The 2 Line will soon be complete: Sound Transit announces that Crosslake Connection revenue service will begin March 28th

By the time the second quarter of 2026 begins, light rail trains will be carrying people over the Homer M. Hadley Bridge across Lake Washington between the International District and South Bellevue Stations and beyond. With this segment’s arrival, two new stations will finally join the system: Judkins Park and Mercer Island.

In just a lit­tle over two months, it’ll final­ly be pos­si­ble to go from Red­mond to Seat­tle via train (and vice ver­sa!) bypass­ing cross-lake grid­lock on the region’s fre­quent­ly con­gest­ed high­ways with a reli­able com­mute on steel rails. That’s right: the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed, long await­ed Cross­lake Con­nec­tion — as Sound Tran­sit now calls the 2 Line’s miss­ing mid­dle seg­ment — has a grand open­ing date and the count­down is on.

A parade of very excit­ed elect­ed offi­cials stood togeth­er with Sound Tran­sit CEO Dow Con­stan­tine and WSDOT Sec­re­tary Julie Mered­ith this morn­ing at the Mount Bak­er Tun­nels’ East Por­tal View­point to unveil an elec­tron­ic dis­play board count­ing down the time left until the grand open­ing on Sat­ur­day, March 28th, 2026.

While a run-of-show is not yet avail­able, it’s rea­son­able to assume that a speak­ing pro­gram may be held from 10-11 AM, fol­lowed by a rib­bon-cut­ting and an inau­gur­al train ride. Sound Tran­sit could elect to hold the main fes­tiv­i­ties at either the Jud­kins Park Sta­tion or the Mer­cer Island Sta­tion; Jud­kins Park in Seat­tle sounds like it’s the lead­ing can­di­date. The sta­tion is locat­ed between the I‑90 east­bound and west­bound lanes.

The trav­el­ing pub­lic can also expect com­mu­ni­ty fes­ti­vals at the new sta­tions — that has become the norm for these grand open­ings. We saw them in 2024 and again last year in 2025, and they’re sure to make a return. The like­ly time­frame for those is 10 AM — 4 PM. Prob­a­bly there will also be Dis­cov­er Maps hand­ed out that you can get stamped at each new sta­tion and then enter into a draw­ing to win a prize.

The Cross­lake Con­nec­tion is the last major remain­ing incom­plete part of the Sound Tran­sit 2 sys­tem expan­sion plan that vot­ers approved in Novem­ber of 2008. The seg­ment has been plagued by con­struc­tion prob­lems that the agency deter­mined neces­si­tat­ed the rebuild­ing of crit­i­cal com­po­nents, which are the sub­ject of a legal dis­pute between Sound Tran­sit and Kiewit-Hoff­man Joint Ven­ture, which is build­ing the con­tract. A few days ago, Sound Tran­sit filed an amend­ed com­plaint against the part­ner­ship in King Coun­ty Supe­ri­or Court, which you can read here.

“KH, and there­fore Kiewit, breached their oblig­a­tions under the con­tract by fail­ing to fol­low the Con­tract Doc­u­ments, caus­ing numer­ous defects and lead­ing to years-long delay of the project and increased costs to Sound Tran­sit,” the com­plaint alleges, detail­ing a lengthy list of defects that had to be cor­rect­ed, caus­ing the project to drag on. “In total, the num­ber and dif­fer­ent types of defi­cien­cies is stag­ger­ing, result­ing in the issuance of 451 Non­con­for­mance Reports.”

It could be some time before that dis­pute is resolved. In the mean­time, though, rid­ers will get to start using the sys­tem they’ve been patient­ly wait­ing to ride.

No oth­er local­i­ty in the world, to Sound Tran­sit’s knowl­edge, has tried to put a rail sys­tem on a float­ing bridge: the Cross­lake Con­nec­tion is thus a world-first engi­neer­ing mar­vel. ST has been run­ning test trains across the bridge for months now. Our staff were out at night last autumn watch­ing the first one and four-car trains cross the bridge under their own pow­er, and day­time test­ing has since got­ten under­way. Trains were zip­ping across the bridge dur­ing and after the 10 AM media event at the tun­nel por­tal at fair­ly fre­quent inter­vals. Oper­a­tors have been get­ting train­ing in prepa­ra­tion for the launch, and that will fol­lowed by sim­u­lat­ed / pre-rev­enue service.

As of Mon­day, test trains ought to begin oper­at­ing at fair­ly pre­dictable fif­teen minute inter­vals. You’ll be able to see them most eas­i­ly from the Homer M. Hadley Bridge’s pedes­tri­an and bicy­cle path, which is adja­cent to the I‑90 west­bound lanes. Test­ing will then progress to even more fre­quent inter­vals after that.

The com­plete 2 Line will stop at these sta­tions, from east to west to north:

* Down­town Redmond

* Mary­moor Village

* Red­mond Technology

* Over­lake Village

* Bel-Red

* Spring Dis­trict

* Wilbur­ton

* Belle­vue Downtown

* East Main

* South Belle­vue

* Mer­cer Island

* Jud­kins Park

* Inter­na­tion­al Dis­trict / Chinatown

* Pio­neer Square

* Sym­pho­ny

* West­lake

* Capi­tol Hill

* Uni­ver­si­ty of Washington

* U Dis­trict

* Roo­sevelt

* North­gate

* Shore­line South

* Shore­line North

* Mount­lake Terrace

* Lyn­nwood City Center

Lat­er this year, Sound Tran­sit will add one infill sta­tion between North­gate and Shore­line South: Pine­hurst. That’s expect­ed to come online in the lat­ter half of the year.

After that, there won’t be any Sound Tran­sit light rail sta­tion open­ings for an extreme­ly long time, because the first ST3-fund­ed light rail sta­tions in down­town Red­mond and Fed­er­al Way have already opened and none of the oth­er ST3 sta­tions are under con­struc­tion yet. It could be six to ten years before we get any more, though Stride bus rapid tran­sit will make its debut in the late 2020s.

Agency lead­ers made their fond­ness for the project abun­dant­ly clear.

“After decades of hard work, cre­ative design, and world-class engi­neer­ing, we are final­ly link­ing the east and west sides of Lake Wash­ing­ton with rail,” said Sno­homish Coun­ty Exec­u­tive and Sound Tran­sit Board Chair Dave Somers.

“I applaud all those who worked on this project, and I appre­ci­ate the patience of the trav­el­ing pub­lic as the project worked through many bar­ri­ers. Today is a very impor­tant mile­stone, and we look for­ward to Link light rail con­nect­ing Taco­ma, Seat­tle, Everett, and Belle­vue in the not-too-dis­tant future.”

“The com­ple­tion of the 2 Line expo­nen­tial­ly expands employ­ment, hous­ing and recre­ation oppor­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple on the east and west sides of Lake Wash­ing­ton,” said King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive and Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber Gir­may Zahi­lay. “When the 2 Line opens, it will serve twen­ty-six sta­tions and more than thir­ty-five miles, while knit­ting togeth­er five King Coun­ty cities and two Sno­homish Coun­ty cities, cre­at­ing new tran­sit hubs through­out the region.”

“WSDOT oper­ates the longest float­ing bridge in the world and now oper­ates the only float­ing bridge in the world that car­ries light rail. We’re proud to part­ner with Sound Tran­sit on this impor­tant project, which will bet­ter con­nect the region and increase capac­i­ty in some of our busiest cor­ri­dors,” said Wash­ing­ton Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion and Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber Julie Meredith.

“As the East­side con­tin­ues to grow and thrive, this moment rep­re­sents more than just a tran­sit open­ing, it demon­strates all this region can achieve when we com­mit to auda­cious goals and per­se­vere to get things done,” said King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci, who was instru­men­tal in get­ting the 2 Line built and suc­cess­ful­ly pushed for the Red­mond Belle­vue por­tion to open first.

“If you build it, they will come,” said Seat­tle May­or and Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber Katie Wil­son. “The Cross­lake Con­nec­tion unlocks worlds of oppor­tu­ni­ty for tran­sit rid­ers like me, and I’m so excit­ed to wel­come new rid­ers as the sys­tem grows. Our whole region deserves world-class mass tran­sit, so let’s con­tin­ue expand­ing the net­work and deliv­er­ing on what vot­ers were promised.”

“The open­ing of the Cross­lake Con­nec­tion is a major mile­stone in the con­tin­ued expan­sion of Sound Transit’s region­al sys­tem,” said Red­mond May­or and Sound Tran­sit Board­mem­ber Angela Bir­ney. “By link­ing Seat­tle and the East­side, this long-await­ed con­nec­tion will improve access across the region and make the net­work more use­ful for every­one. We can’t wait to cel­e­brate with the community.”

“This exten­sion con­nects east and west, con­nects the 1 and 2 Lines, vast­ly improv­ing mobil­i­ty and qual­i­ty of life in our region,” said Sound Tran­sit CEO Dow Con­stan­tine. “It’s a trans­for­ma­tion­al achieve­ment that took grit, per­sis­tence and inge­nu­ity, and it ful­fills a gen­er­a­tional promise of unit­ing both sides of Lake Wash­ing­ton with high-capac­i­ty transit.”

I appre­ci­ate their enthu­si­asm. Sev­er­al of the NPI staff and I will be using the com­plet­ed 2 Line to reg­u­lar­ly com­mute into Seat­tle for meet­ings, sport­ing events, and spe­cial occa­sions. We’ll also use it to bypass grid­lock for air­port trips.

Com­bined with the arrival of Sound Tran­sit’s night owl bus ser­vice, it’s going to make it much eas­i­er to quick­ly get around with­out need­ing a car.

(I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about being able to roll my e‑bike onto the train and access trails that are fur­ther away from Red­mond. E‑bikes are hard to bring onto most bus­es, but they roll aboard Link light rail trains with ease.)

The Cross­lake Con­nec­tion will exem­pli­fy true free­dom of mobil­i­ty. Its grand open­ing will be an incred­i­ble moment for the region, and we plan to host a spe­cial cel­e­bra­tion to mark the occa­sion. We’ll have more details to share soon.

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