at 148th. My biggest concern is there's only one lane into the station for both buses and cars. Both will turn left into the station and then on for a half-block before they separate, buses to the turnaround, cars to the garage, and other cars to a separate turnaround to drop people off. I'm concerned about cars getting in the way of buses there, and wondering if they need separate lanes. However, more lanes means more asphalt and ugliness.
Aerial view of NE 185th Street Station (Sound Transit)
185th Station has a bus turnaround too but it's right next to 185th Street. The parking garage is on the other side of the freeway (the west side), which makes the station itself more compact. A passenger drop-off is just east of the bus turnaround, adjacent to 5th Avenue NE. All this makes 185th Station a better design than 145th. That's good because it's closer to Shoreline's population center, but I wish 145th Station had a similar design too.
Mary Lucking's artwork for 185th Station is magnificent: a bird and tree theme to represent the people in the area. People come home to their houses; birds come home to their trees. One might note that trees are multifamily, so it may be an (un)intentional allusion to the future apartments. For 145th Station, Buster Simpson has a water rivulet theme, showing symbolically how water flows from the roof down to Roland Bog and Thornton Creek.
The station names now have a list of finalists from previous public input. The board will make a final decision this summer. The finalists for 145th Station are "Jackson Park", "South Shoreline", and "Ridgecrest". For 185th: "Shoreline" and "North Shoreline". For Mountake Terrace: "Mountlake Terrace" and "Ballinger". For Lynnwood: "Lynnwood Transit Center" and "Lynnwood". I prefer Ridgecrest, Shoreline, Mountlake Terrace, and Lynnwood.
The city of Shoreline is planning a multi-use trail along the track from 205th to 145th. I wondered if it could be extended further south to Northgate. Between 145th and 125th the freeway comes right next to 5th Avenue so a trail would be in the sidewalk. A trail could remain on 5th down to Green Lake. But the official plan is only in Shoreline.
Lynnwood Link is planned to open in 2023. It depends on a $1.1 billion federal grant which is now uncertain because Trump's budget request eliminated transit grants, but Congress has not yet written the 2018 budget so it's unclear whether that will stand. Sound Transit has not said what it might do if the grant doesn't come through.
Metro's long-range plan has a large number of feeders. One Frequent route will connect 145th and 185th Stations to Mountlake terrace, Meridian Avenue, and Greenlake. 145th Station will have 522 BRT and Frequent routes to to Shoreline Community College; 35th Ave NE and U-Village, and in 2040 8th Ave NW and Magnolia. 185th Station will have Swift to Everett and Frequent routes to Richmond Beach, 15th Ave NE and UW Station; and Shoreline Community College, Ballinger Way, and Kenmore.
Lynnwood Link is particulart interesting because the area has so much potential with its intact street grid, close-in location, room for multifamily housing, a Link travel time competitive with ST Express, and two Link lines giving double frequency. If this area reaches even half its potential it will be a major asset in the region and people will be grateful it was done.