Seattle Light Rail

We are flying into Seattle for a few days before our cruise, we plan to stay in a hotel near the airport and use the Light Rail. Most of what we want to see is near the Space needle, so my question is-

have you done this? What stop do you get off to get to the space needle? How far north of town does the light rail go? Could you use it to get to the Carnival Pier?

Thanks,

it is very accessible from the airport You take the seattle LRT rail to westlake station . From there it is a short monorail ride to to the space needle. Depending on time I would think you need to account for 1 hour to the space needle each way.

Just in case you assumed from Oilsands reply that light rail might go further north just not nearer the space needle - it doesn't, Westlake is end of the line and the monorail is entirely separate with it's own ticket. More expensive actually, despite the very short trip ($5pp vs. $2.75 from airport to Westlake).

The Streetcar does go further north than Westlake, but nowhere near the 'carnival pier' (*usually* Pier 91, but check the schedule in case your cruise is an exception) so you'd have to transfer to a bus (which is fine with carryon only, but I wouldn't recommend using buses with large suitcases) and do a fair bit of walking too, including some outdoor stairs.

We've done basically what you are every time we've flown out of SEA - stay near airport, but come into town for dinner & a little sightseeing - and I also plan it will take an hour each way. If your hotel will shuttle you to a different LINK stop, or directly to the SEA station instead of the hotel shuttle loop at the other end you can knock 10mins off easily.

When you're heading to the ship I would suggest getting a cab from near Westlake instead. Regular taxis should be $15ish, Uber/Lyft less, and EastsideForHire is fixed rate $9 zipcode to zipcode (I would ask for pickup at the Mayflower Park hotel since the front door is obvious, whereas there are multiple entrances to the Westlake Centre all around the block).

Since a bus is a separate ticket from LINK, this may even be cheaper depending how many of you are traveling.

We are flying into Seattle for a few days before our cruise, we plan to stay in a hotel near the airport and use the Light Rail. Most of what we want to see is near the Space needle, so my question is-

 

have you done this? What stop do you get off to get to the space needle? How far north of town does the light rail go? Could you use it to get to the Carnival Pier?

 

Thanks,

Here's a link to the Seattle Light Rail website. For Downtown you'd want to get off at the Pioneer Square station.

Attached is a graphic of the waterfront area (including Pier 66) of Seattle.

Tom

http://www.soundtransit.org/Schedules/Link-light-rail

Sorry, disregard the map as it shows the wrong pier, you'll be at Pier 91 which is about 3 miles north of pier 66. It's about a $10-15 cab ride from the waterfront area I believe.

Tom