Redmond Station Areas
On Saturday I went to see what the Redmond Link station areas and bus transfers are like. The 2 Line starter line will open in two months (April 28) as we reported, running from South Bellevue to Redmond Technology stations. The last two stations, Marymoor Village and Downtown Redmond, will open in a second phase. The full Line 2 to Seattle and Lynnwood is expected in 2025. So let's take a look. You can follow along on Metro's current Northeast area map.
Overlake VillageBus transfer walks: B 1 minute, 221 14 minutes, 226 21 minutes, 245 14 minutes. Destinations: Safeway 10 minutes, ex-Sears (currently vacant lot) 15 minutes, Goodwill 15 minutes, Trader Joe's 20 minutes. Fred Meyer and Crossroads are further.
I started my journey by taking the 550 from downtown Seattle to Bellevue Transit Center. Traffic was light so it took 32 minutes. I was in luck at Bellevue TC because the 226 was about to leave. (Otherwise I would have taken the B). The 226 took 15 minutes to 24th & 156th. From there I started my stopwatch and walked to Overlake Village station, 21 minutes. Part of that was long waits at intersections. The station is at 152nd and what would be NE 28th Street. Between 24th and 31th are three named streets : Hopper, Turing, and Shen. Turing is Alan Turing, so the others are probably computer-related too.
RapidRide B passes directly in front of Overlake Village station but the stops are a block south. Hopefully they can be relocated, since Metro has relocated stops this distance before. The nortbound street has a yellow curb stripe, which could be turned into a bus zone. However, the street is a narrow two lanes there, so cars behind the bus would have to wait for the bus to load. That wasn't a hindrance on Dexter Avenue North in Seattle, but in a more affluent car-oriented area near a P&R entrance it might generate more opposition.
I then timed the walk to 148th (route 221), 13 minutes. The path spirals up three levels to the ped-bike bridge crossing 520. This is where the green forest mural is. On the west side an off-street bike trail goes through an office park of 3-story buildings, to fast-moving 148th Avenue NE (40 mph). The nortbound 221 stop is on the right. The southbound 221 stop requires doing a button-hook and half-block backtrack to get to the crosswalk. From there I walked back to 24th and Safeway, 16 minutes. I hadn't seen the B station near the Link station (I was looking north toward 31st), so I went to the station I'd seen on 24th and took a bus north.
Bicycle access around the station is good: there's the east-west bridge and short trail, the 520 trail, protected north-south bike lanes on 152nd, and north-south bike lanes on 148th.
Is Overlake a 15-minute city" now? It's getting there with three supermarkets, a drugstore, whatever goes into the Sears lot, a bookstore (Half Price Books), office buildings, and a dozen Asian restaurants. There are so many six-story apartment buildings on 20th and north of 24th that it looks like apartment city", and more are coming in the lots between Safeway and the station. There are also several one-story strip malls ripe for development. I didn't see a medical clinic or gym. Crossroads is adjacent, and Evergreen Village (140th & Bel-Red Road) is almost adjacent.
Lake HillsI'll digress a bit to talk about my regular trip to a house 2.5 miles southeast of Overlake Village station, at 164th & Main Street in Lake Hills. This kind of trip is typical for everyone in the single-family neighborhoods east of the station who wants to take transit, like when I was growing up there in the 1970s and early 80s.
I currently take the 226 eastbound from Bellevue TC to 164th & 8th (35 minutes) and walk 8 blocks. The 221 goes right to my destination, but there's no ST Express at Overlake Village to connect to. Coming back, I walk 8 blocks downhill to 156th & Main, and take the 226 or 245 northbound to 8th, transfer to the B to Bellevue TC, and the 550 home. In the East Link restructure Final Proposal, the 226 will go to my destination, and the 221 will be replaced with a 223 that zigzags to 156th & Main (the stop I use on my return trip). A commentator says the 221 will be modified in March to serve Overlake Village Station, but I don't know if the other 223 and 226 changes will happen then or in 2025.
My current travel time from downtown Seattle to 164th & 8th is: (route 550) 30-45 minutes + (route 226) 40 minutes = 70-85 minutes.
With the Starter Line, the 550 from Seattle to South Bellevue is 22-37 minutes. The Starter Line to Overlake Village is 15 minutes. The 223 if it exists might be 10 minutes. Adding a 10-minute Link transfer, that totals 57-72 minutes, or a savings of 23 minutes (15-19%).
When the full Line 2 opens in 2025, I think Westlake-Bellevue Downtown will be 20-25 minutes. Subtracting 3 minutes for Westlake-South Bellevue, and 10 minutes for the 550+Link transfer, that results in: (Link) 20-22 - 3 - 10 + 15 minutes + (223) 10 minutes = 32-34 minutes, or a savings of 33-41 minutes (53-52%) over the current travel time.
However, if the 223 is not created in March for the starter line, and the 221 is not moved to the station, the 21-minute walk between the station and the 226 obliterates the time savings of transferring to Link. So at worst I might continue taking the 550+226 eastbound. Westbound I have more options, so I might take the 245 north to Redmond Tech station and transfer to Link and the 550. Which brings us to...
Redmond TechThe B and 245 both go into the Redmond Tech lstation bus loop, so there's no problem transferring there. I was going to walk around the station area, but Overlake Village took longer than expected and I had only an hour of daylight left, so I continued on to downtown Redmond. I'll come back to Redmond Tech in a future article.
Downtown RedmondThe B terminated at Redmond Transit Center. I couldn't see the Link station from there and didn't know where it was, so I looked it up on Google Maps, and it said it's two blocks south. So I walked two blocks south to 161st & Redmond Way, and found a grassy plaza with a sign Downtown Park". The gazebo looked like it might be an entrance to an underground station, but it wasn't. My ankle unexpectedly started hurting and I was hungry, so I had dinner at Garlic Crush across the street. I asked the cashier where the light rail station is. He pointed east and said about two blocks away but he wasn't sure if it's built yet.
After dinner I started looking again. The south side of the park is Cleveland Street, and I was impressed. This area looked European: wide sidewalks, multistory buildings without setbacks, one of the buildings looking historic, and the lighting and ambience reminding me of paintings of Paris. I started going east as the cashier had said, but I got a glimpse of another park a block south and went to investigate.
This second park is a linear east-west park called Redmond Central Connector Park. It's along Bear Creek Parkway, which is a nice small street, not at all like the awful Bear Creek 520 interchange and Fred Meyer parking lot in eastern Redmond. The park has a small concrete plaza with a blue light installation, in a shape connoting a railroad crossing. East of that is a path with narrow embedded tracks. It may have been a historic railroad switch, or an art installation imitating it.
The linear park extends one block east and two blocks west. Going west, bam!, the end of the elevated Link station is right in front of you. If the Link line continued west it would go through the linear park. So this must be a historic railroad corridor. The line will never continue west because it's really just bending back in a U shape for the last station.
I wanted to follow the track southeast to the next station, Marymoor Village, but with my sore ankle, my arthritis kicking in, and it already being dark, I just went half a block and then went back to the transit center, and took the 545 back to Seattle.
The next parts of this series will explore Downtown Redmond station further, and the Marymoor Village, Redmond Tech, Spring District, and Bel-Red station areas.
(Late edit: The East Link restructure Final Proposal is out. It looks like the B is moving away from Overlake Village station, from 152nd to 156th, where the 245 is. In early 2024, Metro will conduct select engagement with the project's Mobility Board, Partner Review Board and local cities - to ensure that the East Link Connections Final Network Proposal remains aligned with community priorities. Metro will work with project partners to reevaluate travel trends and ridership since the conclusion of engagement in May 2022 to determine if any final changes to the Final Network Proposal should be considered. Implementation of the approved East Link Connections updated bus network will begin when the full 2 Line opens, following consideration by King County Council".)