Holiday Inn Express Hotel And Suites Northgate

Re: Transportation from SeaTac to Olympia

by glabah

If you want to do a SeaTac to Olympia trip by public transit, there are some options, but the problem is that Olympia is served by a completely different transit agency than SeaTac. Driving distance is 55 miles and approximately 1 hour, assuming the best of traffic conditions.

However, much more to the point, you have to pass through a number of different cities, and three different counties to make this trip. This means that a taxi that is waiting in line at SeaTac is most likely not licensed to take you all the way to Olympia due to the different governing authorities in each city and county.

Your available options also depend a bit on when you are arriving, your budget, what types of inconvenience you are able to withstand, and where in the Olympia area you are trying to go. For example, under the right circumstances you could take a taxi from SeaTac to the Tukwila train station (very close to SeaTac), take Amtrak from Tuwila to the Olympia / Lacy station, and have someone pick you up there. However, this depends on when you arrive at SeaTac, as there are only four trains per day that stop at Tukwila.

There are several public transit options, but it depends a lot on where you are trying to go in Olympia. For example, SoundTransit bus route 574 goes from the SeaTac Airport to Lakewood, and you could get off at the Tacoma Dome Station (before Lakewood) and then transfer to any of several bus routes going from the Tacoma Dome Station to Olympia (Intercity Transit route 603, for example, gets you to downtown Olympia, but that only works if downtown Olympia is where you want to go).

Olympia's Public Transit Routes are Here:
http://www.intercitytransit.com/

Pierce County Transit Routes (where Tacoma is, as where you need to get in Tacoma may be closer to one of their routes than to one of Intercity's routes):
http://www.piercetransit.org/

SoundTransit Routes are Here:
http://www.soundtransit.org/

Amtrak Routes are Here:
http://www.amtrak.com
(Tukwila = station code TUK, Olympia = OLW)
Trains stop at Tukwila at 7:45 am, 11:40 am, 2:35 pm, and 5:45 pm, and the trip time is about 1 hour. The price is in the $17 to $22 range, depending on how many tickets have been sold.

There are quite a number of airport transport companies serving the SeaTac airport, but most of them are on the SeaTac web site mentioned above.