The Capitol Hill and Husky Stadium light rail stations will open to passengers at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 19.
Sound Transit officials say it should take about eight minutes to ride to Husky Stadium from downtown. And they say the project came in six months early and roughly $150 million under budget.
But they don’t mention that it was supposed to be built years ago.
“When this agency was brand new, back in the late ‘90s and 2000, they were not able to properly estimate what it was going to take to get this massive job done,” King County Executive Dow Constantine said on Tuesday.
Then, in 2001, Constantine said the agency was rebuilt from the ground up, and it’s been managing projects responsibly since.
[asset-images[{"caption": "A stairway descends into Capitol Hill’s light rail station.", "fid": "123730", "style": "placed_wide", "uri": "public://201601/stairway_to_station.jpg", "attribution": "Credit KUOW Photo/Joshua McNichols"}]]Capitol Hill resident Phil Thilman said he and his neighbors have learned to be patient.
“Everyone was kind of like, ‘We’ll just let them finish when they’re done. It took a while, whatever,’” he said.
Pearl McRae, who waited for the bus on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, said she expects she’ll switch to light rail when it opens.
“I’m really stoked about it,” she said. “I’ll definitely use it to my advantage for sure.”
