Sound Transit will be performing track maintenance near the Columbia City station from 10pm – 1am on July 26th through July 30th.
Link trains will operate every 25-30 minutes during this period.
The following station platforms will be temporarily closed during the scheduled maintenance:
- Columbia City — Southbound platform will be closed on Thursday from 10 p.m. – 1 a.m.
- Columbia City — Northbound platform will be closed on Friday from 10 p.m. – 1 a.m.
Please board all trains at the other platform during the times indicated.
I am headed to the airport Wednesday night. Is there any way I can get a schedule to know when link will be running? No schedule is given on the ST rider alert. What crappy customer service.
They generally start the single tracking after 10pm and are starting to take trains off line around 9pm. With the Sounders schedule, they may delay the work a little. Give yourself a little extra time, and avoid trying to catch a train between 9:30 and 10:30 (Sounders fans will be filling all trains at that time.)
The schedule during these operations change for several reasons, so are not able to be posted. Take your arrival time, 1 hour before that, be at the train station. It should work.
I just love entitled Americans.
Compare ST’s on-time performance to that of Amtrak, Greyhound, US Airways, or Southwest.
When ST has a maintenance problem, your delay is rarely more then 15 minutes, and they give you a heads up ahead of time. They even read the more college-level blogs to converse with the public.
Amtrak. Where to start. Or, more importantly, when. Who the heck knows? (I have to exempt the Cascades from this critique, since it actually runs more or less on time. Long live the Cascades! May it run more often!)
With the airlines, they can cancel your flight at will, and rebook you for another one three hours later, because they can.
Commenters descending to complain about how there’s too much Link maintenance downtime in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
It was either them, or the ones complaining about the track noise. Can’t win either way.
We did pretty well tonight!
ST could just say that after 10pm trains will leave Westlake every 30 minutes at :10 and :40 and Seatac every 30 minutes at :15 and :45 (or whatever would work with the single track section). Riders could roughly extrapolate, even if running times are longer than normal.
An every 30 minute schedule that’s somewhat predictable would work a heck of a lot better than saying a train will come on a totally unpredictable basis every 20-25 minutes.
The trouble is in timing the trains to arrive at the switches to the single tracking just when the other train is clearing the work area.
Monday was easy, it was a short, high-speed section of track (about 5 minutes) and we were able to keep the trains pretty close to the posted schedule. On other segments, the delay is longer (sometimes 10 minutes for the track segment.) requiring 20+ minute headways.
Timing the trains so that they don’t have to wait excessively at the station waiting for track means that we have to be flexible in the end point departure times.
Please, please, please, give Sounders fans an hour after the final whistle blows before Link is halfway shut down.
Wednesday is the Sounders’ first-ever Champions League match, which should be letting out around 9:30.
We do try to postpone the single tracking until after the game crowds are accommodated. (It won’t be up to me on Wednesday, I will be at home.)
Hail to the graveyard crew! Those whiners better watch out, or they will be reincarnated as graveyard crew workers, or customer service agents… with no bus routes to get them both to and from work (that is they’ll have one but not the other).
After my comment, an e-mail was sent to the staff to delay the construction closures until after the game was cleared out. (Hint: They do read this blog. They may even know who I am.)