The candidates running to represent Seattle's progressive 43rd Legislative District

And that first one is that starting Wednesday morning at 5 a.m., Light Rail is going to be stopping at the newest sound transit station in Seattle's Pinehurst neighborhood right along I-5 at Northeast 130th.

We've seen a flurry of new lines and stations opening in the past couple of years from Linwood to Federal Way to Redmond.

But This is the last one for a while.

So it's kind of like a benchmark for this sound transit era of expansion.

And I guess the big question is, will anybody use this Pinehurst station? Mike Lindblom at the Seattle Times wrote about this.

And David, I know it's been on your mind.

You've been talking about this for a while as a former transit reporter.

That's right.

And the reason that people are asking, are people going to actually use this station, is that the Pinehurst station is kind of like an island next to Jackson Park, the golf course, it really hasn't seen the kind of development nearby of apartments or businesses that other stations have.

It doesn't have a parking garage, so you can't park and ride.

And let's not forget, it costs $240 million to open.

Supporters have argued that this is going to help people who live in those east-west corridors, Bitter Lake, Lake City, access the train easier than they can at Northgate.

But Sound Transit's own projections for ridership at Pinehurst are very low compared to industry standard.

There is an interesting political story behind why the Pinehurst station exists, David.

I mean, why did they build it and what do you make of the opening now and what it says about, you know, the way that we we do things here?

Yeah, this is very Sound Transit, which is inherently a very political organization because it is a tri-county transit agency.

So in order for projects to progress and to win voter approval, you need support from people not just in King County, which we know tends to vote in favor of transit measures, but also from Pearson's Nahomish County.

And that takes a little more massaging.

And so in a lot of ways, the Sound Transit map is sort of reflective of political deal-making, lawmakers exercising what their priorities should be, what they think will best serve their particular community.

The 130th Street Station is a great example of this.

And in this case, we're talking about current council member and also former council member, Deborah Juarez, who represents District 5 where this lands.

So in 2016, she was on the Sound Transit Board and was saying, hey, look, we were once upon a time promised this 130th Street Station.

I want to do everything in my power to guarantee that you put it there to the point where I have a press release drafted.

This was a conversation that she was having at the time with then CEO Peter Rogoff.

And if you don't include 130th Street Station in this, I'm going to come out and oppose Sound Transit 3, the big package to build out light rail to... ballard in west seattle and and across the east side