Transit ridership in the Seattle area typically reaches its seasonal low in early months of the year as tourists avoid the Big Dark and locals hunker down after the holidays. Sound Transit often uses this time to complete disruptive maintenance and upgrade projects. At a Sound Transit Board committee meeting earlier this month, agency staff presented plans for construction, upgrades, and maintenance requiring disruptions to Link 1 Line service in January and February next year.
- January 2-5 (Weekend): No service between Stadium and Capitol Hill stations.
- January 13-15 (Weeknights): Service ends early between Tukwila/Intl. Blvd and Mount Baker stations.
- January 30-February 2 (Weekend): No service between Stadium and Capitol Hill stations.
- February 10-12 (Weeknights): Service ends early between Mount Baker and Stadium stations.
- Ongoing (Weeknights): Reduced 1 Line service after 7pm.
Read on for details.
Pinehurst Station Construction
Pinehurst station is nearing completion and some remaining tasks require northbound and southbound 1 Line trains to share a single track while crews are working. Reductions in 1 Line service after 7pm on weekdays began earlier this year, but were put on hold in October and November to reduce the amount of service impacts during that time. These disruptions resumed earlier this month and will continue into the new year. Sound Transit says regular service will be maintained during major events, and the nightly service reductions will start after 9pm during the holidays.
Pinehurst station is currently expected to open in June 2026.
Downtown Transit Tunnel Signal Upgrades
In October, Sound Transit announced it would upgrade signal systems in the former Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel to enable Automatic Train Protection (ATP). This work will continue in January, with closures spanning two full weekends: January 2-5 and January 30-February 2. When the cross-lake connection of the 2 Line opens in 2026, trains will run every 4 minutes through the Downtown tunnel during peak times. The 35-year-old DSTT is the only stretch of Sound Transit’s light rail track without ATP and the upgrade is expected help future high-frequency operations run smoothly.
Monthly Maintenance Program
Sound Transit also began a new Monthly Maintenance Program in October, shutting down service early on different segments of the 1 Line for a few days each month to enable completion of more complicated maintenance projects. Normally, the 1 Line stops operating around 1am and restarts about 4 hours later, but window only really allows about 1.5 hours of productive maintenance work. By ending service around 10pm, the productive work window grows to nearly 4 hours and the agency has used this time in previous months to troubleshoot problems and complete complex preventative maintenance which would otherwise be impossible to finish.
The next monthly maintenance period will be January 13-15, when service between Tukwila/Intl. Blvd and Mount Baker stations will be replaced by shuttle buses after around 10pm. The following month’s extended maintenance will occur February 10-12, impacting service between Mount Baker and Stadium stations.
Midweek Roundups will include reminders of upcoming disruptions. You can also sign up to receive service alerts directly from Sound Transit.
[off-topic. The topic of this article is the maintenance periods in January and February. People will be using this article as a reference for that throughout the two months, and we can’t have it buried in weeds of endless discussions about DSTT2 or ST3 service.]
Thanks to ST for selecting weekends when the Seahawks won’t be in town.
It would be really cool if there were more shuttles expressing between the open stations, and to make sure the signage on the front of the buses is set up to show that that bus is expressing to the next open station.