It was a major feature of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel agreement approved by the Sound Transit Board, the King County Council and the Seattle City Council. The bus tunnel today serves about 23,000 passengers a day. When light rail opens in 2006, the tunnel will serve about 43,000 passengers a day. When the light rail system extends to Northgate and beyond that number will grow even higher. That s why it s so critical to secure additional funds to extend the line as soon as possible.
Trains can load and unload passengers faster than buses.
The budget for converting the downtown transit tunnel for light rail use assumed in Sound Move was substantially higher than the current estimate. When the Link light rail trains begin running, ridership is projected to be immediately higher than just about any other light rail system in the nation. Link will help relieve the load on one of the most congested corridors in the state. By the end of this decade more than 125,000 passengers will ride Link every day. Based on conservative Sound Transit ridership projects, light rail will remove 16,000 vehicles from traffic every day by the year 2010.