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Capitol Hill Station began living up to its promise of changing the way we commute and move through the city when it served its first light rail passengers in March 2016.
Construction of the mixed-use developments above the busy subway station was completed in the summer of 2021.
Bike lockers to help serve the thousands who move through the station each day? April 2024 — probably.
Sound Transit is telling folks who care — like CHS tipster @CheeToS_ — that the long-promised bank of on-demand bike lockers finally installed above the station and giving riders a new, more secure option for leaving their rides behind on Broadway should open for service beginning next week.
“As it turns out, there were a number of challenges with the project,” a Sound Transit spokesperson tells CHS.
From @SoundTransit: The on-demand bike lockers at Capitol Hill Station are being installed this week. If there are no complications then they will be ready for use by next week. Here is a photo of these new lockers. cc @jseattle pic.twitter.com/XYQWw6G8mQ
— CheeToS (@CheeToS_) April 10, 2024
A BikeLink promo shot (Image: Sound Transit)
Eight years, three years, or one year late depending on when you start counting, CHS reported last spring on Sound Transit’s plans to finally catch Capitol Hill Station up with other key stops along the light rail lines and add the BikeLink round the clock, 5 cents per hour, on-demand lockers. The installation never happened leaving riders to bring their bikes with them or take their chances locking up their ride to a few sturdy signposts and racks along nearby sidewalks.
But this spring, the lockers have finally been placed. It is an important moment for a station and hundreds of apartments built intentionally with no massive underground parking garage.
“There were material delays from the bike manufacturer for both the access controls and the stainless steel panels,” the Sound Transit rep explains. “We also had to have an emergency phone and security camera for the area, which required a new data source. We found a spare fiber optic in another room to feed a new network switch, but that in turn required a new power source. Combined, all these issues ended up pushing up the final implementation to where we are now.”
You can also blame the pandemic, the shaky mix of economic uncertainty and labor and contactor issues that have followed, and the strange mix of priorities around Capitol Hill Station’s development that have entangled the Portland-based for-profit developer and 99-year-lease-holder Edlen and Co. with Sound Transit, and the city.
The “unbuildable” area has been empty for more than three years
Permitting and construction and installation above the station has been a slog. CHS reported here in November on the challenges faced by the long-planned Seasmith coffee shop and cafe as it has tried to open above the station and work its way through pandemic challenges and red tape.
Others have had easier paths. Training gym Uplift Fitness, which required no change of use permitting and had relatively simple buildout, is now open near where Seasmith had hoped to eventually serve the neighborhood and station riders, joining the mix that includes the M2M Mart grocery, a Nékter Juice Bar, and the new home of Glo’s Diner.
And some elements may never meet their promise. The AIDS Memorial Plaza and the weekend home of the Capitol Hill Farmers Market live up to the early plans for the developments. The under-utilized quasi parking lot of the unbuildable and neglected Nagle Place streetway do not.
But some of the long-awaited final components of the station’s development are moving into place.
The 16 new bike lockers line a long empty platform deemed another “unbuildable area” due to Sound Transit restrictions along the west-side breezeway entering the plaza above the station and are available for 5 cents and hour, 24 hours a day, and for rentals up to 10 days. Users can either purchase a BikeLink card or download the app.
The community-shaped “urban design framework” (PDF) for the station completed in 2011 called for “plentiful bicycle parking should serve a variety of users.”
“Light rail will generate many short trips to the station such that it is certain to increase levels of bicycling to gain access to the station,” some member of the Hill’s commuting forepeople wrote. “Adequate space and locations for bicycle parking are essential to making bicycling a convenient and desirable choice to access light rail.”
That 2011 urban design goal will finally be reached in 2024.
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