February 18, 2015
A newly built train station was officially dedicated in the city of Tukwila in Washington’s King County. (Tukwila is located just south of Seattle.) Tukwila station was constructed by Sound Transit (ST), a public agency serving the Seattle metropolitan area, as a replacement for a temporary station that had been at that site since 2001.
The public officials on hand for the inauguration of the permanent train station in Tukwila included Patty Murray, the senior U.S. senator from Washington; Adam Smith, the U.S. representative for the Evergreen State’s ninth congressional district; Dow Constantine, ST board chair and King County executive; Jim Haggerton, mayor of Tukwila; and Amy Scarton, assistant secretary at Washington State Department of Transportation.
Construction on the current version of Tukwila station had begun on June 24, 2013. The funding for this project included $4.6 million in Federal Transit Administration (MTA) American Recovery and Reinvestment Act monies; $1.5 million in FTA Fixed Guideway funds; and $7.4 million in High Speed Rail grant funds.
Tukwila station serves Sounder commuter rail, which is operated by BNSF Railway’s Seattle Subdivision on behalf of ST. Tukwila station also serves Amtrak’s Cascades passenger train line between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle. This station, a matter of fact, has the distinction of being the closest Amtrak station to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
Along with containing two 600-foot (183-meter)-long side platforms for train passengers, Tukwila station encompasses 390 parking spaces. In addition, the station has bus bays for the RapidRide F Line and other bus routes operated by the King County Metro Transit Department.
Tukwila station also features public artist Sheila Klein’s large-scale creation Imaginary Landscape. The components of this artwork, which can be found near the station’s ancillary building, include red-twig dogwood shrubs and painted steel panels.
Photo Credit: SounderBruce (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)
For more information on Tukwila station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tukwila_station
Transportation History 
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