Link Reliability Issues Declared an “Emergency”

35 Replies to “Link Reliability Issues Declared an “Emergency””

1. I wonder if the current organizational structure of ST is also contributing to these issues. Having all your critical O&M staff report up to Metro, while working inside ST on ST projects, is not a recipe for an efficient and well run organization.

   Being able to identify, report, and correct issues in an efficient and timely manner is key to minimizing the impact of these disruptions. As is organizational culture. But the current structure of ST doesn’t allow for that.

   I think organizational issues need to at least be looked at, in addition to the purely technical issues. Because often times technical issues are a symptom of some larger problem.

   But hey, I’m just glad we have Link. And I have yet to be impacted by any of these issues.

   And a lot of these interruptions that people are getting all angry about are planned interruptions anyhow. You simply can’t expand a system like Link as fast as ST is expanding it, without at least some down time to tie the systems together.

   Can’t wait for Full ELE to come online. That will be an absolute game changer regionally.

   1. Dude, read the post… it’s not just planned disruptions. At all.

      1. @Matt,

         Of course it isn’t all “just” planned disruptions, but people tend to lump them all together when they spoil up their inner angst. And right now the planned disruptions are definitely more frequent than the unplanned.

         But kudos to ST for bringing in outside experts to look at this. And hopefully they also look at organizational issues related to their staff. That is usually where problems start.

      2. *spool* up.

         I’m out walking in the cold and using a small keyboard.

      3. It’s one thing when Link is routinely unusable on weekends because the tunnel is closed on weekends; it’s another when your train shuts down for 40+ minutes with no announcement, or the next train is 2 minutes away for half an hour. There are email service alerts seemingly every day telling how Link is delayed by some mechanical issue. The unplanned disruptions are definitely more frequent than the planned ones, but the planned ones tend to extend for days. Perhaps by number of hours, the planned disruptions outnumber the unplanned, but that’s an irrelevant metric.

         Also, you laying the majority of the blame one Metro’s involvement is pretty ridiculous, but I guess I should have expected that from you.

      4. It’s not about planned disruptions at all. We haven’t complained about ST closing parts of Link weekends or single-tracking evenings because it’s FIXING PROBLEMS or preparing new extensions. THIS is about the unplanned failures that necessitate the maintenance periods. They’ve been happening almost every day for months. Clearly there are lot more problems than ST fixes because the 2-3 maintenance periods last year didn’t fix all of them.

         What’s interesting now is to know more of the factors that are causing the failures. Six of the eight items are new to me. And the fact that ST had to issue an emergency declaration to accelerate progress on fixing them.

      5. I’ll let Lazarus speak for himself, but even though he mentions Metro by name, I’m not sure if this time he’s faulting the agency (as he often does), so much as he is faulting the idea of ST having another transit agency operate much of their agency. Lazarus may be saying he’d like to see ST start to operate more of ST. He may be saying quality and efficiency at the agency would increase if ST operated more of ST.

         “But, Sam, how can you say ST should operate more of ST? That’s would cost a lot of money!” I’m not saying that. I’m saying maybe that’s what Lazarus is saying.

      6. Tracks and infrastructure are clearly ST’s responsibility. Metro just drives the trains. The idea that these problems exist because Metro operators’ outage reports messages get lost in Metro’s bureaucracy and never make it to ST is ridiculous.

      7. “how can you say ST should operate more of ST? That’s would cost a lot of money!”

         It has the money it’s paying Metro. That includes a contract overhead to get Metro to accept it.

      8. I have always felt that ST is set up as a PR (“campaigning for money), planning and maybe construction agency rather than an operations agency. The structure works fine when it’s mostly a system of express buses and commuter trains that others run on streets or tracks maintained by others, and stations and stops are modest.

         The problem is that Link is now carrying most of the riders. That means also maintaining their own track and stations. While this is the ultimate vision goal, the basic structure of oversight has not changed to accommodate the greater burden.

         Anyone that has understands the difference between renting an apartment and building/ owning/ maintaining one’s own home gets the significantly greater responsibility involved.

         And ST never ever asks the next question: What did ST design wrong? ST keeps blaming it mostly on day-to-day things rather than study and admit what was a poor design choice in the past.

         This emergency declaration is a sign that the problems have escalated. However, it remains to be seen whether anything ultimately structurally changes. As long as ST keeps being a “feel good” elected official board doing everything rather than have an appointed “management” board with a focus primarily on day-to-day operations, this declaration will accomplish little.

         And somehow passing off the problem as a Metro problem is failing to take ownership of the problems. ST is the agency that must be ultimately culpable for their own daily operations.

         If your house needs major repairs, you don’t keep hiring an architect to create pretty renderings and diagrams. You don’t hire a consensus builder who is a de facto family therapist. You employ someone who actually can assess the problem and fix it. It’s a very different skill set.

         For this situation, you wouldn’t hire a bureaucrat that knows how to schmooze local board members. You put someone who has years of actual transit operations experience — something that ST never hired as its CEO. They don’t need a nice guy; they need a seasoned bossy head (awed by staff) and then not second guess them.

         This is not a new dilemma. Agencies that lan, build and operate rail transit systems across the US are often structured differently — like for the light rail systems in Portland and San Diego. Chicago, New York and SF Muni have appointed management of their operations. It’s just that ST hasn’t been circumspect enough to realize that it’s evolved and needs to run things differently now.

      9. @Nathan Dickey,

         You should actually read what a person writes before you get your undies in a bunch. I made exactly zero disparaging remarks about the Metro employees that work for ST. Nor did I make any disparaging remarks about Metro itself.

         I was however critical of the current ST operational model where the bulk of their key O&M employees aren’t actually ST employees. Anyone who has actually worked in a large organization like ST knows how hard it can be to manage such a thing efficiently. That task only gets that much harder when your employees aren’t actually your employees and they report up through a different organizational structure, with different communication lines, and with a different product focus.

         Suggesting that a study on potential organizational inefficiency at ST is somehow an attack on Metro is sort of ridiculous. If the current organizational model is producing inefficiencies, then we should strive to understand that and improve ST. If those same inefficiencies are impacting ST’s ability to provide effective service delivery and failure response, then we should understand that too.

         And if the answer is ST would be more efficient and effective if all their workers were actually their own employees, then we shouldn’t be afraid to move in that direction.

         The goal here should be effective transit delivery, not protecting individual fiefdoms. Period.

      10. @Sam,

          Thanks. At least you read my post before responding. I appreciate that.

          “ He may be saying quality and efficiency at the agency would increase if ST operated more of ST.”

          I don’t work at ST, but the people I know who do/have have all said that the current model is driving inefficiencies. And I’ve been around long enough to know that inefficiencies in one part of an organization will usually manifest themselves in others parts too.

          Bottom line, all I was saying is that organizational issues at ST ought to be studied right along with the technical issues. Sometimes the technical problems are just symptoms of the organizational problems.

          If you want to truly fix the problem, you should study both. And you shouldn’t be afraid to go where the data leads you.

      11. @Lazarus: All I said is that it’s ridiculous to blame Metro’s involvement. I didn’t say you said anything disparaging about Metro. Don’t put words in my mouth.

      12. @Nathan Dickey,

          You should go back and read what I wrote. Honestly.

      13. This back & forth about planned/unplanned, and finger jabbing about Metro is missing the point. The point raised in the post is about why does ST rely on consultants so much, and why aren’t these issues addressed in-house?

          The org structure is a challenge. Authority and responsibility is diffused to the point it’s hurtling the system’s physical and operational resilience. KCM is a fantastic agency. They do so much so well with a rich county-wide bus network. They also operate and maintain Link under contract to ST. Under this arrangement, a KCM LRT Ops director reports an ST LRT operations Director who reports to an exec who reports to Sparrman. That same LRT director at KCM also reports to his boss Michelle Allison, who reports to Dow Constantine, who has been chair or vice chair of the ST board much of the last decade. The point is there’s no single point of accountability to ensure operational resilience. Who’s job is it? It’s simply not clear.

          So yes, I think the org structure absolutely contributes to the issues.

      14. I don’t see any evidence that outsourcing to engineering firms or operating agencies caused or perpetuate the missing reliability maintenance. I agree ST should move these in-house, and ST should have a process for monitoring and addressing these things, but I don’t see how outsourcing is specifically a culprit here. Some people raised the issue that the accountability chain might not have been complete and nobody was assigned to some things. But that’s ST’s top-level responsibility regardless of whether the lower levels are outsourced or not. ST could have had a complete pro-active maintenance process AND outsourced the work: it’s not either-or. It’s not the contracts’ fault that ST neglected this responsibility that’s above and beyond contracts.

   2. Back in the Before Times, during the days of joint tunnel operations, it was necessary to have all the tunnel operators reporting to Metro.

      Now, it might make more sense for ST to hire the Link operators, supervisors, etc., though the transition period would involve a mix of Metro and ST operators and supervisors.

      One detail to look at is the Pick process. Are there a bunch of new train operators with every Pick, replacing other operators fleeing Link operation if they find it too monotonous, difficult, etc? Are new train operators causing an inordinate amount of mechanical issues?

      OTOH, operator fungibility comes in handy for bus bridges, and having a ready source of new train operators ahead of major expansions. But opening the 2 Line all the way from South Bellevue to Lynnwood is the largest bump in operators ST will ever have.

   3. Having all your critical O&M staff report up to Metro, while working inside ST on ST projects, is not a recipe for an efficient and well run organization.

      I don’t think it makes any difference. There is an added layer of bureaucracy, but it is quite likely that would occur anyway. I get what you are saying from an abstract level. Maybe it would make sense for Metro to just take over the whole thing. Metro would operate the trains, maintain the tracks, add the new lines — everything. Maybe they would have avoided the East Link mess or the huge cost overruns (although it is a bit too late for a lot of that now).

   4. “I think organizational issues need to at least be looked at, in addition to the purely technical issues. Because often times technical issues are a symptom of some larger problem.”

      I was really stunned that ST created such a disruption in service in 2023 just to replace tiles. Replacing tiles is a fairly basic overnight fix. At most it could be done over a weekend or two. Instead ST insisted in a two week continuous disruption. Then when they finished dthe first one in 6 days with only one eight hour shift each day, I thought that they should have only set aside six days at most for the next one, and they could replaced a half platform tiling every weekend.

      There is a real question in my mind whether these disruptions need to be as long as they are.

      The organizational problem I see is that no boss has the hands-on skills to say “we can’t keep upsetting riders — so tell me how this can get done either overnight or between 7 pm and 5 am” and then offer ways that he knows that can make it happen. I’m suspect that senior management at ST doesn’t push back. This is why hiring a seasoned boss who has run rail transit for many years needs to be hired at ST.

2. A couple of free links on the subject.

   https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/infrastructure/sound-transit-network-reliability-emergency/281-2c6f503e-5f1f-4730-98df-c672abe404c2

   https://www.aol.com/sound-transit-declares-emergency-expedite-224900498.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXdzLmdvb2dsZS5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAF1KqzbQjnO7trwqwBfEn-JVvw5uBnbfGnClbf5tiGq2kOov2pbH_Ea8h5HQuVkorvsFSQsUUvbcZdTJQDJMrggubjWIlgEdDi3Bp3PQ_SuKrGcXh-76lHC0mPWZG2Im65s27jf3EKxyOWnpst1s8L6KUCvClop-ZVPbV24cwbgm

3. HNTB is a big engineering firm focused on building things. They have already recently earned billions of contracts from ST.

   This appears to me to be the wrong kind of firm to tackle this assignment. The core problem is there is a lack of effective management. The agency needs a hard-hitting accounting or public management firm to point out management problems. HNTB may be a team that does this — but they are tainted by the fact that they will want to preserve their main business line.

   I predict that HNTB won’t dare risk offending anyone and won’t publish anything that isn’t to the liking of the Board and current management. They won’t deal with the structural problems.

   The work should be instead done by a firm with no ties to ST engineering contracts.

4. Another part of the problem is ST cheaping out during construction by not building enough crossover tracks. This saves a small amount of capital cost, but makes track repair more painful in the future by forcing trains to single-track for miles for a repair covering one small section.

   I can see crossover tracks not being worth it in places like the Beacon Hill tunnel, but there’s no reason why they can’t be at every station in the downtown Seattle tunnel or the Rainier Valley surface-running section.

   1. Crossover tracks I. The DSTT is a notable design problem. It’s traceable to the design of the Downtown tunnel for buses.

      It was probably assumed that the gap between the middle unused lane at the stations could be used as a bypass if ever needed. So the whole tunnel was designed without rail crossover locations in the middle.

      Clearly it’s a rail engineering challenge. It’s just that I’ve never seen any report proposing any design nor determining benefits of installing them. Maybe one was done before 2010?

      We’ve internally speculated how to do it. I think the easiest may be to do it inside Symphony Station and simply close the station when in use (which should be rarely). Otherwise it’s probably going to be a risky ad expensive digging effort.

      This is an example of how building underground rail tunnels needs to be done to last 100 years. Once built it’s very difficult to impossible to change anything. It’s why some of us look closely at the planned tunneling for the West Seattle and Ballard extensions.

      It’s important for above ground too. It’s just that those modifications are much easier and cheaper if needed. .

      1. I think it’s a bit too late now because the construction work would, itself, require several days of shuttle buses through downtown. But, back in 2007, when the entire tunnel was closed for over a year in preparation for Link, that was time to do it. If the crossover tracks were in the station area, they wouldn’t have even needed to do any digging. But, they cheaped out, and anytime trackwork is needed in the future, we pay the price.

   2. Could crossovers be added to all the stations downtown if the platform lengths were reduced to match 2 or 3 car trainsets on a fully automated line? It would be a big undertaking, but would go a long way to both system resiliency and train frequency.

      1. you could still use 4 train cars with crossovers added like in the middle of station. the trains would just need to enter the crossover at the station beforehand if there’s an obstruction ahead.

5. There have been at least w large planned outages to connect Eastside libraries. Remember connect 2020 at the start of the pandemic? It was presented at the time as all the work that would be needed to link the 2 sections. Then we tossed away the center platform at pioneer Square. Yet another bad choice by ST. IT’S become clar that st can’t really build things and they can’t really operate link very well so what is the point of them then?

   1. Let’s not even get into how the 2 Line across Lake Washington was supposed to be open before Lynnwood Link in 2023. And it’s only now that the planned closures are happening? They should have done these things in 2022 or 2023.

   2. I think Connect 2020 was to connect the trackway, while this is to connect the signal and electrical systems or such. But at the time it sounded like Connect 2020 did everything.

      “the 2 Line across Lake Washington was supposed to be open before Lynnwood Link in 2023. And it’s only now that the planned closures are happening? They should have done these things in 2022 or 2023.”

      It doesn’t matter when those happen. When ST saw cross-lake service would be delayed, why not postpone the interconnection until closer to opening?

      1. There were fewer riders those years to be impacted.

         Who knew the endless interruptions would keep Link from getting to 30M riders for 2024?

      2. Exactly, Brent. The delay involved tracks — not overhead wires.

         The public was told that EastLink would not open across Lake Washington in October 2023 in April 2023. That delay announcement and the planned opening date were closer together (6 months) than we are currently from the opening date (10-12 months). So the work including temporary closures should have been done by early 2023 if ST was still keeping its promised date.

         I’m not saying that we can do anything about it. I’m only saying that ST seems to have been doing a terrible job in determining work task scheduling in 2023. Either that or the delay was well known internally by mid 2022 so they kept the electrical work from starting — and the public wasn’t told until many months later.

         So which is it? Widespread schedule lies or bad management — or both?

6. “With these original facilities nearly two decades old”

   But much of Link really isn’t that old.

   The issue with track bolts damaging trains on Northgate Link, and notifications from maintenance personnel going unheard, speaks of structural problems rather than age problems.

   And some of this needs to be better planned. Eg: when TriMet has to have the Gateway station closed for tying in Better Red Line, they closed everything from Lloyd Center to Gateway to do a major tie and rail replacement project on that section.

   Eg: The upcoming closure would be an ideal time to run a street sweeper through the older section of the tunnel and take care of the accumulated dirt problem. Sure, it might have to do a 7 point turn around at Northgate, but it’s designed for buses. It shouldn’t be a problem for small maintenance trucks.

7. I’d like to hear more about those faulty brakes.

   Are some of the brakes on the newly-delivered Siemens LRVs faulty?

   Is track west-and-tear aging the brakes faster than expected?

   Why aren’t we hearing about brake problems on the older Kinkysharyo LRVs?

   1. The issue with the brakes, as far as been publicly reported, is that the leaking hydraulics drips onto the brakes. The hydraulics issues on the Siemens trains have been known since they started service, and previous reports said ST was “working with Siemens” to figure out the solution. It appears to be a design problem with the new trains.

8. “Flaws in ST’s dispatch control center network making disruptions difficult to fix;”

   I don’t think people realize how crucial this affects operations – not just in train networks but for buses too. Controls centers at transit agencies around the country operator on such an antiquated philosophy of having just a handful of dispatchers to oversee hundreds of drivers and buses on the road. When something goes wrong, they’re swamped and can’t handle other matters in the system.

   Transit control centers need to operate like air traffic control centers. Having “sections” or “groups” of drivers or routes rather than the entire fleet reporting to a single dispatcher. For example: group 1 can handle north end routes, group 2 for the eastside and etc. Designated maintenance dispatchers, security and customer service teams also need to be in the control center so there’s a seamless flow of communication and that everyone knows what’s going on.

Comments are closed.