As 2018 draws to a close, we at The Platform thank our readers and Sound Transit riders for following along and look forward to another busy year showing you the people building your new train lines and hopefully making your commute easier.
Some of the most popular content of 2018 on The Platform and across all our social media channels was the amazing photographs from our new photographer, Glenn Landberg, who joined Sound Transit from Boise, Idaho last January.
So we asked him to pick his favorite photographs of the year and write about them.
It's a great collection capturing some of the 48 million riders who boarded our buses and trains and the men and women who put in more than 2.6 million labor hours expanding your transit system.
We hope this look back conjures good memories of 2018 and builds excitement about where we're headed in the new year.
Union Station got a bit more colorful in June as Sound Transit raised the Pride flag outside our headquarters to celebrate Pride month.
Taking the bus or train has lots of benefits, but being able to stare out the window has to be one of my favorites. Some of the best commute daydreaming can be done on Sounder between Seattle and Everett as the train winds along the Puget Sound waterfront.
Remember how great fall was this year? It felt like it just kept going. It was really nice when sunset and peak commute hours lined up for lots of sun-kissed photos.
But all good things come to an end. It wouldn't be Seattle without the rain.
Every time I visit our Operations and Maintenance Facility in SODO I’m shocked by how clean and bright it is.
Oh, and the workers there are some of the friendliest around. Most of their work happens overnight when the trains come out of service so that they are clean and safe for your commute the following morning.
I’ve enjoyed scouting overpasses and interesting vantage points to photograph our different vehicles. OneBusAway is a great app for commuters to get real-time information about bus arrivals, and it’s also a must for someone who takes photos of transit.
This year Tacoma Link celebrated its 15th birthday and we also broke ground on an extension that will more than double its length, taking riders to Tacoma's Hilltop neighborhood.
Some more of that lovely fall light as Link pulls into Mount Baker Station.
It’s great to see a platform full of happy Seahawks fans making their way off a Sounder game-day train. On to the playoffs!
Thick smoke from wildfires filled the region in August.
In 2018 contractors finished installing and testing new antennas in the Beacon Hill tunnels and underground station to provide cell service for our riders.
Do yourself a favor this spring and take Link up to the University of Washington Station to soak up the cherry blossoms. It has to be one of the most beautiful sites within a five-minute walk from a light rail station.
This was a fun bunch to take photos of. I went out to shoot portraits of some of the hard-working men and women who drive our buses and trains as part of Transit Driver Appreciation Day. Take a minute to thank your driver!
Members of the rail installation crew take a break long enough to have their photo taken. They use the overhead gantry to lower the track bed into place underneath the University of Washington campus.
This is a shot from the platform level of the future U District Station just before they poured a lid for the station. Watching these stations come to life has been one of my favorite things to photograph. I’m just blown away by the progress every time I make it out there. Workers on the ground, and beneath it, put in more than 1 million labor hours on the Northgate light rail extension from University of Washington Station to Northgate. Trains roll in 2021!
This is one of my favorite moments of the year. At an open house where we had display boards to show off future station renderings, a visually-impaired man asked one of our staff members if she could describe what the station was going to look like. It's something that we take for granted. We can see a rendering and know how we will interact with that space. I also love the thought of the freedoms public transit gives those who don't have a car or aren’t able to operate one.
This year crews finished mining an approximately 2,000 feet long, or approximately one-third of a mile, tunnel under downtown Bellevue where trains will roll in 2023. East Link workers put in more than 1.6 million labor hours in 2018 taking the project to about 40 percent complete.
It’s incredible to see the amount of rebar that is used to reinforce these structures. This ironworker is tying in pieces of steel rebar on the section of the guideway that crosses I-405 in downtown Bellevue.
Making our way through the pontoons inside the I-90 bridge to check in on the work completed this summer to get the bridge ready for trains in 2023.
It’s always nice to see a smile on site.
This is just some of the track bed pieces that line the tunnel underneath the University of Washington. Each one of these is constructed out of extra-dense concrete and weighs about 11,000 pounds.
During an open house in South Lake Union, our planners met with community members to learn more about the needs of a neighborhood. They often roll out the giant maps and get the markers out for some input on station location and how people move about their neighborhood.
A particularly muddy day at the future South Bellevue Station. We’ve got folks like this to thank when we are whizzing past traffic in a nice warm, dry train.
Thank you for following Sound Transit here at The Platform and across all of our channels on social media!
As a bonus, check out this video highlight reel from 2018. We'll see you back on The Platform in 2019!
