Sound Transit’s board of directors have selected a contractor to expand Link light rail south from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to the intersection of South 200th St and 28th Avenue South, the agency announced Thursday.
PCL Civil Constructors, Inc. has been awarded a contract to bring Link’s southern terminus into the southern part of SeaTac, with service to begin just four years from now, in September of 2016. PCL’s bid came in at $169 million, which is less than the $170 to $190 million cost Sound Transit had projected.
Over the next four years, PCL will design and build the guideway for the 1.6 mile extension (which I’m going to call Angle Lake Link for the sake of brevity and clarity) as well as the station, which does not yet have a final name. (It will either be South SeaTac, S. 200th Street, or Angle Lake; I personally prefer Angle Lake).
The Sound Transit press release included in their statement “The important work PCL and Sound Transit will accomplish together will enable the agency to deliver the South 200th Link Extension project on an accelerated schedule.” The words accelerated schedule is an understatement, if you ask me. What Sound Transit has accomplished over the last year is really significant. They’ve moved up the completion date for this component of Link’s expansion from 2020 to 2016. For real. That’s huge. It means that in 2016, Link will be expanding in two directions simultaneously – north (to the University of Washington) and south (to Angle Lake in SeaTac) – adding a total of three new stations.
Plans for the Angle Lake station call for a parking garage with seven hundred stalls, though that will be built separately under a different contract than the agreement approved today. Sound Transit is also looking at adding several hundred additional parking spaces to accommodate people who want to park and ride.
So for now, the design / build contractor has been named – we’ll just have to wait a bit longer for the official station name to be announced.
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Jennifer Lemus, Community Outreach Specialist with Sound Transit informs me that a staff report is currently being compiled and will be presented with recommendations to the Board in November. However, I am not sure if a naming decision will be made at that meeting or deferred to another, later meeting.
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