Kaczaraba: Ride to-and-from Seahawks game via Lynnwood Light Rail extension was easy, efficient

The opening of the Seahawks season is always one of my favorite weekends of the year. Now, with the addition of the Lynnwood Light Rail extension, I have even more to look forward to.

I have season tickets, and the only things I don’t like about the games are the traffic and the price of parking. The signs I saw advertised for parking were $45-$100. Yikes!

So this year, I had a transportation option I actually wanted to use. I live in Edmonds and my plan was to take the train down to the game from the Mountlake Terrance station.

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The kickoff for the game was 1 p.m. and I wanted to get in a little prefunk before. I drove to the station around 10 a.m. and Seahawks fans had already started to gather, but there was plenty of parking. I got an ORCA card, put $6 on it, and was on my way.

There was plenty of security at the station. Everyone seemed to be excited about the ride. I talked to a man who had been paying attention to the progress of the Light Rail Extension build because he lived right across from the station. He said it brought plenty of positive growth to the area.

The ride was pleasant and it took around a half hour to get to the Pioneer Square station. Taking the escalator to street level was easy to manage. When I got out, I wasn’t sure exactly where I was and there were a few sketchy people around the entrance. But in a hundred yards I was at the “sunken ship” parking lot and started my search for bars to have breakfast and a few drinks.

The game was great and, as you know, we won.

The post-game ride was what I figured would be a challenge. On the way in, people were drifting in, but on the way out, I thought thousands of fans trying to get on Light Rail at the same time would create a headache of a bottleneck.

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Despite the fact that there were several stations closer to the stadiums, I returned to the Pioneer Square station ready to fight the crowds. To my pleasant surprise, there were very few.

The second question would be how full the trains would be. After a five-minute wait, the train pulled up, full, but with room for one or two more. I got on. It was standing room only, but that was no issue.

By the time the train hit the University of Washington, I was able to find a seat. From entering the train to Mountlake Terrace was again a little over half an hour. It was easy to get out of the lot and I took my five-minute drive home.

Kudos to both Sound Transit and the Seahawks fans for making the journey fun. It reminded me of my old East Coast days in Washington D.C. and Boston. Also, the money I saved on parking went to my breakfast and screwdrivers (the drink kind).

I’d give the experience an A. Sound Transit was happy with the weekend.

“Nothing out of the ordinary with the ridership from the Seahawks game,” John Gallager of Sound Transit wrote me in an email. “There was a delay later Sunday evening due to some mechanical issues with two trains, but it was two hours post-game, so ridership had returned to normal at that point. Garages were pretty full but not at complete capacity. With any big event, the more people can pace their departure, the easier it is to keep things moving and the less packed the trains will be.”

He said Sound Transit adds extra trains during big events.

“We know that people want to savor every minute of the game or concert,” Gallager said.

Bill Kaczaraba is a content editor at MyNorthwest. You can read his stories here. Follow Bill on X, formerly known as Twitter, here and email him here.