Just before midnight on Monday night, I was standing on the I-90 pedestrian walkway with six other people and one nervous-looking shiba inu. The sky was clear and the moon was full, so Lake Washington was bright. Traffic would have felt sparse if you were in a car, but on foot, it felt like a crowded jet way. All seven of us were watching the other end of the bridge—most of us were squinting at the tracks between the east-bound and west-bound roadways; one older man with a baseball cap and a windbreaker periodically picked up his binoculars and peered toward Mercer Island.

At 11:53 p.m., headlights appeared just above the empty tracks. Then some orange lights came into view. And finally, a whole light rail car, moving slowly enough across the bridge that men with hard hats and hi-vis vest

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