Graham Street Station Project
As part of ST3, Sound Transit plans to build an infill station at Graham Street between the Columbia City and Othello stations. To start the public engagement, Sound Transit opened an online open house and will host an in-person event on Tuesday, July 16th, nearby.
Area of future Graham Street station, facing north along MLK Way. Photo: Martin Pagel.The Graham Street Station had been under consideration for quite a while. I'm glad this very diverse neighborhood will be served with a separate stop as both adjacent stops are quite far away. With the help of Puget Sound Sage, the neighborhood developed a vision document in 2019. It pointed out many opportunities for this community and also a lack of transportation and the hope to get a light rail station soon. The open house is soliciting input on station access and whether the station should be placed north or south of the Graham Street intersection. As there is more commercial activity on the north side, I would favor that side.
Potential Graham Street station locations, from Sound Transit's Open House website.MLK has had a large number of traffic fatalities. Both SDOT and Sound Transit have worked on improvements. The Sound Transit System Expansion Committee will discuss further work this Thursday. I do expect that Sound Transit will apply learnings from such fatalities when planning this infill station. I hope they not only add the additional warning signs as they did at the Columbia City Station, but at least the gates they installed at East Main Station for the 2 Line. Even better, they could put Graham Street into an underpass underneath the light rail line and MLK. Then riders could use the underpass to access the station platforms without having to cross MLK and cars would not interfere with trains either though it would make it more difficult for cars to turn from Graham Street to MLK and vice versa.
Please visit the website or the open house for details. The survey on the online open house will be open until July 28.