As Sound Transit extends Link Light Rail north from Seattle, local agencies need to plan for high quality, multimodal connections to the future stations. To facilitate an inclusive process, Snohomish County and Perteet formed an Agency Support Team consisting of Everett, Mill Creek, Lynnwood, WSDOT, Community Transit, and Sound Transit with the goal of developing and agreeing on mobility solutions that would improve connections to the Sound Transit Light Rail Transit (LRT) Stations in Southwest Snohomish County. The first phase of the study began with a robust travel demand analysis.
The results of the travel modeling suggest that Sound Transit Link Light Rail will add substantial regional capacity in the County, with 30,000-45,000 daily boardings each day on the segment between Lynnwood and Everett. The challenge was how to get riders to the planned stations. In the second phase of the study, the team refined potential alignments and configurations that accommodates the most people crossing the I-5 corridor while reducing travel time for both transit and general traffic. Detailed travel time analysis for transit and general purpose traffic for each option was conducted, and opinions of cost updated. Costs for the proposed improvements ranged from a low of $121M to a high of $993M.