[techsupporter]

It's for a few reasons, let's see if I remember them all from the run-up to the Sound Transit 2 vote in 2008:

Mercer Island exists and has political clout (even though they tried to use that clout to force Sound Transit to not use the express lanes on I-90) and would demand a station no matter what.

Running across a floating bridge is hard enough and the Governor Albert Rosellini Bridge (SR 520 Floating Bridge to the Yanks) is the longest in the world. Going across the dual-named bridge that carries I-90 would be shorter and was seen as easier back then.

You don't have to turn around to serve Bellevue and then Redmond. Coming up from I-90 you hit the big part of Bellevue then you turn right and keep going northeast to Redmond. Coming from SR 520 you'd go south into Bellevue then have to U-turn to go back to meet BelRed and Overlake.

At the time, we didn't know when, if ever, the SR 520 bridge would be replaced. The previous span was a nightmare. It had a movable bit in the middle, the road deck sat at roughly water level, and would routinely sway so hard in strong winds that the bridge would have to be blocked off so the midspan section could be opened to relieve stress and prevent the thing from sinking. The I-90 bridges have no such issue (considering the damn thing had already sunk once in the 90s). There was no way to use the previous SR 520 bridge for light rail, though the new one is built to support it.

You also catch a lot more potential riders in station areas around I-90 and South Bellevue. The Points cities are basically HOAs with delusions of grandeur. There's no hope they'll gain more people in any of our lifetimes, meanwhile the areas the 2 Line passes through are already fairly populated by Eastside standards and have room to grow (also by Eastside standards).

Meanwhile, the 542 and 545 are comparatively very fast.

[sakras]

Wow I didn’t know the old bridge was such a nightmare. This also makes me wonder why this line only opened now, if it was voted on all the way back in 2008.

I do usually take the 542 now, and it works well-enough, but it only comes every 30 minutes which is annoying.

[saratogacx]

ST put priority to going north through Cap hill and up to Northgate (where there used to be a mall). Prepping the I90 bridge took a long time (8 years ago they shut down the express lanes, after adding an HOV to the main bridge) so far from my recall.

It was scheduled to open a few months ago but early this year they found a fault with the rail supports on the bridge that was missed as they were put in during early COVID and didn't have the ability to get them inspected as well as normal. So for the next year you've got Redmond to Bellevue with a missing link across the lake.

On the other side. I think that this month the main line from Northgate to Lynhood is going to open with several more stops so the system is expanding in a couple directions.

[techsupporter]

I completely agree that the 542 needs more frequency. Sound Transit likely saw the dip from Microsoft wholeheartedly embracing work-from-home and figured they could reuse the service hours. Remember that Metro has been suffering from a bad shortage of workers (drivers, maintenance, and operations) that they've only just started to recover from. This is important because Sound Transit contracts out operation of most of its transit service to the local agencies so Metro operates the 542, 545, 550, and others.

Hopefully now that Metro hiring and training is on the upswing Sound Transit will be able to get more bus service hours.