Part of the reason for the station placement in Bellevue is that the mall’s owner (and a lot of other property in Bellevue) was strongly against the project and sued multiple times to stop it. Sound Transit pretty much decided to not deal with him, and so they ended up with the alignment they have now, with the station east of downtown.

My friends are big transit nerds. They both attended the opening of the new Seattle line, and one of them used it as the perfect opportunity to propose to the other. Transit; it brings people together.

Seattle resident here. Something to remember when considering the large cost of such a system is that it is a super long-term investment (in both money and environment). The land, roadbeds, tunnels and stations that constitute the bulk of the capital costs of this system will be in use far longer than our lifetimes, possibly for centuries. Think how much cheaper it is to build it today than to build it a few decades from now, which we surely would have had to. This project is not only an investment in lower commuting costs, but in restructuring our region for less asphalt, educating our citizens on the value of mass transit and building public works for the common good instead of ruthless profit, and finally weaning our civilization off automobiles to save our planet. Considering all the factors, it is an enormously good deal.

The reason there is no downtown Bellevue Station is largely thanks to Kemper Freeman who fought tooth and nail to make sure the light rail line didn’t intersect his Bellevue Square and Lincoln Town Center properties. I’m not sure if he was trying to prevent transit “riff raff” from entering his car oriented developments or if he’s just against public transit in general. Since there is no central Bellevue Station, I’m imagining that the Spring District will be the beneficiary of new transit oriented development. Love the new line ! Can’t wait until they finally get it connected to Mercer Island so I can go most places without a car. (And believe me it WON’T be Bellevue Square 😂)

The reason there's no station in Downtown Bellevue is two words: Kemper Freeman. He and his son, also named Kemper Freeman, oppose all forms of transit in "their town". He owns a large portion of Bellevue, and will do anything to keep light rail out of "his town."

Pretty amazing seeing it go from wanting monorails as its primary transit mode to how it is now.

Besides all the tech companies, it's also worth mentioning that Wilburton station serves the Overlake Medical Center campus. It's a great thing for hospitals to be served by light-rail or rapid transit because not only would healthcare workers be able to take it to work, but it increases healthcare access for a lot of people, it benefits patients by getting them to appointments, and also helps to hold down the healthcare costs by not having patients delay care until they are much sicker! A key reason Duke University stated for not wanting a light-rail system in Durham, NC was that an elevated rail line would "impact" the operations of Duke University Hospital due to vibrations, which is a completely wild thing to say when the Pink Line in Chicago goes through the Rush University Medical Center, and that doesn't impact operations! In NYC, Montefiore Medical Center's main campus in the Bronx is by Moshulu Parkway on the IRT Jerome Avenue Line, and that line doesn't impact the medical center's operations either! The reason Bellevue Downtown station, which serves the Bellevue Transit Center bus station, isn't deeper into downtown is because of Kemper Freeman, who built Bellevue Square mall, Bellevue Place, and Lincoln Square downtown. In the 1990s when the then Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority created a 69-mile light-rail system plan (it included a Bellevue/Overlake line) that was submitted to voters in 1995, it was rejected thanks to a campaign by Freeman. When the plan was changed to just between Seattle and SeaTac with express buses to Bellevue, then it was approved in 1996. However in 2002, the Freeman-backed Sane Transit group sued Sound Transit after the 1 Line was reduced, saying that the reduction required the agency to put the issue to another public vote. In 2008, Freeman campaigned against the plan to extend to downtown Bellevue and backed city council candidates in an effort to route it alongside I-405 away from population centers (thankfully it chose the current alignment instead). Freeman then sued Sound Transit in 2009, arguing that the use of the I-90 HOV lanes for light rail was illegal, but his suit was ultimately rejected. And in 2016, he spent 210K to oppose the Sound Transit 3 measure, which thankfully passed with over 54 percent. So yeah, he has a history of opposing transit and being very hateful overall

Considering Seattle is the only city I can reasonably get to by rail from Vancouver, I do feel a special connection with Seattle and I cheer for their transit wins.

I’m glad you mentioned how nice their website is! When I’m bored in class I’m always scrolling on it, it has a cool section on all the TOD projects that ST is working on and they just do a good job of explaining what is happening with the system. I’m also glad they took the decision to open half the line first rather than delaying the whole thing

to break it down for anyone unfamiliar: many of the issues with the current link network aren't due to poor planning. the low floor trains are because link originally shared the downtown tunnel with buses (locals still call it the bus tunnel). these buses were massively popular with riders around the region, and so it was politically impossible to close this tunnel to buses when the trains only served the RV and the airport. this was also at a time before ST2, so eastside, snohomish, and north king residents weren't even sure they'd be getting a train at that time. as such, the rest of the network had to be low floor because of the central tunnel. as for the RV, it was the most heavily redlined part of seattle back in the day. when Sound Move plans came out, community leaders there were upset that they were supposed to get an elevated line, while the wealthy white parts of seattle were planned to get tunnels (the stigma against elevated trains was far worse 20 years ago than it is now, obviously ST could have taken them on a trip to vancouver to see how inobtrusive they really are, but we don't live in the past). they wanted a tunnel underneath MLK which was obviously a waste of resources and financially untenable, so at grade was actually seen as a compromise at the time because there wouldn't be any "ugly pillars." the issues that arose from these decisions are obvious, but it's also important to understand why they happened in order to be able to promote realistic solutions. I also have huge issues with ST3, but that's a story for another comment lol

Much better than the LRT system Toronto is getting. Toronto needs to follow Seattle's example for transit example instead of building the glorified streetcars Metrolinx and Ford are building. This means grade-separating the LRT east of Laird Drive and routing the Eglinton East LRT through the Gatineau hydro corridor and the Lakeshore East line. The vehicles and platform also be inspired by the LA metro's gold line.

I used to live in the Seattle area, but had to move away due to rising housing costs and other work opportunities, but hopefully I’ll return sometime soon and see the Eastlink line for myself!

im moving to seattle for work next month. thanks for the hype!

I love Seattle for being essentially the US' only shining light for ambitious, high ridership transit expansions but damn am I mad every time I see those low-floor vehicles. The at grade sections could potentially be fixed in due time but the low floor architecture will make sure it will never be a true metro system. Arrgh, the wasted potential...

Damn Seattle is impressing me. Wish the nyc would be a bit more ambitious with rail extensions (especially in the outer boroughs). Instead they are trying to kill the QueensLink project, which uses already existing right of way, while the Trust for Public Land is trying to convert it into a park to block trains from running on it again :(

A regular IC or even better high speed train from Vancouver to Seattle is kind of a no brainer to me. Both cities are quite close for North American standards and both cities already have a decent regional/local train network, making international carfree trips a lot more convenient. Of course for memesake you should extend it to Vancouver WA, so you have a Vancouver-Vancouver HSR

Seeing Seattle be so ambitious really drives home how badly Portland is letting its MAX system slide. Still low frequencies, no one's even talking about a city center tunnel to expedite travel across the region, absolutely minimal TOD anywhere....If our transit's decline here is a symptom of our problems, it'd be nice to see Metro try to use it as a potential source of improvement.

We went to the grand opening. While it’s a bummer it isn’t fully connected to Seattle yet, we look forward to when it does. Lynnwood opens August 30.

Just a note of thanks, for the informative, clear and concise video!

Nice. News on Paris transportation new features: Next Monday, the extension of RER E to the West opens as a limited shuttle service at first until November. The stations look really good. About metro, Line 11 extension should open Mid June (possibly around the 15th) and Line 14 extensions should open around the 25th of June.

Exactly, it's great to see a lot of grade-separation on a new line like this! North American light-rail systems should be looking at all the crossings that the Brightline intercity rail system has in Florida and how many crashes it leads to (on top of bad FL drivers) and think to themselves, "We don't want that" for their systems! Because grade-separation leads to not only great frequencies of course, but also reduced noise, decrease in traffic congestion, as well as greater safety for its users. And as shown here on the 2 Line, the Vancouver SkyTrain, and the Chicago L, you don't need to build a whole underground system to achieve that when elevated transit can do the trick! A light-rail system with great grade-separation is the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail in NJ! Much of it is grade-separated, and this is because much of the HBLR is repurposed ROW from old railroads, though the downtown JC segment was built brand-new (which includes an elevated section). And at-grade crossings are equipped with transit-signal priority signals to automatically change traffic lights in favor of the light rail. And like the 2 Line, it goes where people wanna go, whether it's shopping at Newport mall, visiting Liberty Science Center, taking a train from Hoboken Terminal, or studying at New Jersey City University by West Side Ave! For those who don't know, the reason Lake Washington has floating bridges is because Lake Washington plunges to a depth of more than 200 feet, and the bottom is soft silt, which makes building a conventional suspension bridge with rooted towers quite difficult. Each tower would have to be about 630 feet tall, the state DOT says, twice the height of the sentinels holding up the Brooklyn Bridge! The idea of a floating bridge across Lake Washington was proposed originally in the 1920s by engineer Homer M. Hadley due to the reasons already mentioned, and so Hadley floated the idea of connecting hollow barges end-to-end. The original Lake Washington Floating Bridge opened in 1940 was renamed the Lacey V. Murrow Memorial Bridge in 1967. It closed in 1989 for reconstruction and, following a severe storm that sank portions of the old bridge, the current incarnation of the I-90 floating bridge finally opened in 1993. The Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge for the 2 Line however opened in 1989. The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge to the north is the world's longest floating bridge at 7,710 ft/2,350 m.

Apparently the delays caused by the bad concrete plinths also affect that Lynwood extension since they were going to utilize extra trains from that new maintenance base in Bellevue, but those are now trapped across the lake. Plus they still need to test trains on the bridge to make sure the rail expansion joints function properly under normal use.

I took the 545 bus to Redmond and saw parts of the link route under construction. Seeing it up close was an awesome feeling, like watching a historical shift from the post-WW2 urban calamity to this more transit oriented development. I'm hyped

Rode the train on its first day open from my house in Redmond to get to Bell Square to have dinner with my aunt. Love that this line is finally open and can't wait for it to connect into Seattle in 2025. Makes getting into Seattle a ton easier and means I won't have to burn as much gas getting there.

Cool to see Seattle's big plans! Would love to hear your reaction to Alberta's newest passenger rail announcements!

Love this, I have always heard many of my friends complaining about no transit between east and west.

As someone who lives on Mercer Island (one of the 2 stations not connected on the ELSL) It is very frustrating not to have our station connected. The delays on the remaining portion of the line are all on the west side bridge that connects Seattle-Mercer Island. As far as I can tell there is no real reason not to connect the Mercer Island station (which is finished btw) to the east section of the line... Ah well I guess we'll just have to wait another few years.

Should have been heavy rail, but LRT is better than nothing

Any new public transit is great but as a west Seattle resident I’m a little pissed we don’t get our link for at least another ten year. This means we are all bottlenecked into driving across the west Seattle bridge for most trips.

That looks impressive, thamks for explaining the project!

With all the negativity (sone of it justified) coming from local urbanists about the East Link/2 Line opening and Sound Transit's planning in general, it helps to get an outside perspective on what has been done right and what needs improvement. Thanks for showing what this means, as well as how much it's being influenced by Vancouver's SkyTrain. Looking forward to the completion of the line across Lake Washington, and also up in Vancouver for the Millennium Line extension west through the Broadway tunnel to open.

The next north extension of the central line, which adds 4 more stations up to Lynnwood opens at the end of August... I am SO EXCITED!!! And once they finish the floating-bridge part of the East Link to connect everything together, it'll be a real transit *system*. Some people pooh-pooh what the regional transit agencies are doing, but Seattle is definitely a place that you can get around effectively without a car. It's not perfect, but it is functional. A lot of their current expansion plans (Ballard, West Seattle, Issaquah, Everett, Tacoma) have pretty long timelines (late '30s), which is the only frustrating part.

I think that a nice website and good promotion of other plans has its roots 20 years ago around 2000-2003, when Sound Transit had to fight for its place with the then more welcome and wanted project of the monorail network. They got used to it and it stayed. Which is good.

When are they going to realise they should've built a proper high capacity metro with high floor trains, rather than linking trams together. When it's one line, their solution seems fine. But with all these extensions happening, it's starting to look silly having trams go such a long way.

6:32 I MUST SUPPORT THAT POINT, 100%! There are far too many urbanist who consider trams to be the only true mode of urban transportation but fact is, that only works in a smaller city and even then, they still lose against regional trains, especially if the latter are frequent enough. Of course, this is built-up and finding ROW to support heaver trains in a build-up area while upgrade light to heavy (i.e. mainline) rail is a difficult and time consuming procedure (due to large scale level crossing removal, land acquisition, removing driveways and overall difficulty of grade separation). The one thing I am surprised by the extension is just how much of it is at grade while still being grade-separated for the most part.

I was just going to mention that Overlake Village is an entire ToD that is right adjacent to MS campus. Additionally iirc the reason there is no "North" technology station as you mentioned, near 51st is that the neighboorhood adjacent didn't want the "downsides of transit". Same goes as to why there isn't a good connection into the neighborhood west of east main

i live in everett and ive been so excited watching the progress of this, getting to seattle was already made a lot better with just the northgate station so im extremely excited for the lynwood expansion this year. unfortunately i dont know if ill be in everett to see it open 10+ years from now

The craziest part of all of this is seeing an overhead map of the area and the difference in space taken up by highways right near a downtown area vs how little space is taken up by transit. Move more people on such a smaller footprint

Thanks for making this video! I was over there on opening day and see myself multiple times throughout the video!

The very fact this line will have stops on the huge Microsoft campus means ridership will be quite strong to start with.

I use the 1 Line. I cannot wait to see the 2 Line connect because the maintenance facility is going to be a game breaker because its going to add capacity to the route that's crucially needed and missed between the time we start live fire testing for Lynnwood link and the time live fire testing for the 2 link opens.

One thing buried within the documents page is, the agency is worried about passenger capacity and asking car manufacturers to think creatively in the third car procurement (which is necessary for Everett, Tacoma, Ballard, and West Seattle extensions). We may end up with double-length carsets segmented like newer trams in Europe, to get rid of unused cabs and unnecessary gaps in the middle of the train. (They have said that end-to-end trainsets are a no go because it would require too much reconstruction at the OMFs.)

The 1 Line Link Light Rail does go about 70mph on the way to the airport, between Rainier Beach and Tukwila International Blvd, when it goes along I-5. So, not much more than 60mph as you said, but it's a start!

I was wondering if you have ever heard of the saint louis metro link light rail. It doesn’t have street running and has a downtown tunnel, which is a lot better than other larger midwest cities

I do not necessarily think the lack of stations at this point in the project is a negative. The possibility for infill stations in the future especially with light rail will be a huge advantage for the system.

Coming from DC to Seattle, I was so surprised they don't have a good public transportation. I live in Tacoma and you'd hope there's an easy way to get to Seattle or the airport from Tacoma. Hopefully the train gets down here one day

Another great video, I love the diagrams! Seattle is really doing huge work, putting other cities to shame in the process. Hopefully it sparks big things. Can we be looking forwards to an Alberta Passenger Rail Master Plan video? I saw that reveal recently and I am VERY excited, not just for Albertans but for other provinces which might be influenced by this master plan to make some of their own.

Maybe it's a very basic question, but it would be great to see a video about how the clocks that indicate the waiting time for the subway work, that is, how the systems that measure how much time is left for the next subway to arrive at the station function

At the moment I spend a lot of time to draw the regional transport map of Seoul, South Korea, on Google Earth and it always is astonishing how far ahead those Asian cities are compared to cities in the US. For example how many long tunnels were built through the hills surrounding the city jut for the regional trains to nearby cities. Of course you can't compare Seoul to many American cities, because Seoul is really massive, but there are so many things American cities could learn from Seoul. I found it quite genius for example tat the APEX (airport express) line serves both major airports. I can't think of another city where you can get from one airport to the other via a single line. That allows them to work like a single even bigger airport. Seoul has such a dense network of metro station along its major roads, that you can be sure that you will find the next station just by walking along those roads a bit. That's what I would wish for the United States. A good public transport system might put Seattle on my list of cities to visit. I never rent a car on a vacation. So I really need public transport to get around a city. Los Angeles showed me how horrible it is to get around in a city with bad public transport. So many bus lines, but many of them served once an hour or less. Even people who never take public transport should be glad about each new line, because even if only 20,000 people per day use a line, those people will be off the highways. So there will be less traffic jams and car lovers will have a much faster commute.

So excited to see the new line open!

Regarding the spacing of stations, the next phase of expansion includes three "infill" stations on the line through Seattle. So there is the opportunity to modify this in the future.

You should check out the tram system in Budapest, Hungary!

I truly think Seattle is on the way to having the best transit system in the US (outside of New York ofc). They have a plan and its just a matter of time for it all to come to be. My own gripe is I think the link might do almost too much and its speed limited due to being both a inner city and inter regional transit option. That being said its great for shorter distances

Nice to see Seattle growing transit. It'd be great to see LA, Portland, and Seattle eventually get to the level of service San Francisco has, maybe in my lifetime. Unfortunate to see that Seattle has the same issue with building super long light rail lines like we do here in LA. Grade separated light rail seems like a jack of all trades compromise that might not work out in the long term, but if that's all they can do from price/NIMBYs/etc. then I guess we have to take what we can get.

Watching US cities get new rail lines while I live in Tampa which is so ass backwards makes me jealous

Reminds me of The DLR

Nice work.

Reese ❤ you’re so handsome. I love listening to you spill your heart out about transit

Glad to see that this line is open. I visited Seattle and Vancouver a year ago and it amazed me how people in two different cities can react towards a new transit line. When I was in Vancouver a friend told me that the real estate prices were going up because a new SkyTrain line was planned to go near that neighborhood. And my friend in Seattle told me people in Bellevue were protesting because they worried that the East Link would bring homeless people from Downtown Seattle to Bellevue...

If only the two lines can connect, imagine all the additional commercial activity that can be generated.

That's exciting, I wish we had decent transit in Kentucky, all Lexington has are buses. I wish we kept our WWII era trolleys.

Riding the light rail working downtown, my biggest complaint for sure was the lack if express trains

Reece I love your map animations. How do you do them? I’d love to learn to do that.

I went to the opening celebration, and Sound Transit + Bellevue really know how to throw an event. It's was super fun and so many people showed up. I got a bunch of free stuff, including a poster and a 2 Line hat. Also, a picture with Luigi!

Microsoft's campus has over a hundred buildings on it...

Love taking the train

I wonder if you could make a video specifically focusing on how Seattle can improve it’s light rail and upgrade it to a metro. I know you made a video like that already but I was wondering if you could go i to specifics.

I lived in downtown Seattle (First Ave, near the ferry docks) from 1992 to 2013. I never owned a car the entire time I lived there, by my own personal choice. I was 100% dependent on public transportation, again by choice. I was able to get everywhere I needed or wanted to go, from north, south, east and west, all in a fairly timely manner and quite inexpensively. The options for using the greater Puget Sound public transportation systems is staggering. Granted, public transportation is not everyone's cup of tea, for whatever reasons, but as someone who ONLY used public transportation for over 20 years, not owning a car becomes it's own (and very liberating) lifestyle. I left Seattle due to being priced out of the housing market but have hopes that maybe someday I can move back.

Ok right off the bat, you made the mistake of saying that downtown Bellevue is walkable. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Other than that, it was pretty good. I was there on opening day and it was packed. It will be heavily used once the connection to Seattle opens.

Good to see new tracks and stations being built in Seattle. However, those short vehicles are definitely trams (or light rail if you will), not trains. Also, the alignments, low number of stations and at-grade crossings leave a lot to be desired. However, it's better than nothing.

Can't wait for it to expand across the bridge. The 550 is always full and late. And driving to Bellevue SUCKS.

as unfortunate as it is that there is no middle-of-bellevue train station, I always look at the upside and in this case I LOVE the walk from the station to just about anywhere in Bellevue, even if it takes 20 min.

I visited Bellevue twice (2013 and 2019) when my family and some other groups visited Seattle, definitely remembering going to the Microsoft headquarters. If we plan on going the same route the third time, hopefully we could take the 2 line to visit all these places.

I wish I could watch a Bellevue resident's face as you refer to their city as a suburb. 🤣

Moved from Metro Vancouver to Redmond. Kind of feeling the density of east side of Seattle (Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, etc) is a lot lower comparing to Vancouver. Most of this 2 Line (and probably future lines as well) is going along the highways, which makes the stations far from many of the destinations. Luckily Bellevue Downtown isn't that large and it takes about 10min to walk to Bellevue Square from the station and 15min to Downtown Park. Anyhow, I hope more businesses will develop near the stations and people's car oriented mindset could start to change at some point of time.

Forever dreaming of the west links expansion to tacoma being complete theyve put a streetcar in near me to the transit hub but then u gotta take a bus into seattle still

I can't tell which is growing faster, RMTransit or transit itself. Think about it.

Now i have a picture i understand why the Seattle metropolitan area is planning big. They have to get real or suffocate from automotive congestion. The transit choices are a start. I will be curious to see what happens in 10 years and how much better it gets.😊

East Link Starter Line is a light rail system that operates on a graded and non graded corridor.

what sound transit could do is buy berlin s-bahn type trains, thats have really short carriages that can be designed to fit around sharp corners the light rail was designed for. once you expand tunnels slightly, 100% grade separate, extend platforms to ~200 meters for 10 car sbahn trains, and add passing sidings for express trains, you just transformed LINK! and grade crossings on the outer sections could be fine with lower frequencies too. its also worth noting that sounder needs investment as well. it should be running all day and with way more stations; running at least every 15 minutes on local and express trains (8tph, 4 local 4 express). buy some low floor FLIRTs or talents for local trains and buy modern locomotives for express trains, as well as some new bilevels. side tangent: designing a well-sized sbahn carriage that can also fit around tight track corners is totally possible: the buffalo metrorail runs pretty big (though very ugly and old) 20.37 meter long, or 66' 10" light rail vehicles, that seem to be able to fit around the tight bends of light rail. ~20 meters is generally the size of sbahn carriages, even shorter in some cases, so designing an sbahn train that has decent sized cars as well as the ability to round tight corners is 100% possible; these trains would probably have noticeably, though not too big, larger gangways to fit around the tighter corners, but they would defiantly be better than the low floor LRVs, especially when arranged into 8, 10, or even 12 car trains!

6:20 : The locations of the downtown Bellevue stations are mostly terrible. One is at the top of a good-sized ridge! (downtown station) To be fair, it is near the transit centre (all busses go through there), but also to be fair the transit centre has the same location problem. For example, visit the mall, you have to walk for 10 minutes each way and up a steep hill on your way back. There is also a lack of frequent transit options within Bellevue downtown, with the most convenient being the 550, which costs you an extra 50c for a 4 minute ride. At least you relax on the bus and not personally have to wait every 100-200 m for a light that has a 4 minute cycle time. The on-demand service (cricket) is only useful when going home due how busy it is/wait times to get picked up. The other station (east main) is on the other side of that ridge in no-mans-land by the highway, and just serves a few hotels? (not well, they all have giant parking lots). I suspect it will be the least-used station, especially among the starter ones. The population+office density is definitely skewed east; east of bellevue way/the mall, but both stations loose about half their catchment area to the highway, which is insane.

Next step transit oriented developments 😎

I noticed you mentioned San Diego and you also have some SD Trolley signs on your wall. Do you have a video planned on SD? Our transit needs serious help

The system should run from Lynnwood to SeaTac, going down both sides of Lake Washington and across both bridges. 520 should have been designed with that expansion in mind.

can you please make a video about the Bucharest metro?🙏🙏🙏

I find it odd how you say that the distances between stations on East Link is too great. Just take a look at your home city Vancouver and it's Skytrain network. Almost all stations on Skytrain are over a kilometre apart with the average station spacing at 1.8 km or 1.1 miles. The longest distance between any two stations on Skytrain is over 5 km which occurs between Burquitlam and Moody Centre. In fact the trip between these two stations crosses through three cities! From Burnaby into Coquitlam and then into Port Moody. This should give you a sense of what wide station spoacing actulally looks like. The longest distance on East Link pales in comparison to Skytrain.

I’m surprised you say at the end that Seattle has the best transit expansion program in the US. What makes LA’s light and (potentially autonomous) heavy rail expansions miss the cut?

i feel like one day there rail line has lotss of potential for automation

VTA has the infrastructure, but enough people don’t use it because it doesn’t integrate with the regional rail. 12 minute frequencies are really good by US standards. But the trains are empty.

There are certain areas of Bellevue that are walkable, but for a gridded city there are a surprising number of impediments to full-city walkability. The entire area is car-depending from the ground up. Most walkable areas are only a few city blocks, specifically curated for shoppers who parked their cars in nearby parking garages. It feels more like a series of open-air shopping centers than a real walkable city.

There have been several pontoon bridges around the world that have had trainlines, there was one in Stockholm that was built in 1914 (there is now a high bridge that were built in 1934)

Bellevue South station reminds me a lot of Heng On Station on Hong Kong's MTR--neither have mezzanines but both are equally substantial in terms of station structure.

Nice

Mercer's getting a station? Last time I checked in (which was admittedly a while ago) there was a proposal to skip that one because they were being all NIMBY about both the project as a whole and the prospect of losing their special HOV freeway exit.

So can should it be called an S-Bahn or Stadtbahn?

Finally

Seattle seems to be trying to make up for the lost time after the monorail project collapsed two decades ago

Twenty years ago the Sund Tra nsit bus line from Seattle-Everett was the fastest way to get to Everett. Despite the expansion of light rail, light rail together with a transfer to a bus still takes longer than that direct route. Perhaps when light rail makes it to Everett it will be faster than a bus route, but if so it wont be by much.

Sound Transit should go completely Chicago style in Rainier Valley. Crossing gates, signal override, and the only signal trains receive is conformation the intersection is blocked. No more | -- signals holding a train up! Wouldn't stop all car crashes but people are less likely to run a red and hit a train vs going through a barrier gate

I hope the TOD comes soon because at the moment it seems like this line connects mostly parking lots and car dealerships. That's not to say that Sound Transit doesn't have great feeder bus services, but I'd love for transit to connect to destinations instead of transfer points.