Want to catch the Blue Angels from a new angle? Hop on the light rail

The Blue Angels will take to the skies for Seafair on Thursday, and for the first time during their practices and shows, there will be light rail trains rolling across I-90.

If you didn’t live here before 2019, the Blue Angels’ practices and shows created some of the worst congestion you could imagine. Before the F/A-18 Super Hornets could take flight from Boeing Field, the state had to shut down I-90 under their flight paths. That meant the entire region would shut down.

Since the first practice round was around 11 a.m., that’s when I-90 would close. About an hour later, I-90 would reopen, only to close again about an hour later.

Traffic never recovered.

Before the 2019 show, the Blue Angels moved the center point of their show a little to the south. That meant that I-90 no longer needed to shut down when the planes were in the air.

Why the Blue Angels moved their flight path in 2019

Drivers always used to ask me why the freeway would shut down. It wasn’t about cars running into each other on the bridge because they were distracted. It was for the pilots. They used portions of the bridge as waypoints to count out their maneuvers. Traffic was shut down to prevent any distractions in the cockpits.

When you’re only 18 inches from another plane at 700 miles an hour, distraction is not a good thing.

But eliminating that distraction wasn’t the only reason for the change. It was to prepare for upcoming shows when light rail was running across the lake. The change in 2019 was made in preparation for light rail over the lake in 2023. As a Seafair spokesperson told me back then, “we wanted to have the Blue Angels get used to a new flight path.”

Three years of delays later, and now we have our first Blue Angel flights with trains rolling across the lake.

Listener Keith asked me whether train service would be disrupted this weekend because of the flights. Sound Transit confirms that it will not be impacted, and 2-Line trains will run as scheduled.

But this has also created an interesting opportunity. Sound Transit is curious how many people might catch a train across the lake just to watch part of the show. It is hoping riders take pictures and video from the trains and share them.

It will be hit-or-miss on the timing, but it could be a fun way to catch the show.

Chris Sullivan is a traffic reporter for KIRO Newsradio. Read more of his stories here. Follow KIRO Newsradio traffic on X.

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