It couldn’t have happened to a nicer project (and region of riders)!

The four agencies that teamed up to give thousands of riders the Northgate Link light rail expansion won national recognition today when TransitCenter named the project “Best Transit Expansion.” The award jointly honored Community Transit, King County Metro, the Seattle Department of Transportation and Sound Transit.

The heart of the project was the extension of Sound Transit’s 1 Line to Roosevelt, U District and Northgate stations, with Seattle’s new John Lewis Memorial Bridge connecting riders to the station over I-5. Oct. 2 likely marked the largest service change Metro has undertaken and also included bus changes to Sound Transit and Community Transit.

Riders are the real winners and now can make new connections to destinations across the region at the new stations.

It didn’t happen overnight. Metro co-created transit route changes by surveying riders and collaborating with a community led Mobility Board and 130 different organizations to help make those connections as smooth as possible. Metro focused on creating equitable outcomes by consulting with priority populations including Black, Indigenous, and other Communities of Color (BIPOC), low-income, immigrants and refugees, linguistically diverse, youth, seniors, LGBTIQIA, people with disabilities and people experiencing homelessness.

The result has been greater reliability on congestion-free Link light rail to and from downtown Seattle. Today, riders have the improved transit connections they asked for, including six new bus routes, 22 revised routes, 11 other route replacements, and improvements to the frequent, all-day network.

To explore the bus service to and from the new stations, visit our Northgate route change page and see our popular “spider maps” for Roosevelt, U District and Northgate stations.

We couldn’t have done it without our Mobility Board, thousands of riders’ surveys and comments, our community relations team and service planners, our speed & reliability and transit route facilities teams, government relations and the King County Council, King County Executive Dow Constantine, and our agency partners.

On the horizon, we have East Link and Federal Way Link and Lynnwood Link expansions. We’re looking forward to launching those exciting projects and delivering even more frequent, reliable connections.