The Lunch Bus

Rail, originally uploaded by Matt Westervelt.

Yesterday, Eric, Andy and I took a ride on the Sound Transit Lunch Bus, a guided tour of the Light Rail in progress. They say in 2009, we'll be able to take a train from the downtown bus tunnel to Tukwila Station, then later in the year, Seatac Airport. Judging by the progress we've seen, It looks like they're on schedule, and mass transit really is coming to Seattle.

The Lunch Bus took us on a tour of all the stops between the International District and the Airport, and we stayed close to the line throughout the trip, stopping in Columbia City for pork sandwiches at Jones BBQ. Tour guides Jeff Munnoch and Roger Pence told us about all the stops on the line, the construction process, the art, and the outreach efforts that Sound Transit has gone through to create the 16 mile line that broke ground in 2003. There were a lot of questions and answers, and some were very interesting, but all I did was take pictures and put them in a Lunch Bus Flickr set (I'm lousy at taking notes, but I do carry two cameras). Eric got video, and will be putting it on the tubes as soon as he figures out how to edit it all down in Linux.

Thanks to the Sound Transit Community Outreach organizers Wilbert Santos, Jeff Munnoch and Roger Pence for answering all of our questions and providing a fun friday diversion.