Two weeks ago (Monday, March 5th, 2007 - I am obviously a bit late in posting this) Galan, Ben, and I went down to the new Sound Transit Operations & Maintenance Facility for the official dedication and the first public tour.
Seattle has been in great need of a good public transportation system for a long time, and it’s really great to see it finally happening.
The facility is located in south downtown (also known as “sodo”), across the street from the former Raineer Brewery, which is now the Tullys coffee headquartes.
The mayor of Seattle started things off. Somehow the crowd managed to restrain themselves from throwing any eggs, I was impressed.
As part of Sound Transit’s art program, they had the huge “R” that used to stand high on top of the former raineer brewery restored, and used it to write “Rail” on the side of the building, I thought this was pretty cool.
The poles that hold up the electrical wires for the rail cars in the outside lot are also part of an art project, apparently.
These are supposed to be horsetail. As the mayor said, “I always thought that the stripes were a safety thing, but it turns out that they are art!” (paraphrased). Honestly, I thought they were ugly safety stripes too, so who knew. A sound transit representitive referred to the yard as the Sound Transit Missle Defense Silo, which I thought was aptly chosen.
Painful speeches from various politicians went on for a while, I had a whole rant prepared here but decided against including it. Maybe in a future post.
Anyway, obviously no building dedication is complete without a pair of oversided scissors and a photo opt:
With the facility’s only security now lying on the ground in ruins, everyone swarmed into the building where were were greeted by cake, coffee, and lots of free swag.
Too much cake, coffee, and swag later, our tour group set off, lead by Roger Pence, a community outreach coordinator for sound transit.
The building is four stories tall. The upper floors have very nice offices, with very nice views of the city. Note that they still had not installed furnature, computers, or anything in most of the building.
This will be the command center:
The lower and ground floors are warehouse space and repair/maintanence shops.
Since the electrical system is on the top of the rail cars, each service bay has an overhead mezzanine, as well as an underground pit for working on the wheels and stuff.
To keep the cars looking nice, they have a paint room and a 2-car carwash:
And finally, we got to walk through one of the cars, they are very nice!
More photos here and here. Official press release about the opening here, website and factsheet here. The Seattle Channel also put together a video, although I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet.
Light rail - finally coming to seattle for the first time in 2009!
