Delayed by bad soil, Federal Way light rail finally opens this week

Eight more miles of light rail tracks will open to the public this weekend when service expands from Angle Lake south to downtown Federal Way Saturday morning.

Public transit advocates have been waiting for service to Federal Way since it was approved by voters under ST 2 in 2008. Then came the housing bubble and the Great Recession. Plans for the extension were postponed and then folded into the new ST 3, approved by voters in 2016.

King County Councilmember Pete von Reichbauer, who represents south King County, admitted at a celebration earlier this year that he never thought this would happen.

“South King County’s always felt it’s the poor stepchild when it comes to transportation,” he said. “This is the beginning of being accepted into the full family, whether we have recreational needs, going to the airport, going to work, or going to see friends. This is finally linking South King County with the rest of King County.”

This extension was supposed to open in 2024, but Sound Transit ran into soil issues along the route. The trains were supposed to run at grade along I-5, but a landslide erased those ideas. The project was delayed as engineers found a solution, which ended up being an elevated track through the problem area.

Sound Transit then further delayed the opening until 2026, but chose to speed it up with the continuing problems getting across the lake on I-90.

CEO Dow Constantine still tried to sell this as ahead of schedule

“The fact that we’re able to deliver it early and come in a half billion dollars under budget is especially reassuring,” Constantine said. “We have a lot of challenges ahead, but we know that with each of these extensions, we’re getting better and better at delivering what the people voted for.”

As for the fuzzy math Constantine pushes on this project, the original price tag was pitched at $2-2.5 billion. It had ballooned to almost $3 billion before settling near the top of the original estimates.

And let’s not forget that, as a whole, Sound Transit is running tens of billions of dollars over budget with no solid plans for filling the gap going forward, especially when it comes to extending service to West Seattle and Ballard.

But for all its problems, adding three new stations and service to this area is a good thing.

“This is going to be a very big deal for our South King County cities, all the people who work or play in other parts of the region,” Constantine said.

Light rail riders will have to wait at least another decade before the line extends to the Tacoma Dome, something approved by voters in 2016, which is a sore spot for board member and Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus.

“I’m not the most patient of people, so I’d like to see it all done now, but it takes time, it takes money, and it takes effort, and it takes vision,” she said. “I’m really proud to be on the board that has the vision of the three to make sure that there is mobility around this region.”

The Tacoma Dome link is still in the planning phases, with service scheduled to start in 2035.

As for light rail over Lake Washington, test trains are supposed to start going across the floating bridge soon. Service from Seattle to Bellevue was supposed to start in the middle of 2023, but Sound Transit had to rip up the original tracks because of flaws in the supports. It is believed to start service sometime early next year, which would put it almost three years behind schedule.

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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