Angle Lake station on the Link 1 Line is closed due to a power outage. Trains are still running between SeaTac and Lynnwood. Peak hour trains are running every 10 minutes this morning instead of 8 minutes. This may affect future peak periods. Sound Transit has been sending several alerts since Wednesday evening. One of them says:
The power outage was caused by severe damage to overhead wires as a result of inclement weather. Work is underway to repair the broken overhead wires as soon as possible. It is uncertain at this time how long the repair process is expected to take. Updates will be provided as they become available.
Angle Lake Station will remain closed while repairs take place as a safety precaution.
Some alerts mention Link shuttle buses or extra RapidRide A service to bridge the gap between SeaTac and Angle Lake stations, but this seems to be changing over time. Sign up to Sound Transit alerts for the latest information. A signup form is at the bottom of the page.
This is an evolving issue; this article will be updated as more information comes in.
Update: 3/27 11:36am: ST is now recommending RapidRide A between SeaTac and Angle Lake stations. This seems to be the strategy it has settled into rather than an ultra-short shuttle bus. Transferring at Tukwila International Blvd station is more convenient than at SeaTac station: the bus bay is a 15-second walk from the platform, whereas at SeaTac station you have to cross the boulevard once or twice.
The storm wasn’t nearly as bad as forewarned for the Seattle area, but there was certainly a lot of lightning to the south. It’s unsurprising some of it might have hit the overhead wire down there. Hopefully it’s fixed quickly!
If Federal Way Link was connected, would this mean trains couldn’t get to/from Seattle?
They had shuttle buses filling up the gaps when the Link tunnel was undergoing repairs recently. I’d guess they’d do the same for South Link in this situation.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest Link. Our mass transit system is so stupidly fragile.
delta, i feel like “a lightning strike took out a substation” is a rare enough failure mode that you can’t insult the system over it
@Micheal — I think what Delta is getting at is what happens if the trains are stuck in the southern depot? We can definitely live without train service south of SeaTac. Hell, we can muddle along without service south of TIBS (we did initially). But if the trains can’t get past Angle Lake for some reason would that mean the trains wouldn’t be able to run from downtown to the UW? I don’t think so — I think there would be enough trains at SoDo, but I don’t know.
To really properly answer the question, you’d have to know about how they’ve arranged things, and the tolerance of the car power supply.
Milwaukee Road electrified lines dealt with far, far heavier trains than Link, with substations much further apart. They were only running 3,000 volt overhead, or only double what Link has. Furthermore, the solid state power converters on Link cars should be much more tolerant of low voltage than the linear response devices available in the 1920s.
So, it doesn’t seem too far fetched that, if there’s a substation at SeaTac and another at Angle Lake, that they’d be able to bypass one substation and just tolerate a bit less performance.
However, if a substation goes out, it also could eliminate power to the track signals, and the communication system. Those aren’t necessarily powered from the overhead lines powering the trains.
It’d probably be good to see what would be necessary to operate with a substation cut out, or decide if a portable substation would be a good investment. A portable substation, despite the cost, seems like it could be useful.
Some examples of what’s out there for the standard utility market:
https://atlaselectricinc.com/products/portable-mobile-substations/
A sign of good communication by ST is when they break their own news, instead of the media or this commentariat doing it for them.
I wonder if ST could complete Pinehurst Station before the Great Conjunction if service between Northgate and Shoreline South were replaced by a bus bridge most of the day, except maybe during peak of peak.
After the Great Conjunction, the single-tracking hack probably won’t work. I suspect the 2 Line will have to be turned back at Northgate for awhile during Pinehurst completion, which really wouldn’t be that awful, I suppose.
Update: I added a paragraph saying ST seems to have settled on RapidRide A as the mitigation, and my own suggestion to transfer at Tukwila Intl Blvd station.
It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a station profile report that states which ways people get to and from each station today — and from those transferring from a bus which route.
I guess we could get close by looking at the Metro boarding data like that proposed here — except the data includes both those that walk to the stop as well as transfer to get to the stop.
That said, I wonder how many of the riders headed to Angle Lake are then boarding RapidRide A there.
There have been some surveys asking people how they use each station. I know some have referenced it here, but I don’t have a link for it. I think it requires polling and thus doesn’t happen very often (and could easily change over time).
There are both Mariners and Kraken games today at 7pm.
It’s back up and running now as of 5:00pm
I haven’t seen a “Resolved” alert. Can somebody confirm whether Angle Lake station is open again?
It would be great if the link systems would, once and for all. If it’s not the daily multi elevator issues at the stations, it the trains or power structure there is issues to deal with daily. . I can certainly see how this will be when the Seattle area again hosts the big even. How it will appear, and word get out by all the visitors that’ will be coming. It will be the black eye of our light rail system ,. We as locals deal with these issues constantly it seems. Let’s spend the funds, get the light rail, system that was sold to us fixed, so elevators, escalators , and trains are fixed and have less issues. Sure we cannot controll nature, though we can control the time to fix electrical issues. We can get a city up and running in 2 days time, yet not a station?.
Post M’s game travel yesterday was a disaster. Our train got stuck at Pioneer Square first from a claim that people were leaning on the door and then the train had to have some reboots.
Apparently the train after ours got stuck at Symphony and after multiple reboots they forced everyone off.
Maybe just too many people due to opening day?
Ridership is unlikely to be higher than at previous major games. There was a Kraken match at the same time, but again that’s not unusual. So I’d look to a non-crowding cause.
I’ve been on Link once or twice when it required a reboot. The driver made an announcment, the lights went out for a moment, a new set of dimmer emergency lights went on (in a nicer warm white color), and in a couple minutes it was back to normal.
If multiple reboots at two stations were required, then I’d guess something was mechanically wrong with the train. In that case, the issue isn’t what happened that one day (which I haven’t heard of in Link’s 16-year lifetime), but why various mechanical issues keep happening every couple days, far higher than is typical for these train models or track infrastructure.
Two different trains. Mine and the one behind mine. That’s what makes it so weird.
I’ve been told by other commentators that crush loads have little to no impact on train operation and that it’s stupid to speculate otherwise.
> Transferring at Tukwila International Blvd station is more convenient than at SeaTac station: the bus bay is a 15-second walk from the platform, whereas at SeaTac station you have to cross the boulevard once or twice.
I love this blog & thanks for all the work you put into it, but no, it’s not a 15-second walk from the Link platform to the bus bays. I haven’t stopwatched it, but it’s at least a minute and a half if you’re spry, and I’m not spry.