Operations and Maintenance Facility South

Maintaining the growing light rail fleet.
omf south web map

Overview

  • A new Operations and Maintenance Facility (OMF) is needed in South King County to store and service a growing train fleet. This will support future light rail extensions to Tacoma, West Seattle, and the entire region.
  • An OMF is where light rail trains go 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, for cleaning and repairs. To build this new facility, we need approximately 60-70 acres (for reference, one football field is 1.3 acres) near an operating Link line. 
  • We need four OMFs across the region to support our system expansion. Currently, we service the existing light rail fleet at a central OMF on South Forest Street in Seattle. We've built a second facility in Bellevue and will add another OMF north of Seattle. 

Benefits of the OMF South

  • This facility will create high-skilled, living-wage jobs for more than 610 people in South King County. At our existing OMF Central in Seattle and OMF East in Bellevue, the average employee wage is $45 per hour, or $85,000/year. 
  • OMFs ensure thousands of passengers ride clean, well-maintained trains. We suspend service every night between 1-5 a.m. so we can service our Link trains. 

Current project status

An additional environmental review is underway for the Operations and Maintenance Facility South.

In 2021, Sound Transit published a Draft Environmental Impact Statement under the State Environmental Policy Act. On September 22, 2023, Sound Transit, alongside the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), published the National Environmental Protection Act Draft / State Environmental Policy Act Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (NEPA Draft / SEPA Supplemental Draft EIS) for the OMF South project. This additional review supports federal approvals and funding and assesses project design changes. We expect to publish a Final EIS in 2024. 

The South 336th Street alternative in Federal Way remains the preferred alternative. The Sound Transit Board will select the project to be built after publication of the Final EIS. 

Due to the changes, Sound Transit is revising the project schedule. We are exploring opportunities to maintain opening in 2029 but may be delayed until 2032. We will share an updated project schedule when we have more certainty. 

Have any additional questions or comments? We're always here to help. You can contact the project team at omfsouth@soundtransit.org.

We encourage you to sign up for project email updates for all the latest news as OMF South develops.

What can I expect as a project neighbor?

If you live, own a business, or own a property near a potential OMF South site, sign up for email updates to stay informed about the project. If you have any questions or want to schedule a meeting to learn more, contact the project team at omfsouth@soundtransit.org.

In the Final EIS, we’ll further study the site alternatives and will respond to substantive comments received from the Draft EIS comment periods in 2021 and 2023.  

After issuing the Final EIS, the Sound Transit Board will finalize a decision on the site and the project to be built.