On December 6th Sound Transit will celebrate the opening of three light rail stations in South King County. This is sure to be a festive occasion with a ribbon cutting ceremony and fine-sounding pronouncements by elected officials (never mind the construction delays and hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns).
The true test of whether the $2.5 billion project can be considered a success won’t be known until we see if it actually increases transit ridership. It should add some light rail riders (a few anyway) but many riders will simply switch from the Metro Rapid Ride service running parallel to Link that serves the same locations, or former customers on Metro’s 177 express route from Federal Way to downtown Seattle. By the way, the 177 bus takes about 40-minutes to go from the Federal Way Transit Center to 4th and Jackson in downtown Seattle. That’s about ten minutes quicker than Link for the same trip.