As announced in October, Link will be replaced by shuttle buses between SODO and Capitol Hill Stations from 10pm tonight (November 8) through Sunday, November 10, and return to full service on Monday, November 11. Trains will run every 15 minutes north of Capitol Hill and south of SODO. As a commentor noted earlier today, this means attendees of this evening’s Kraken game and other events this weekend will need to plan ahead.

Sound Transit and The Urbanist each posted articles recently describing this closure and other upcoming closures. This weekend’s closure is in service of tying in the upcoming 2 Line extension between Downtown Seattle and South Bellevue across the I-90 floating bridge and Mercer Island.

Sound Transit has provided the following graphics to help weekend riders plan their trip who may seek alternative service to each station during disruptions [edit: some routes may not be in-service on weekends, check schedules for more information]:

As commentator Al S. noted, Link ridership on weekends has reached parity with weekday ridership. If rider impacts are the impetus for weekend closures, should Sound Transit consider major service impacts such as these for weekdays instead of weekends?

Edit, 3:40pm: clarified utility of the alternative service chart.

24 Replies to “Link Disruption This Weekend (Nov. 8-10)”

  1. ST just absolutely positively COULD NOT!!!!! delay the closure until 11:30 PM now could they? Who GAS about a silly hockey game? Let ’em skate home.

    I also REALLY appreciate that they included the two express buses to Snohomish County points to remind people that they only run weekdays with last runs at 6:45! That was real strategeristical of them.

    1. I revised the post to note that the chart is a general alternative service chart, and may include routes which don’t have service on weekends.

    3. Lindblom’s Seattle Times article says, “Sound Transit suggests Kraken hockey fans Friday night take Route 8 up Denny Way to catch trains northbound at Capitol Hill Station, rather than the usual trip involving Seattle Center Monorail and Westlake Station.”

      2. And one half-hourly 8 totally has the capacity to handle hundreds of hockey fans. I might take the D north instead, although other people will be filling it too.

      3. Would have been better to start this work later and push it into Monday which is a federal holiday and Monday is typically a lighter weekday.

      4. I took the 8 after a preseason NBA game (the Clippers were in town). It was a Friday or Saturday night (I forget which). It absolutely crawled. This was with every other system (monorail, Link, etc.) working just fine.

  2. The shuttle is extended to UW Station, and UW to Roosevelt is single-tracked, due to a “mechanical issue”, as of Friday 10:42pm.

    1. Perhaps extension of the SLU streetcar up Eastlake would provide some apparently much-needed redundancy.

      1. They looked at extending the streetcar (for the RapidRide J route) but it wasn’t worth it. They are much better off with buses. They offer a lot more flexibility and redundancy (e. g. they can run as an express).

        There are other ways they could build redundancy. They could fix the 8. They could run a gondola from Capitol Hill to South Lake Union to the Seattle Center (with a cherry on top — http://citytank.org/2012/02/21/a-gondola-with-a-cherry-on-top/). They could build a Metro 8 subway.

        Of course none of that is happening. The only redundancy will be between Uptown and downtown. But this is the wrong kind of redundancy. You want a system to be redundant while also offering something different. For example a Metro 8 subway would enable very fast one-seat rides from Capitol Hill to South Lake Union or Uptown. But when Link is built-out the monorail will be redundant because it does almost exactly the same thing Link does. In this case it doesn’t help at all.

        This is something that folks tend to gloss over. The second downtown line is very expensive. It offers nothing in terms of additional coverage downtown. But one argument for it is that it offers redundancy. The problem is, it offers very little. Consider some scenarios:

        1) A problem on Line 2 between Judkins Park and CID. They just close off Line 2 and run Line 1 more often (or they run a truncated version of Line 1 from SoDo mixed in with Line 1). East Link riders are out of luck. They have to transfer from Judkins Park. The new tunnel offers nothing.

        2) West Seattle Link is broken between West Seattle and SoDo. Same story.

        3) Link is broken between Capitol Hill and Westlake. Same story.

        But now consider a time when it really is valuable:

        4) Line 1 is broken between Symphony Station and Pioneer Square. The trains turn around at Westlake (in the north) and CID (in the south). Riders continuing on their journey can take a train (instead of a bus). Except this just so happens to be one of the best segments for buses in our entire system. If you are forced out of the train at CID and are headed to Westlake it really isn’t the end of the world. My guess is ST doesn’t bother running shuttles. There will be a bus along fairly soon and it can get you there fairly quickly. It is quite possible that taking a bus would be faster than transferring to the train (depending on your destination).

        We are building redundancy where it isn’t needed. This is just one of the many ways in which ST3 was a poorly thought-out set of projects.

  3. What will happen with the full 2 Line when the downtown tunnel is closed? Can trains turn around at Judkins Park? One shuttle bus route can’t serve both Stadium/SODO and Judkins Park without having awful travel time. Would ST have a second shuttle route without reducing frequency on the first route? Will there have to be because ridership will double?

    1. I suspect the big variable is whether or not 2 Line trains can reach the ID-C Station.

      I’ve often felt that ST needs a deliberate contingency planning guide for any track segment closure or station closure in the system. They seem to “wing it” with each closure. Maybe they have a private one that staff uses but I’m not aware of anything that’s been discussed with the public. Of course, it may be good to not share it with the public in case there is some troublemaker out there who likes to disrupt things.

      Imagine if the guide had a review step called “special event impacts” with a set of actions like “don’t schedule shutdowns within 90 minutes of the start or end of an event if possible” — followed by an action to activate supplemental special event bus service if it can’t be avoided.

    2. They should be able to reverse at Judkins Park. There’s a pocket track just west of the station so they effectively have a cross-over.

  5. Link outage/ shuttle now lasting thru Monday. Oops.pardon us while we at st fall on our faces yet again.

    1. Monday until 9am. So the AM peak will be affected.

      You’re surprised that maintenance sometimes lasts a few hours longer? Other times it has finished two days early.

    2. I’d rather they take their time and do it right, than rush and need another shutdown later, or worse.

      1. They might be taking their time for safety. They might be taking their time because this is government work and they can make more money stretching this out. Both are possible.

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