The 1Line, formerly Central Link, is a
light rail line in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region o ...
, Washington, United States, and part of
Sound Transit
Sound Transit (ST), officially the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, is a public transit agency serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It operates the Link light rail system in Seattle and Tacoma, ...
's
Link light rail
Link light rail is a light rail rapid transit system serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is managed by Sound Transit in partnership with local transit providers, and consists of two non-connected lines ...
system. It serves 19 stations in the cities of Seattle,
SeaTac, and
Tukwila, traveling nearly between and stations. The line connects the
University District,
Downtown Seattle
Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by ...
, the
Rainier Valley
The Rainier Valley is a district in southeast Seattle. It is located east of Beacon Hill; west of Mount Baker, Seward Park, and Leschi; south of the Central District and north of Rainier Beach. It is part of Seattle's South End.
History
...
, and
Seattle–Tacoma International Airport
Seattle–Tacoma International Airport , branded as SEA Airport and also referred to as Sea–Tac (), is the primary commercial airport serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It is in the city of SeaTac, which ...
. The 1Line carried over 25 million total passengers in 2019, with an average of nearly 80,000 daily passengers on weekdays. It runs for 20 hours per day on weekdays and Saturdays, with
headways of up to six minutes during
peak hours, and reduced 18-hour service on Sundays and holidays.
Trains are composed of two or more cars that each can carry 194 passengers, including 74 in seats, along with wheelchairs and bicycles. Fares are calculated based on distance traveled and are paid through the regional
ORCA card, paper tickets, or a mobile app. Sound Transit uses
proof-of-payment
Proof-of-payment (POP) or proof-of-fare (POF) is an honor-based fare collection system used on many public transportation systems. Instead of checking each passenger as they enter a fare control zone, passengers are required to carry a ticket, pa ...
to verify passenger fares, employing fare ambassadors and
transit police
Transit police (also known as transport police, railway police, railroad police and several other terms) are specialized police agencies employed either by a common carrier (a transit district, railway, railroad, bus line, or any other mass tr ...
to conduct random inspections. All stations have
ticket vending machines
A ticket machine, also known as a ticket vending machine (TVM), is a vending machine that produces paper or electronic tickets, or recharges a stored-value card or smart card or the user's mobile wallet, typically on a smartphone. For instance, ...
,
public art
Public art is art in any media whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process. It is a specific art genre with its own professional and critical discourse. Public art is visually and physically acce ...
, bicycle parking, and bus connections, while several also have
park-and-ride
A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, rail system (rap ...
lots.
Voters approved Central Link in a 1996 ballot measure and construction began in 2003, after the project was reorganized under a new budget and truncated route in response to higher than expected costs. The light rail line, which followed decades of failed transit plans for the Seattle region, opened on July 18, 2009, terminating at in the
Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel
The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT), also referred to as the Metro Bus Tunnel, is a pair of public transit tunnels in Seattle, Washington, United States. The double-track tunnel and its four stations serve Link light rail trains on th ...
and near Sea–Tac Airport. It was extended south to in December 2009, north to the University of Washington in March 2016, and south to Angle Lake in September 2016. The line was temporarily renamed the Red Line until its designation was changed to the 1Line in 2021, coinciding with an extension to Northgate.
Further extensions to
Lynnwood
Lynnwood is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located north of Seattle and south of Everett, near the junction of Interstate 5 and Interstate 405. It is the four ...
and
Federal Way
Federal Way is a city in King County, Washington, United States. One of the most recently incorporated cities in the county, its population was 101,030 at the 2020 census. Federal Way is the tenth-largest city in Washington and the fifth-larg ...
are planned to open in 2024 and 2025, respectively. The
2 Line will open in 2023, connecting Seattle to the
Eastside suburbs and forming a multi-line network via its connection with the 1Line. Further expansion under
Sound Transit 3
Sound Transit 3, abbreviated as ST3, was a ballot measure during the November 2016 elections in Seattle, Washington, proposing an expansion of the regional public transit system. The measure was proposed by Sound Transit, which was established ...
will divide the current corridor between two lines, the 1Line from
Ballard to
Tacoma and the
3 Line from
Everett to
West Seattle
West Seattle is a conglomeration of neighborhoods in Seattle, Washington, United States. It comprises two of the thirteen districts, Delridge and Southwest, and encompasses all of Seattle west of the Duwamish River. It was incorporated as an i ...
.
History
Background and early transit proposals
![Seattle-Tacoma interurban railway, circa 1920s (17157602651)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e0/Seattle-Tacoma_interurban_railway%2C_circa_1920s_%2817157602651%29.jpg)
Public transit service within Seattle began in 1884, with the introduction of the city's first horse-drawn
streetcar
A tram (called a streetcar or trolley in North America) is a rail vehicle that travels on tramway tracks on public urban streets; some include segments on segregated right-of-way. The tramlines or networks operated as public transport a ...
line. The system had been replaced with a network of electric streetcars and
cable cars by the end of the decade, which spurred the development of new
streetcar suburbs
A streetcar suburb is a residential community whose growth and development was strongly shaped by the use of streetcar lines as a primary means of transportation. Such suburbs developed in the United States in the years before the automobile, when ...
across modern-day Seattle.
Interurban railways to
Everett,
Tacoma, and the
Rainier Valley
The Rainier Valley is a district in southeast Seattle. It is located east of Beacon Hill; west of Mount Baker, Seward Park, and Leschi; south of the Central District and north of Rainier Beach. It is part of Seattle's South End.
History
...
were established after the turn of the century, giving the region an intercity passenger rail system to feed the streetcar lines. The interurban system failed to compete with the increasing popularity of automobile travel, capped by the completion of
U.S. Route 99 in the late 1920s, and was shut down. By 1941, the streetcars had also been acquired by the municipal government and replaced with a
trolleybus network.
Various proposals for a
rapid transit
Rapid transit or mass rapid transit (MRT), also known as heavy rail or metro, is a type of high-capacity public transport generally found in urban areas. A rapid transit system that primarily or traditionally runs below the surface may be ...
system in Seattle, to replace the streetcar—and later bus—networks, were presented in the 20th century and rejected by city officials or voters due to their cost or other factors. In 1911, urban planner
Virgil Bogue
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...
proposed a system of subway tunnels and elevated railways as the centerpiece to a
comprehensive plan for the city, which was rejected by voters. The
Seattle Center Monorail, originally built for the
1962 World's Fair
The Century 21 Exposition (also known as the Seattle World's Fair) was a world's fair held April 21, 1962, to October 21, 1962, in Seattle, Washington, United States.[Albert Rosellini
Albert Dean Rosellini (January 21, 1910 – October 10, 2011) was an American politician who served as the 15th governor of Washington from 1957 to 1965 and was both the first Italian-American and Roman Catholic governor elected west of the ...]
in the 1960s and Seattle voters in the early 2000s. The
Forward Thrust
The Forward Thrust ballot initiatives were a series of bond propositions put to the voters of King County, Washington in 1968 and 1970, designed by a group called the Forward Thrust Committee. Seven of the twelve propositions in 1968 were successf ...
Committee of the late 1960s proposed a rapid transit system, to connect Downtown Seattle to
Ballard, the
University District,
Lake City,
Capitol Hill
Capitol Hill, in addition to being a metonym for the United States Congress, is the largest historic residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., stretching easterly in front of the United States Capitol along wide avenues. It is one of the ...
,
Bellevue Bellevue means "beautiful view" in French. It may refer to:
Placenames
Australia
* Bellevue, Western Australia
* Bellevue Hill, New South Wales
* Bellevue, Queensland
* Bellevue, Glebe, an historic house in Sydney, New South Wales
Canada ...
, and
Renton. The federal government offered to fund two-thirds of the rail system's capital costs, approximately $770 million (equivalent to $ in dollars), if $385 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) in local property taxes were approved by voters. The rapid transit initiative was placed on the ballot in February 1968, but fell short of
supermajority
A supermajority, supra-majority, qualified majority, or special majority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of more than one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority ru ...
needed to pass. A second attempt in May 1970, with $440 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) in local funding and $870 million (equivalent to $ in dollars) in federal funding, failed amid a local economic downturn caused by layoffs at
Boeing
The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and ...
. The federal funding earmarked towards the rapid transit system was granted to
Atlanta, Georgia
Atlanta ( ) is the capital city, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georgia, Fulton County, the mos ...
, forming the initial funding for the
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA, ) is the principal public transport operator in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Formed in 1971 as strictly a bus system, MARTA operates a network of bus routes linked to a rapid transi ...
's rail system.
Light rail planning
Following the failed Forward Thrust initiatives,
Metro Transit was created in 1972 to oversee a countywide bus network, and plan for a future rail system. In the early 1980s, Metro Transit and the
Puget Sound Council of Governments
The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) is a metropolitan planning organization that develops policies and makes decisions about transportation planning, economic development, and growth management throughout the four-county Seattle metropolitan a ...
(PSCOG) explored
light rail and
busway concepts to serve the region, ultimately choosing to build a
downtown transit tunnel that would be convertible from buses to light rail at a later date. The PSCOG formally endorsed a light rail plan in 1986, recommending a system be built by 2020, and include a line between Seattle and
Sea-Tac Airport, with routing alternatives that served the Rainier Valley. A 1988 advisory measure on light rail planning was passed in
King County
King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the st ...
, encouraging Metro Transit to accelerate the plan's timeline to open by 2000. In 1990, the
state legislature
A state legislature is a legislative branch or body of a political subdivision in a federal system.
Two federations literally use the term "state legislature":
* The legislative branches of each of the fifty state governments of the United Sta ...
endorsed the creation of a regional transit board composed of politicians from King,
Pierce, and
Snohomish counties, with the goal of implementing the regional transit plan. Several members of the
Seattle City Council
The Seattle City Council is the legislative body of the city of Seattle, Washington. The Council consists of nine members serving four-year terms, seven of which are elected by electoral districts and two of which are elected in citywide at-la ...
endorsed the rail plan on the condition that it pass through the Rainier Valley, by then an economically disadvantaged and majority-minority neighborhood.
The Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, later renamed
Sound Transit
Sound Transit (ST), officially the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, is a public transit agency serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It operates the Link light rail system in Seattle and Tacoma, ...
, was created in 1993 to write and present a regional transit plan for voter approval. The agency proposed a light rail network as the centerpiece of a $6.7 billion transit ballot measure, with a surface line through the Rainier Valley and tunnels between Downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, and the University District. The ballot measure failed to pass on March 14, 1995, and the light rail line was shortened to , between the University District and Sea-Tac Airport.
Voters approved the $3.9 billion package on November 5, 1996, along with increases to sales taxes and motor vehicle
excise taxes
file:Lincoln Beer Stamp 1871.JPG, upright=1.2, 1871 U.S. Revenue stamp for 1/6 barrel of beer. Brewers would receive the stamp sheets, cut them into individual stamps, cancel them, and paste them over the Bunghole, bung of the beer barrel so when ...
across the regional transit district.
Sound Transit considered several routing options during a series of public hearings and studies early into the project's
environmental impact
Environmental issues are effects of human activity on the biophysical environment, most often of which are harmful effects that cause environmental degradation. Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment on t ...
study, which adopted the name "Central Link". In 1999, Sound Transit selected the alignment for the light rail project, consisting of a line between the University District and Sea-Tac Airport, with surface segments passing through
Tukwila, the Rainier Valley, and
SoDo
Sodo ( am, ሶዶ) or Wolaita Sodo ( am, ወላይታ ሶዶ) or ( Wolaytatto: ''Wolayta Sodo Ambbaa'') is a city in south-central Ethiopia. The administrative center of the Wolaita Zone. It has a latitude and longitude of with an elevation bet ...
, and tunnels under
Beacon Hill,
First Hill
First Hill is a neighborhood in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is named for the hill on which it is located, which in turn is so named for being the first hill encountered while traveling east from downtown Seattle toward Lake Washing ...
, Capitol Hill, and
Portage Bay
Portage Bay is a body of water, often thought of as the eastern arm of Lake Union, that forms a part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle, Washington.
To the east, Portage Bay is connected with Union Bay—a part of Lake Washington— ...
.
Budget issues and delays
The Central Link project was originally planned to open in 2006 and projected to cost $1.9 billion (equivalent to $ in dollars), but the estimates were found to be unrealistic by auditors in November 2000. New executives, hired by Sound Transit to replace previous program directors, presented a revised plan with an opening date pushed back three years to 2009 and a $3.8 billion (equivalent to $ in dollars) cost estimate. Planning of the Portage Bay tunnel between Capitol Hill and the University District was suspended due to higher than expected contractor bids, attributed to difficult soil conditions. Sound Transit adopted the revised budget and schedule in January 2001, including provisions to re-study routing options between Downtown Seattle and the University District, along with a $500 million federal grant agreement to fund the construction of an "initial segment" for the project. The initial segment identified and approved by Sound Transit later that year shortened the line to , between Downtown Seattle and a
southern Tukwila station near Sea-Tac Airport. The remaining routes to the airport and University District were sent back to the planning stage, and re-organized into separate light rail projects.
In November 2001, Sound Transit approved construction of the shortened Central Link light rail project, calling for a summer 2002 groundbreaking. Property acquisition in the Rainier Valley began in March 2002, but two legal battles delayed the start of construction. In November 2002, the
King County Superior Court
The Superior Court of Washington for King County (more commonly, the King County Superior Court) is the largest trial court in Washington state. It is based at the King County Courthouse, 516 Third Avenue, in downtown Seattle, Washington. It als ...
ruled in favor of Sound Transit in a lawsuit filed by light rail opponents, alleging that it lacked the authority to shorten a voter-approved line. The approval of
Tim Eyman's Initiative 776 threatened to repeal motor vehicle excise taxes needed to fund Sound Transit's budget, but was declared unconstitutional in February 2003. Another routing change requested by the City of Tukwila, placing light rail tracks along freeways in lieu of International Boulevard, was approved by Sound Transit and the
Federal Transit Administration
The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is an agency within the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) that provides financial and technical assistance to local public transportation systems. The FTA is one of ten modal administration ...
in 2002, moving the project closer to construction.
Construction and testing
![Beacon Hill Station - under construction, May 2009](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/Beacon_Hill_Station_-_under_construction%2C_May_2009.jpg)
Sound Transit received its $500 million federal grant agreement in October 2003, and a groundbreaking ceremony was held in SoDo on November 8, 2003. Construction contracts for various segments were awarded in 2004 and 2005, coming six percent under Sound Transit's estimates,
and work began along all parts of the system. The first rails were installed on August 18, 2005, in the SoDo area;
a month later, the downtown transit tunnel closed for a two-year renovation to accommodate light rail service. Excavation of the
Beacon Hill tunnel and station began in 2005, and two
tunnel boring machines
A tunnel boring machine (TBM), also known as a "mole", is a machine used to excavate tunnels with a circular cross section through a variety of soil and rock strata. They may also be used for microtunneling. They can be designed to bore throu ...
were launched in early 2006 to bore the twin tunnels between SoDo and the Rainier Valley.
The SODO and Stadium stations were completed in May 2006, and light rail testing in the SoDo area began the following March.
Testing was extended to the re-opened downtown transit tunnel in September 2007, initially limited to weekends without bus service, and further to the Rainier Valley after the completion of the Beacon Hill tunnel in 2008. The elevated guideway in Tukwila, including crossings over major freeways and the