The earliest proposal for a light rail station near Angle Lake came from the Puget Sound Council of Governments in 1986, as part of a north–south line from Lynnwood to Federal Way. A regional transit authority (RTA) was formed in the early 1990s to study a regional light rail system, first proposing a $6.7 billion plan in 1995 that included a light rail station at Angle Lake as part of a line between Downtown Seattle, Seattle–Tacoma International Airport, and Tacoma. The proposal was rejected by voters in March 1995, and the RTA presented a smaller proposal the following year. The second proposal, called "Sound Move", selected a station at South 200th Street in SeaTac as the southern terminus of a light rail line traveling north through the Rainier Valley to Downtown Seattle and the University of Washington campus; it was approved by voters in November 1996 and was scheduled to open in 2006. The RTA, later re-branded as Sound Transit, selected an elevated alignment for the station in 1999 and added a park and ride facility. A series of budgeting troubles led to the line being truncated to South 154th Street in Tukwila, north of the airport, in late 2001; the cost of extending the $2.1 billion line to the airport and South 200th Street was estimated to be $350 to $450 million. An extension to the airport was eventually approved in 2006 and opened in December 2009, a few months after the initial line from Seattle to Tukwila. The South 200th Street station was reorganized as a part of a $1.4 billion, light rail extension from Sea-Tac Airport to the Highline College area to open by 2021, which was put on the 2007 Roads and Transit ballot measure. The ballot measure failed, in part because of its reliance on road expansion. A smaller, transit-only ballot measure known as "Sound Transit 2" was approved by voters in November 2008, including a light rail extension to Redondo/Star Lake to open by 2023. Sound Transit began exploring means to accelerate the construction of the South 200th Street station in 2010, using federal grants to align the opening with the University Link Extension in 2016 and provide additional parking capacity to supplement Tukwila International Boulevard station. In December 2010, amid a tax revenue shortfall during the ongoing economic recession, the Sound Transit Board elected to suspend all design work on the light rail project south of South 200th Street. The Sound Transit Board officially approved an accelerated schedule for the South 200th Street station in July 2011, seeking a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant of up to $34 million; a $10 million grant was awarded in December, allowing the opening date for the station to move from 2020 to September 2016.