The ten-week period of construction work to install East Link track and switches in International-District/Chinatown Station, a project Sound Transit has dubbed “Connect 2020“, has arrived.
Operational nuisances begin today and tomorrow with a full closure of the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel. Just like happened a couple weekends last fall, shuttles will run every 7 minutes between SODO Station and Capitol Hill Station, and serve temporary bus stops at each station in between. Link will run every 10 minutes on tunnel closure days.
Both the shuttles and Link will be free all weekend. ST staff will be available at both Capitol Hill Station and SODO Station to answer questions.
Three other Metro route options remain available for a potentially faster connection between the two temporarily-disconnected Link segments:
- Route 8 between Capitol Hill Station and Mt Baker Station (probably not faster, but still an option)
- Route 48 between University of Washington and Mt Baker Station
- Route 60 between Capitol Hill Station and Beacon Hill Station
Several other buses connect SODO Station to downtown, including Metro routes 101, 150, and ST Express 594, that each serve the bus stop closest to the station.
Routes 10 and 49 connect Capitol Hill Station to the Westlake Station vicinity. The First Hill Streetcar connects Capitol Hill Station to Chinatown.
More details, including maps for the various shuttle stops, are available at ST’s Connect 2020 page.
Too bad this first closure happens during a Seahawks game.
Seahawks are playing at Philadelphia so no problem. If they had won last Sunday then they would have had a game at CenturyLink Field this weekend.
Trains to downtown had not shown up at Beacon Hill Station for at least 30 minutes according to someone else who had been waiting before I arrived there this morning. Signage listed next trains arriving is 30+ minutes so we all ended up taking the 36 into town.
I don’t plan on using link light rail until during any of the planned closure weekends. It’s just too much of a hassle.
How is the Capitol Hill to UW segment of Link doing? Anybody ride that?
I wouldn’t trust those signs. They don’t actually use real-time data.
As I said yesterday, the 7, 36, 48, 49, and 70 will have extra trips during Connect 2020. Each route will have four extra buses (if it’s even), so if they normally have around ten, that would be a 40% increase in frequency.
This mess combined with the work at3rd and Virginia makes it an interesting day to be a bus rider. It seems the link shuttles are getting completely bunchedownd up and not much else is running on 3rd. Oh.. There’s an escalator outage at capitol hill. More stellar work by metro and sound transit! Such clowns…
I took the D at 1:30pm, and in the 10 minutes I waited at 3rd & Pike I saw two northound Link shuttles and one or two southbound. They were moving fine. They didn’t have many riders. At 4:30pm at 4th & Pine a crowd of some thirty people got on the 49. That used to always happen weekend evenings before Link, but not like that recently.
Thankfully, the stairs to the platform at CHS are now open to the public. Such foresight!
We’ll see if they take up the possibility of permanently reversing one of the down escalators.
BTW, I would encourage those entering the station during the 10-week Connect 2020 Link slowdowns to stick to the regular escalators when available.
Those stairwells were originally meant for emergency egress. If Link’s operations go too slowly tomorrow, there is a possibility of overcrowding the platform beyond fire capacity, in which case the stairwells need to be available for departing passengers while entry to the station is temporarily closed off to clear the platform enough to make way for more arriving passengers.
If you see a crowd at the station, and you are just trying to get downtown, take the 10 or 49.