Any Rental Car Options Upon Arrival in Seattle on #14?

[JoelG]

Hi, All!

Arriving at King Street Station on the northbound CS (8:37pm if on time), are there any scenarios for obtaining a rental car at that hour? (Our final destination is about an hour's drive north of the City, with no need/desire to overnight downtown.)

The only method I can think of is to backtrack on the light rail to the SEA-TAC airport to pick up the car there, but that seems a bit grisly (especially with the added rental car taxes the airport imposes). You would think that at least one downtown-based rental location would cater to a trainful of arriving passengers…but I assume our only real choice is to crash in a nearby hotel and pick up the car the next morning?

Thanks for sharing any thoughts/suggestions?

 

[CHamilton]

Where is your destination? You could take the Community Transit 510 bus from 4th & Jackson (a block east of King Street Station) to Everett. It runs every hour, with the last departure at 11:48 pm. Community Transit's commuter buses are pretty nice, as they're designed for relatively long trips. You could then pick up your rental car from an Everett location the next morning.

 

[NorthCoastHiawatha]

According to google maps there are two Budget Rent a Car's downtown about half a mile or more from the King Street. Not sure of there hours of operation though.

 

[amamba]

I rented from hertz local at westlake but I think it's closed by the time #14 gets in. There is also a downtown enterprise location.

 

[zephyr17]

None of the downtown rental locations are open when the Starlight gets in. Your options are pretty much what's been mentioned, backtrack to Seatac on the light rail, take public transit, or overnight downtown. It sounds like you're going farther north than Everett, that is only about 30 minutes north of downtown Seattle outside rush hour.

 

[fairviewroad]

Depending on how long you need to keep the car, the extra airport taxes will be much less than
the cost of a downtown hotel, which can be rather spendy.

Another "outside the box" option would be to disembark in Tacoma and hop on a SoundTransit 574 bus which will

take you to the airport. This would save you the need to backtrack from Seattle back down to the airport.

(Obviously you couldn't check you bags to SEA under that option, but disembarking a station early

shouldn't be a problem.) So while you'd still pay airport taxes on the car, you'd at least be able to pick it

up a good 90 minutes earlier.

 

[JoelG]

Good thoughts, All; much obliged!

I'll run the options past my lovely female traveling companions (wife & daughter to learn their preferences. (This little engineer knows when to bow to higher authority!)

Thanks again.