Category / sound transit

by Adron

Here’s the straight‐up status on Sound Transit’s Link expansion into Redmond

Published April 26, 2025 • by Adron Hall

You’d think after eight years of planning and broken promises we’d be cruising into downtown Redmond and gliding across I-90 into Seattle by now. Instead, we’re stuck in a never-ending limbo of concrete re-works, ribbon-cuttings, and “coming soon” bulletins. Here’s the unvarnished status on both fronts.

1. Rolling Into Redmond: Sort-of — But Not Yet Downtown

The first phase of East Link finally blasted into Redmond Technology Station on April 27, 2024, hauling in a whopping 35,000 riders on day one. That stretch—running between South Bellevue and the Overlake Transit Center site—proved we can build tracks and run trains when we really want to.

But if you live, work, or play in downtown Redmond, you’re still stranded on the bus. The Downtown Redmond Link Extension adds two stations—Marymoor Village (just south of Marymoor Park) and Downtown Redmond (in the retail/core area)—but they won’t swing open until Saturday, May 10, 2025. Expect a 10:30 a.m. ribbon cutting at the new Downtown Redmond Station, with “regular” service kicking in around noon.

Construction kicked off back in October 2019. Crews hustled through track work, systems-integration testing (including late-night “live-wire” trials last fall), and the usual quota of quality-control headaches. Despite Covid slow-downs and a concrete-truck strike pushing timelines, finishing this last half-mile of track is finally in sight—just in time for summer traffic to remind us why we needed rail in the first place.

2. Crossing the Lake: East Link Over I-90 — Still Tethered to Shore

Meanwhile, on the western end of East Link, the segment that actually gets you from Seattle to Bellevue (via Judkins Park and Mercer Island) has been inching along even slower. The bones of the project—10 miles of track, floating-bridge foundations, and two new stations—were supposed to open in 2023. Instead:

  • Live-Wire Testing: Crews energized the overhead wires on the I-90 floating bridge in October 2024, complete with test trains rumbling across the lake under cover of night.
  • Defective Plinths: Remember the concrete “plinths” that cracked under the rails? Fixing those ate up most of 2024. Contractors hit 80% completion on the rebuild back in the summer, but slip-ups and re-inspections kept pushing milestones into late-year.
  • “Late 2025” Launch Window: Officially, Sound Transit has been coy—“expected to open in 2025,” they say. Insider whispers (and Reddit threads) peg it toward the tail end of 2025, but no firm month is on the books yet.

In short, don’t pencil in a commute over I-90 on Link for your Q1 2026 budget forecast. Keep riding the 550 for now and plan on that being the option.

3. Why It Matters—and Why Many Are Still Mad

  • Traffic Toll: Every day we delay rail, thousands of cars clog Bellevue Way, SR 520, and 148th Ave NE. That’s wasted fuel, time, and sanity.
  • Economic Impact: Microsoft, Nintendo, Costco Corporate—many are planting roots on the Eastside. Reliable, frequent rail isn’t a luxury; it’s mandatory infrastructure.
  • Credibility Gap: Voter-approved in 2008, with dozens of delays since, Sound Transit is inching toward a 116-mile system by 2041…if we believe the current schedule.

4. The Bottom Line

Redmond Technology Station: Open since April 27, 2024.

  • Downtown Redmond & Marymoor Village: Opening May 10, 2025 (10:30 a.m. ribbon-cut, noon service).
  • I-90 Floating Bridge to Mercer Island & Seattle: “Late 2025”—no firm date.

Ask yourself: when “late 2025” rolls around, will we finally get the seamless, cross-lake Link service we’ve been promised for the better part of two decades? Or will there be another concrete glitch, another supply chain setback, another “new” delay? Stay tuned—just don’t hold your breath.

by Adron

Talking Bakfiets

Recently I was out running errands on my R & M Load 75. I’d stopped by my storage unit to drop off a few crates of things that didn’t need to be sitting around my garage. Then I’d headed over to Village Square Cafe for a diner like breakfast.

Then went about seeing if I could find a plugin somewhere to charge my bike, as my charge was low. I had my spare battery set just for good measure, but I was down to ~35% because I’d forgotten to charge the bike earlier the previous night. So I didn’t technically need a charge but I figured it would be nice to charge up if I could. Albeit, something I’m astutely aware of now, is that there are next to zero publicly accessible outlets in Redmond. Not really surprising, electricity isn’t cheap, but I was sure I’d seen a few I could *borrow* a charge from. 😬

In the end, that would be kind of stealing, but places also let you easily charge your laptop, albeit that’s negligible vs. two monster bike batteries. Still not charging an excessive multi-ton car, but substantially more than I presume most places to want to offer for free.

Anyway, I didn’t find one but I did go rolling into the Town Center and met Nina (Spelling?) as she walked right up to me and inquired about the R&M Load 75. After discussing for a few minutes I hope to see her riding about on a new Load 75 in the near future with her kiddo! It’d be great to have more company over here on the east side in the bakfiets community!

On that note, I’m going to finally get around to setting up a bakfiets meet here on the east side, stay tuned over @ https://bakfiets.bike/ to get that notification (i.e. subscribe for email and you’ll get notified in your inbox). So far this year has started off a bit nuts and with the closure of G&O a few months ago it really threw me off for starting the bakfiets meets!

Eastside Link Light Rail

One of the places I’ve started frequenting to work in, as it’s nice and large, plenty of seats, is the Dote at Redmond Technology Station. Two issues, which is kind of standard for Microsoft, is that they get places like this on campus but then don’t really truly open them up to the public. They don’t offer a public wifi but sometimes have the public Microsoft account that you can use. But that’s a bit sketch, to which hopefully Microsoft sorts that out with the private businesses that they invite onto campus to operate but then make them operate as pseudo private establishments. A coffee shop in this modern era has wifi, so come on Microsoft, let em’ have truly public usable wifi!

But I digress, wifi aside, it’s a really interesting location. Super chill to work there, however I am concerned it stays open over time considering the current state of light rail opening (it’s partially open).

The starter line, as it has been dubbed, runs from Redmond Technology Station to Bellevue South. The key population center it runs through is Bellevue, which provides some anchor to a degree, albeit very few people seem ready to use it in Bellevue and as many in the area know, Bellevue is about as auto-dependent and pedestrian friendly as a parking lot. There are parts of it that are nice but overall it isn’t really acclimate to walking or to using transit, sadly enough. It’ll get there one day, considering the transit center and routes, but overall the people here are a bit myopic about the whole situation – so far.

That’s it for today’s thoughts, back into introspection.

by Adron

Bike Life. Off to get some bagels in Redmond, Washington via the trails.

This is the – sort of – kick of to my VLOG. I’ve kicked off a new effort, that’s going to not just be code focused or music focused or bike focused, but it’ll be fairly heavily bike focused and metal focused and food focused and coffee focused and…

well you get the idea right?

I’m going to cover topics I like, exploring Redmond, Washington with frequent train trips into Portland, rides into Seattle, and on about the area. With a narrative along the various adventures from yours truly along with elaboration of the various places and their quality of life, cool points of interest, and all that jazz. Along with this, there will be some music, almost all written, composed, and performed by me. All of this is going to be wrapped together into the VLOG these days.

Some of the other criteria I’m attempting to meet for each episode includes:

  1. Keeping each episode under 10 minutes, with a few exceptions here and there.
  2. Focusing on 1-3 key segments, or topics, per episode.
  3. Improving a bit each episode.
  4. So far, doing the ENTIRE production, music, shots, and every other aspect myself.

In this episode, the main mission is finding a bagel shop in Redmond, which maybe I succeed in finding, maybe I don’t. You’ll have to watch the episode to find out! 🤣

Also, for those videographer types, please do critique and leave comments on how I can improve this and pending videos. Shot angles, shot ideas, and all that, I’m keenly interested in learning more about! With that, here is the video I’ve put together, hope you enjoy. Various time points within the video can be found below the link to the video.

  • 0:21 – Introduction.
  • 1:06 – Ride start with narration of the adventure. Plus, check out my edits! I might get pretty good at this video thing yet! 😬
  • 2:49 – Love catching friendly interactions! Lot’s of friendly people here in Redmond!
  • 3:19 – The secret (ok, not really, just hard to see) entrance to the back path road.
  • 5:12 – Blazing Bagel arrival! I also point out, which this will be interesting looking back in several years, at the unfinished light rail and parking garage construction.
  • 6:09 – The Blazing Bagel’s Super Dooper Van, or whatever they call it.
  • 6:17 – A 26 second coffee cup holder review.
  • 6:43 – Wrap up of the ride plus what’s coming up.
Episode 29 of the VLOG.

That’s it for this episode. Catch some of the earlier episodes and be sure to subscribe the channel on YouTube. Albeit, if you’re subscribed to this blog, I’ll be posting them here too.

by Adron

Ballard, Sound Transit Sounder, and Recovery Day

Monday was a whirlwind of an adventure. Tuesday then needed to be a recovery day. I’d planned to start out and pick up the other bike (Pop Rocket I rode to Kent, this was Blue that needs picked up). But I didn’t even get around to that. It really did turn into a mostly chill day of relaxation.

A little bit of logistical fun playing the game Transport Fever. But then later in the day I did get down to some of the tracks where the Sound Transit Sounder route comes through Ballard. Here’s a few shots of the 5:35pm departure from Seattle heading to Edmonds on its way to Everett.

Here’s some of the video. There are three segments, so hold on when the screen goes black for a few seconds in between.

That’s it for the moment. Off to more explorations today.