While other students were making plans for the homecoming dance and enjoying their precious free time, I and some 70 other attendees filed into a conference room and sat down to listen to Henry Bendon, a public relations officer for Sound Transit.
The first annual Sound Transit youth conference was held on Saturday October 25th at union station hall in the international district. As of late the Seattle transit agencies have been focusing more and more on youth outreach. From this summer’s Seattle Department of Transportation youth ambassador program to the very summit I was about to step into.
For the those who don’t know, Sound Transit is one of four transportation agencies that operate in Seattle, the others being Seattle Department of Transportation, Washington Department of Transportation, and King County Metro.
These agencies are responsible for the Sounder Bus and Light rail, permits and roadways, the highway, and the metro system respectively.
At the conference, Bendon gave us an overview of the day of panels, seminars, and networking we were about to have.
The schedule broke down like this. The attendees were sorted into three groups. Each would rotate between three panels: the transportation planners panel, the peer panel (young people in transit jobs), and the trades panel.
The planner panel was the most active. College students were taking notes, questions were being raised, and future plans discussed. The panelists told us each about the long and winding roads they had taken to get where they were: former paralegals and professors, now managing the ever-changing transit systems of our cities.
However, the panel with the most surrounding buzz was the peer panel. Interns, engineers and younger supervisors sat down to give advice and answer questions. Most of these questions were focused on university students (I was one of very few high school students at the conference), but there was much diversity of major and interest within the students. This mirrored the diversity of the organization itself.
To keep everything moving, Sound Transit requires hundreds of employees with dozens of different areas of expertise. Sound Transit needs engineers and planners, but they also employ a myriad of trade jobs. The trades panel caught many eyes, though it was possibly the least anticipated panel at the conference. Unfortunately, I was not able to make it.
At lunch two hours later, I had the chance to sit down with Bendon. He gave me his personal thesis on the power of Transit.
“[It’s the] future of the region. We can’t all drive,” he told me as two other enraptured students sat down to see him talk.
It’s not just Seattleites that will have to worry about the future of Sound Transit. The problem may just be more global than we realize: in 2026, the World Cup will be hosted across North America, and Seattle is no exception.
The Seattle area’s transit systems will be overrun with an influx of tourists. Sound Transit has been drafting many plans and projects to handle the surge in transit riders.
The future is what every speaker focused on, and from planners to construction workers, they all have their eyes straight ahead. According to Bendon, the summit is “invest[ing] in you, in me, in the future … the younger you get on transit, the more likely you are to be a rider for life.”
I saw this in action with another attendee I had the pleasure of interviewing, one Elliot Rice. They said that “in June, I started riding transit for the first time … [it] was a really good way for me to get around.”
Elliot lives in Snohomish and was a fashion merchandising student before they transferred to Everett Community College to pursue graphic design.
“Transit is one of the best examples of graphic design in the real world,” they told me.
This air of excitement was not unique to Elliot. Every student I encountered was buzzing: clamoring panels and lunch lines, floating around, watching my interview. The excitement was palpable. It tangibly displayed the rising interest in transit among youth I had been hearing about all day.
While the future is not set in stone, it’s safe to say this Sound Transit conference will become a yearly occurrence. Joining the Seattle Department of Transportation Youth Summit is yet another opportunity to get youth interested in local politics and transit policy.
Keep an eye out for future conferences and announcements by following Sound Transit on Instagram.