West Seattle light rail expansion delayed another 3 years

This is not what West Seattle transit riders wanted to hear. Light rail service to the neighborhood has been delayed again.

In 2035, that’s when Sound Transit expects to open service to West Seattle.

The agency announced the three-year delay during its expansion committee meeting on Thursday. The agency said it’s going to take a lot longer than originally planned to build the train-only bridge over the Duwamish River.

In a blog post, Sound Transit said the new schedule “represents a realistic delivery timeline that the agency can confidently stand behind.”

If you weren’t here when ST-3 was approved by voters, light rail to West Seattle was promised to arrive by 2030. So if the current schedule holds, the line will officially be five years behind schedule. The original price tag was expected to be $1.5 billion. It ballooned to more than $7 billion before those costs were reined in earlier this year.

Even after $2B in cuts, the project costs more than triple the original estimate

Sound Transit trimmed $2 billion from the budget by eliminating the Avalon Station and other cost savings. The price for the 3.9-mile extension from Sodo to the Alaska Junction is now about $5 billion.

The committee also approved the allocation of $765 million to property acquisition and construction services at the meeting. That’s to help pay for the 55 properties Sound Transit needs to buy.

If you haven’t been following the plans to build light rail to West Seattle, Sound Transit plans to take the tracks from SoDo up and over the Spokane Street Viaduct with a bridge that runs parallel to the south side of the West Seattle Bridge.

The line will then burrow under West Seattle with a tunnel starting near S.W. Avalon Way. It will stay underground all the way to the Alaska Junction.

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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