Northgate Link 2021 — Fruitcake Enterprises

Three new Link Light Rail stations opened three weeks ago this weekend, on October 2: "U District Station" at Brooklyn Ave NE & NE 42rd St; "Roosevelt Station" in the Ravenna neighborhood, at 12th Aave NE between NE 66th and 67th Streets; and arguably the crown jewel of them all, Northgate Station on 1st Ave NE & NE 103rd St.

I got a little confused by U District Station, which is what I have long been calling what is technically "University of Washington Station," the second of two new "U Link Extension" stations that opened five and a half years ago, in March 2016. That event was particularly exciting, as it not only opened a Light Rail station in my own neighborhood of Capitol Hill, but connected it to downtown to the west and south, and to the U District to the north. So, being the one station connecting my neighborhood to the U District, I always thought of that one, which is located on the UW campus right by Huskey Stadium, as "U District Station." Oops! I checked my photo album from when Laney and I rode the trains on their grand opening date March 19, 2016, and it's clear from those photos that it was indeed called University of Washington Station from the very start.

"U District Station," then, refers to the new station in the same neighborhood but off campus—and, as it happens, all of four blocks away from our old PCC office location, which we moved out of in . . . 2016. Dammit! (Northgate Station, meanwhile, is just under a mile from the Big 5 Sporting Goods store in Northgate, where Shobhit quit his job at the end of July. On the upside, I also figured out that Claudia's house is all of 0.6 miles from Roosevelt Station. Nice!)

Anyway, I absolutely would have toured these three new stations on their grand opening on October 2, just like Laney and I did with U Link Extension on its grand opening in 2016, except that I was too busy. Touring Light Rail that weekend was precluded by the day trip to Port Townsend for Auntie Rose's memorial service on October 2, and also the Braeburn Condos Theater double feature I did with Tracy on the 3rd. The following weekend was the Seattle Pride fall event on Saturday and the Agosy Locks Cruise I did with Ivan on Sunday; last weekend I went to see The Last Duel with Ivan and then took myself to the "Spooky Specimens Tour" at the Volunteer Park Conservatory on Saturday and on Sunday . . . actually I totally could have done the Light Rail tour that day. I never went anywhere. It's just that by then, same with many weekdays after work when I could have done it, I kept spacing it. I finally just put it on my calendar for this weekend so I wouldn't forget it.

I now have a public transit themed collection of photo albums on Flickr, currently with six albums, three of them dedicated to Light Rail openings. Yesterday I went ahead and added a specified list of which of those are Light Rail openings: Westlake to Tukwila in 2009, the year Light Rail of any kind opened (when I toured the route with Barbara and Susan); U Link Extension in 2016 (which I toured with Laney); and Northgate Extension now in 2021 (which I toured with Shobhit).

It's been five years since the last grand opening, but the next is much sooner: East Extension, to Bellevue, opening in 2023; then expanded links both north (to Lynnwood) and south (to Federal Way) in 2024. That can all be seen mapped out here, and will include ten new stations on the East extention, on its own the broadest expansion of Light Rail since it first opened in 2009. The Line 1 extension north will open four new stations, and its extension south will open three, adding seven on that line. This means that, by 2024, there will be a total of seventeen more Light Rail Stations than we have currently. And as of these three new ones, we currently have nineteen! In another three years, the number of stations will have doubled—because, oh yeah, I forgot to add that by 2024, what I presume will be called Line 2 will be extended another two stations into downtown Redmond.

As for distances, I won't get too into it, except to say that, with U Link Extension in 2016, one mile was added between Westlake Station downtown and Capitol Hill Station; another 3 miles were added between Capitol Hill Station and University of Washington Station. Well, as of this month, one mile was added between University of Washington Station and U District Station; one mile between U District Station and Roosevelt Station (which actually opens up one block east of Roosevelt Way); and finally, another 2.4 miles to Northgate Station. Plenty of the track is already laid further north moving on up toward Shoreline and Lynnwood, and I got photos of the tracks stretching further up, of course.

I also get a very cool video clip of a train pulling into Roosevelt Station from a platform one level up. Both U District and Roosevelt Stations are deep underground, part of an extension of the downtown Transit Tunnel that in 2016 was extended to University of Washington. In fact, with this new extension open this month, the vast majority of it is tunnel, until coming out in the Northgate neighborhood, just north of 92nd Street, until stopping at the elevated station at Northgate, right by the mall.

Before we did our joyriding of Light Rail, Shobhit and I actually drove out to Issaquah to meet a Project Management classmate of his for lunch, named Priya. It was my first time meeting her. She talked openly about how she is "hyper," and she clearly loves to talk. I could see immediately how she and Shobhit must have hit it off in their class. He's so enamored with her that he thinks she should run for office and have him manage her campaign—a rather lofty goal that I have a hard time imagining her truly taking seriously, based on first impressions, at least.

In any case, I liked her fine, although I was still ready to go once lunch was over, as I felt rather drained of energy. The restaurant, called Rajdhani Thali Restaurant, was a great recommendation, though—the food was excellent, and we all ate too much, to such a degree that Shobhit kept complaining of pain in his abdomen (he ate significantly more than I did), and neither of us had dinner later. I just made hot chocolate an had a small plate of cheese and crackers. I still managed to crack 160 lbs yet again this morning. Annoying.

Once we got back home from lunch, we came upstairs to the condo to use the bathroom, and then headed right back out, walking to the Capitol Hill light rail station. I bought a $5 day pass for Shobhit, and we took the trail through University of Washington Station and on to the new U District Station. I also wanted to walk the couple of blocks up 45th to Roosevelt to take a look inside the Spirit Halloween store.

One thing I keep kind of forgetting, which is exciting for me about the U District Station: it's only a few blocks from the AMC Theater up there, which means I can far more conveniently take transit up there than when I used to have to rely on buses. It'll now be far faster too, even if I still have to walk half a mile to get to the station to begin with. In any case, there's a movie I plan to see later this week that is only playing there, so I'll have my first Light Rail movie-going experience in the U District.

As for Spirit Halloween Store, they're limiting capacity to 77 people at a time, which explained the surprising line stretching up the block out the door—I really should have done this sooner. Shobhit was convinced we'd be waiting for at least half an hour (although to his credit, that was really just an observation, he wasn't complaining), but we got in probably within between ten and 15 minutes. Then, they had literally nothing I was looking for. Oh well. I can still make my Halloween costume idea work.

So, we walked back to U District Station, I got a few more exterior shots, and we went down to catch the train further north. I do love that they include multiple public art installations at every station, and I got photos of several; there are so many that I wasn't able to get photos of them all. They each very much have their own personality—the design at U District is a lot more angular overall; it's more abstract in tone at Roosevelt. The actual art installations at Northgate Station are subtler, although when it comes to design, by far the most notable thing is the pedestrian and bike bridge, John Lewis Memorial Bridge, stretching over I-5 and connecting the neighorhood across the freeway to Northgate in a much more direct way. Shobhit and I walked the bridge, of course, nearly to its west end where it more specifically connects to North Seattle College, and found a lovely natural view of their "Campus Pond" surrounded by trees with fall colors, all nestled in between the freeway and the college.

As a result, predictably Northgate got the most photos, although generally speaking, my 62-shot photo album (including 3 video clips) is spread out between the three stations and neighborhoods rather well: 15 shots of U District Station; 20 shots of Roosevelt Station; and 23 shots of Northgate Station, not including a few shots of other things nearby in their respective neighborhoods. Shobhit and I also walked over to the current state of Northgate Mall itslelf, much of it still under significant state of renovation, because we needed to use the bathroom. We went in and checked out the new "Kraken Community Iceplex," where the new Seattle hockey team The Kraken plays, and they also have rinks available for public skate, which we saw happening while we were there. I might just want to go up and do that sometime. Maybe with Ivan? I want to say he and I discussed going ice skating once, several years ago, though we never did. I could also ask Alexia. Shobhit has terrible balance so it likely would not be for him.

I decided to write this post first, so I still need to caption the photos from yesterday. I did get all the photos of the Virtual Pumpkin Carving Party on Friday captioned. Hopefully I can get to work on these a bit later today, although in the meantime Shobhit and I have a movie to go see and then I'll have a review to write.

[posted 11:04 am]