This week on the GeekWire Podcast: we take the show on the road — or rather, on the rails — recording on Sound Transit’s 2 Line as we ride the world’s first light rail on a floating bridge from Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood to Microsoft’s campus in Redmond.
It’s an engineering marvel decades in the making — the bridge, that is, not the podcast. That said, juggling a couple of handheld mics and portable recorder on a crowded train, we did have to overcome some logistical challenges to make it happen.
Along the way, we talk about the week’s news, including Anduril’s autonomous warship facility on Seattle’s ship canal, and golf star Bryson DeChambeau’s acquisition of Bellevue-based Sportsbox AI ahead of the Masters.
We chat with fellow passengers, and get a behind-the-scenes look at the engineering from Sound Transit’s Henry Bendon.
He explains how engineers solved the challenge of running 55 mph trains on a bridge that constantly moves with wind, waves, and changing lake levels — something that’s never been done anywhere in the world. Bendon also talks about the surge in ridership since the Crosslake Connection opened on March 28, and what the line means for connecting the region’s tech hubs on both sides of the lake.
After arriving in Redmond, we sit down with Microsoft President Brad Smith to talk about the company’s two-decade role in making the Crosslake Connection a reality.
Smith says the line gives people “a choice they didn’t have a month ago.”
We ask what it says about how we build big things in this region that it took nearly 60 years to get from idea to reality. “What really matters is people stuck with it,” he says.
And we ask about the unlikely duo of Microsoft and Amazon — fierce competitors in cloud computing and AI — collaborating on regional transit and civic issues. “When it comes to local issues, we’re not competing with Amazon, we’re working together,” Smith says.
And finally, we hit him with a trivia question that hits close to home.
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