What to expect when you try the Eastside’s eight light rail stations

Thousands of people will satisfy their curiosity this weekend at Sound Transit’s eight Eastside stations, finally ready for service 16 years after voters approved light rail for Bellevue and Redmond, along with an upcoming north line to Lynnwood and a south line to Federal Way.

The 6-mile East Link Starter Line, which opens at 11 a.m. Saturday, goes from South Bellevue Station near Interstate 90 to the Redmond Technology Station at Microsoft headquarters, for a 20-minute trip from end to end. A promised connection to Seattle, over the I-90 bridge, is behind schedule. So for at least another year and a half, this is a truly local line.

Trains on the 2 Line will arrive every 10 minutes, seven days a week from 5:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.

Those who’ve used the 1 Line in Seattle will notice how easily they can enter and exit the 2 Line stops, which are all outdoors and surrounded by new sidewalks. Three stations provide walk-bike bridges, and six have curbside lanes where friends and for-hire drivers can drop off train passengers.

Fares will be charged opening weekend, at normal rates of $2.25 or $2.50 adult fare, depending on distance. Senior, disabled, and low-income people with discount passes pay $1. Youth ages 18 and under ride transit free in Washington state.

Here are some highlights of each of the eight stations, and a few shortcomings:

South Bellevue

This is the end of the 2 Line, until trains cross Lake Washington to Seattle and Lynnwood, by late 2025 or so. It’s more of a connecting point than a destination.

Sound Transit built a 1,500-stall parking garage, here, near the junction of Interstate 405 and I-90, to replace the former 500-stall lot that overflowed with people switching from cars to buses.

The pandemic and work-from-home broke that habit, so the new garage currently houses fewer than 50 daily parkers, while the freeway buses lost half their passengers. That’s a bad omen, as Sound Transit hopes people will transfer from the starter trains to I-90 buses. Still the station might prove a popular transfer point to stadium concerts and ballgames in Seattle.

South Bellevue is the nearest place anybody coming from Renton can hop a train to Bellevue or Redmond, an efficient option for intra-Eastside commuters or people heading to events at Meydenbauer Center, or to Marymoor Park when light rail reaches downtown Redmond in early 2025.

Besides the Mercer Slough and historic Winters House, destinations at the station are few. The leafy Enatai neighborhood is isolated on the far side of Bellevue Way, but its beach park is suitable for a combined train-bike excursion. The city won’t be adding apartments here.

Transit users can hear frogs croak at dawn, mixed with freeway noise. There’s even a wheelchair ramp on the garage roof, to gawk over the edge at wetlands.

East Main

This station reaches blocks of new apartments on the south edge of downtown, and some underdeveloped lands next to I-405.

Boarding platforms are just a few steps from the sidewalk entrance, facing 112th Avenue Southeast near Main Street. People walking from Old Bellevue can cut through the station’s new park, rather than walk the entire corner of Main and 112th.

Concrete walls block noise but also prevent direct entry (except emergency vehicles) from the adjacent Surrey Downs neighborhood, which fought against light rail impacts for years. Bellevue High School students can walk north to Main or the corner park, then backtrack a little. There’s a three-minute parking zone to drop off travelers, on southbound 112th, but it’s nerve-wracking to pull in and out of speedy traffic.

Guests from the Red Lion Inn or Hilton Hotel might ride trains. Clientele will increase someday if the two-hotel property, east of 112th and Main, gets redeveloped. Wig Properties says it’s recruiting tenants for a “high energy village atmosphere” ranging from entertainment to medical care, restaurants and housing, with the tallest buildings 300 feet or higher, lead partner Leshya Wig said.

Bellevue Downtown

This station brings transit riders directly into the tall downtown core where 15,000 residents live and 55,000 employees work.

After three years of arguments over track alignment, Sound Transit and Bellevue settled on a shallow half-mile tunnel skirting the east edge of downtown, where Northeast Sixth Street meets 110th Avenue Northeast.

The hillside station sits just outside the tunnel’s north portal. It requires only a stairway walk down from the street-level plaza to the train level — somewhat like International District/Chinatown Station in Seattle, and quicker than the 90- foot escalator descent at University of Washington Station.

The plaza is sheltered by an awning and it faces the rising sun, trains arriving from Wilburton Station, a dog park, and scissors-shaped train switches next to I-405.

Light rail won’t stop next to Bellevue Square Mall and Lincoln Square, mainly because a multimile tunnel there along Bellevue Way, or even within four blocks, was deemed early on to be unaffordable. To reach the mall, workers and shoppers will walk six blocks west from the train station, along the landscaped Sixth Street pedestrian promenade, part of Bellevue’s Grand Connection.

Still, many of downtown’s offices — in government, utility, finance and software — are within a quarter-mile walk to trains. Bellevue’s bus station, equipped with “walk all ways” signals, sits alongside. An Amazon tower called Bellevue 600 is under construction, along with upper stories of the company’s Sonic tower one block over.

Wilburton

This stop was originally named “Hospital Station” to match its prime destination, the 3,400-employee Overlake Medical Center. Health care workers are a promising all-day clientele.

Wayfinding signs are lacking or unclear to enter the station at 116th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Eighth Street, at least for now. People walking from Overlake, Kaiser Permanente and small medical buildings should look for a walkway entrance off 116th, next to Whole Foods. This unmarked passage leads east into the station.

A walk-bike bridge along King County’s 42-mile regional Eastrail project will open in June, connecting Wilburton Station to lands south of Northeast Eighth Street that city leaders wish to flood with future housing. Bridge art honors the site’s past as a produce warehouse for Japanese American farmers, before the U.S. government shipped them to incarceration camps during World War II.

That bridge doesn’t connect to train platforms. Instead, people will descend stairs or a ramp from the bridge, then walk into Wilburton Station at street level. A higher trail bridge would have required a steep slope, while a lower profile would preclude the trains’ level trestle across I-405.

RapidRide B Line buses on Eighth, and a drop-off loop for car passengers, provide more connections. A few transit customers might walk from condos, restaurants or offices surrounding tiny Lake Bellevue.

Spring District

Trains stop at a trenched station, one staircase below the entrance and bike lanes on Northeast Spring Boulevard at 120th Avenue Northeast.

Bellevue and the Wright Runstad development company designed a 16-block neighborhood to mesh with rail transit. Governments spent millions extending roads in this former light-industrial area northeast of downtown, where Coca-Cola and Safeway distribution centers still operate.

Meta leases or owns several office buildings, though many floors remain vacant. Nearby is the Global Innovation Exchange run by the University of Washington with Tsinghua University of Beijing and eight affiliate schools. Leisure life revolves around the Bellevue Brewing Co. pub.

A station crosswalk and walk-bike path lead to an Eastrail segment passing the train maintenance base and a whimsical sculpture of 45 giant bent nails. The trail continues to Kirkland, with a Redmond spur near the sculpture. For now, Bellevue offers unprotected bike lanes but no trail south to Wilburton Station.

BelRed

There’s still a “middle of nowhere” vibe at this stop where new Spring Boulevard meets 130th Avenue Northeast, flanked by a concrete-truck yard, auto repair shops and Sound Transit’s 300-stall commuter parking lot.

Development is beginning, namely a 249-unit apartment block named Ondina and 298-unit Bellevue Station, along with new sidewalks.

As warehouse and light-industrial jobs waned, their buildings became havens for indoor tennis, badminton, skiing, kung fu, CrossFit, table tennis, fencing and boxing, along with music and crafts business. T-Mobile’s 5G Hub is neighbor to the Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Francia Russell Center. About 60 “creative organizations” and the city formed a BelRed Arts District.

Four surface crossings create potential crash risks. The busiest is a five-lane block of 130th where train tracks cross the roadway where drivers stop for a traffic signal. (Sound Transit says signals will be timed to release traffic before the trains arrive.)

Pedestrians will brave fewer traffic hazards here than multicrosswalk Othello or Columbia City station intersections in Seattle, and unlike those, BelRed Station is equipped with crossing-arm gates for both pedestrians and motorists.

Overlake Village

To find this stop next to Highway 520, just east of the 148th Avenue Northeast exit, watch for the wavy, charcoal-colored walk-bike bridge. The covered bridge’s interior displays 156,000 green, hand-painted rectangles creating a pixelated forest scene.

It’s a strategic site because of Redmond’s growth ambitions. The city’s plan calls for 10,000 housing units in flatlands next to the station, by the 2040s. Sound Transit’s leftover construction site off Da Vinci Avenue Northeast will become 333 units of subsidized housing.

Land is abundant at the Redmond-Bellevue border, where a giant Sears store was demolished, while many other empty or single-story parcels are available for redevelopment.

The bridge connects uphill tech offices to new apartments below that surround Esterra Park. A new highway exit from eastbound 520, part of the 148th Avenue Northeast interchange, lets drivers steer through roundabouts toward the station’s drop-off zone. Look for a “T” sign.

Redmond Technology

A bridge featuring white canopies connects the east and west campuses of Microsoft, where 47,000 people work, and hundreds are already crossing at noon hour. The nine peaks were inspired by the Cascade Mountain skyline, said Barb Wilson, the company’s Puget Sound government affairs director.

The ornate 50-foot-wide overpass above Highway 520 qualifies as a destination. There are planters with ferns and evergreens, wheelchair-accessible benches, gaps for sunbreaks to shine through, bike lanes divided from the walkway, and even vortexes in the canopies, so that runoff spills into small gardens. Traffic noise will discourage people from lingering for long.

Microsoft funded the bridge but isn’t divulging the final costs, which surpass the original $33 million announced last decade. The crossing continues past 156th Avenue Northeast into east campus, making it a workforce crossing with transit benefits.

“We care deeply about climate, we care about shifting people from single-occupancy travel to transit options,” Wilson said. “And I think this tool will be a game changer in terms of shifting Microsoft’s commute and travel for employees.”

Station use should soar in 2025, when a 2 Line extension arrives from Marymoor Village and downtown Redmond.

A 300-stall parking garage includes bus bays for King County Metro and the private Microsoft Connector. A passenger drop-off road ends next to Dote Coffee Bar, which provides big screens of public and private transit arrivals.

It’s unknown whether this station will reduce Microsoft’s regional traffic footprint, or demand for commuter garages. Trains follow linear corridors, but commuter housing tends to be dispersed, like a cloud.