Tacoma LINK Light Rail

This is a pretty convenient way to get to the UWT campus if you parked your car at the Tacoma Dome Station. It’s free, thanks to the downtown Tacoma business association, and quicker than walking. It can actually be quite packed during rush hour, and trains run every 12 minutes during the daytime on weekdays. You can’t beat the price, but if it wasn’t free I doubt I would use it at all.
Complaints:
–12 minutes is a long time to wait for a train, especially in the cold.
–Not a lot of seating, can be packed with people.
–No way of knowing how long you have to wait until the next train.
–The front car and end car only have doors on one side of the train, so if the station is on the left side, and you’re in the front car, you have to push through people to get to the middle car to exit. My advice: stick to the middle car.

As someone who works in downtown Tacoma, I can really appreciate the Tacoma Link. Professional commuters know to park for free at the Tacoma Dome Station and either ride the Tacoma Link for free or hop on a rail train or bus to work. There are so many commuting options for the seasoned commuter. The Tacoma Link may not go very far currently but plans are in the works to extend it past Theatre Square and on to Stadium Way and over to MLK. There are also plans in the works to move the Amtrak to FreightHouse Square which is right across the street from the Tacoma Link platform. I believe construction on all of this starts Fall 2015. The Tacoma Link itself is clean and there is usually security riding it.
On a separate note: this is to the douchebag that gave a negative review… you are complaining about a free ride??? Go back to Chicago.

Sound Transit’s link may not have a lengthy route but it sure makes sense in getting someone around downtown Tacoma. Cities such as Miami and Detroit have smaller people mover type systems just to handle the downtown core. Portland has the streetcar to augment the main light rail system. The Tacoma LINK is much like that
Stars:
1. A sensible route covering the key spots in Tacoma’s compact center — the Tacoma Dome, Amtrak (close enough), Univ. of Wash. Tacoma branch campus, the Museum of Glass, Union Station, the CBD and its major buildings, and up to the Theater District with some nicer and/​or trendier restaurants, watering hotels, and entertainment venues near St. Helen’s and Commerce Streets
2. Clean, (relatively) safe, frequent intervals, comfortable, and bubble gum colored train cars
3. No need for a car if working in downtown Tacoma or if visiting and staying at a downtown hotel
4. A step in the right direction in forging downtown Tacoma’s renaissance
5. It’s FREE — don’t be looking a gift horse in the mouth!
Note: Express buses to Seattle, the international airport, and the southern reaches of metro Tacoma (i.e. Lakewood) tie into this small but very useful rail link. Maybe one day the same link that connects Seattle to the airport will continue on to Tacoma but, at the moment, Sound Transit has bigger fish to fry.

Sound Transit doesn’t take Tacoma seriously. The light rail isn’t really. It’s more of a streetcar. It goes 1.8 miles in total, connecting downtown where there are few functional businesses to the crime ridden hellhole by the Tacoma Dome. There’s no real reason to go to Salishan, except to catch a bus or a train out of town.
Most of the locals don’t spend a lot of time in the areas where the Tacoma Link goes. All the action is on 6^th Avenue, and the pretty part of town is the North End. The link goes nowhere near these places, or to the Nalley Valley where most of the jobs are, or to any hospitals, grocery stores, or schools. There is no real reason to use the Tacoma Link if you actually live in Tacoma.
Despite this, Tacomans cling to the hope their toy train will someday go someplace useful. It hasn’t for the ten years of its existence, and Sound Transit has not announced any serious plans to extend it’s route.
The Tacoma Link is free, which is the only reason anybody rides it at all. The local homeless population has made a residence of it, so I guess it serves some purpose, albeit one completely unrelated to mass transit.

Best way from Tacoma Dome to downtown Tacoma, and can’t complain for the price of it! (free)
The route is very well planed, and the stations are clean, would love it if they extend this system.

Convenient, free, close and clean.
Wish it went to Seattle… but I still love it!

The link is great. We always hop on at the T-​dome station and take it down to the Children’s Museum. The stop is only about a block and a half walk from the Children’s Museum. Great fun for the little one to «ride the train» and awesome for me because it’s free!!!
Security can be very friendly (depends on who it is) and it’s always on time.
Finding parking at the station is getting harder to do, which is a bummer. Still… Free!

Yeah, it’s cool. It’s clean. It’s free…
But when will it GO somewhere?

Very good idea for the city of Tacoma and best of all it’s FREE:)
The route is a simple one that covers a decent amount of ground, would be nice if it covered more but then I guess you would be waiting longer for a ride back and forth. 12 minutes on the weekend is not that bad!!! Since parking costs now downtown, I just park for free and ride the LINK:)

Good: LINK is downtown Tacoma’s FREE light-​rail tranist system; runs every 10 minutes.
Bad: LINK only travels from Tacoma Dome Station to 9^th & Commerce, a total distance of about 1.5 miles.

If you plan on exploring the museums in downtown Tacoma I highly recommend parking at the Tacoma Dome Station and taking the Tacoma Link, Sound Transit’s light rail. It’s FREE and it takes you from the Tacoma Dome all the way to Tacoma’s Theater District at S 9^th St. If you want to see the museums get off at Union Station and S 19^th St and you’re right there for the State History Museum and the Museum of Glass, a few blocks down in the Tacoma Art Museum. It’s perfect and free and it’s actually kind of fun!
On Saturday the trains run every 10 minutes from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm and on Sunday the trains run every 20 minutes from 10:10 am to 6:00 pm and is perfect for getting downtown and spending the day enjoying downtown Tacoma. Oh it also runs Monday to Friday too.