[Correction: an initial version of this article listed incorrect single-tracking times. We regret the error.]
Link will be single-tracked this weekend, March 9-10 from 10pm to the end of service and from the start of service to 9am, according to Sound Transit spokesperson John Gallagher. Trains will run every 12 minutes between Angle Lake and UW, and every 24 minutes between UW and Northgate. Just in case you were nostalgic for the recent 3-week reduction. The southbound track will be closed for maintenance.
[Update 2: All trains will terminate at UW Station.Passengers continuing further will transfer to another train.]
To get through the 24-minute area by bus, Pacific Street buses run every few minutes from UW Station to U-District Station. Getting to Roosevelt or Northgate Stations is more complicated. Route 45 serves Roosevelt Station, and Route 67 serves Roosevelt and Northgate Stations, but neither of them come particularly close to UW Station. To transfer at UW Station to the 45 or 67, walk 7 minutes north across the Rainier Vista greenspace to Stevens Way. Going back to UW Station, the 45 stops on Stevens Way, while the 67 stops one block north of the station on Montlake Blvd.
This article will be updated as more information comes in. So far there hasn’t been an email announcement or website update.
What maintenance is so emergent that it couldn’t have been done with the full three week reduction, nor during the 3 hours that Link doesn’t run every night, but so minor that it doesn’t warrant a post on Sound Transit’s alert page that somehow seems to have an alert for every other service that Sound Transit runs?
I’m really glad that the E is our main N/S transit service and not Link, because Metro actually seems to get how to run transit.
It may be something that emerged after that. Perhaps related to the short-term technical failures that have been happening the past couple weeks.
My first thought was that it’s to install new next-arrival displays like the CID one that was done during the grand maintenance. Except that this is not in the downtown tunnel but in the Northgate Link segment.
Ah, I’ll withdraw my rant with the updated times. :) That said, I don’t regret having better access to the E than Link. Even if it’s only running every 10 minutes vs 8, I get that time back by not having to journey to the mines of Moria and back every time I want to use it.
Note that his reduction is happening on the section opened just three years ago.
It looks like ST chose the least impactful time to do this work.
I’ll take this approach over letting the system decay, as seems to happen elsewhere.
I also appreciate ST communicating the slowdown to the public well ahead of time, and having a robust notification system in place, along with having the daily schedules on the website reflect the actual planned schedule for the day.
“March 9-10 from 10pm to the end of service and from the start of service to 9am”
I must have misinterpreted the signs when I wrote down 9am-10pm. I tried to look for a webpage or email announcement with more information to confirm my interpretation and link to, but there wasn’t any. Still, ST thought it was important enough to put up station signs four days in advanced.
Added a second update: All trains will terminate at UW Station and turn around. Passengers continuing north or south will transfer to another train.
The biggest thing with these shutdowns is that the bus bridge or service reduction runs on a schedule and maintains it. The fear for riders is that these events are a giant clusterfks where nothing works, you arrive to work super late, miss your flight, etc and should just avoid Link at all costs (usually as a result of having been burned before).