Update (Feb 21, 3:30pm): Crosslake 2 Line simulated service has resumed.
Following a power outage between Bel-Red station and Downtown Redmond station that started on Thursday, Sound Transit has decided to suspend simulated service on the full 2 Line until further notice. As of this morning, 2 Line trains will operate between South Bellevue station and Downtown Redmond station. The 2 Line will not run between International District/Chinatown station and Lynnwood City Center station. The 1 Line will run as scheduled.
Unexpected outages and service disruptions occur on all transit systems. When issues occur, transit agencies should clearly communicate the situation with passengers and quickly coordinate alternative travel options. Based on the past two days, Sound Transit needs to revamp how it manages outages on the 2 Line.
Communication Challenges
Sound Transit’s communication during the recent 2 Line power outage was all but clear. The agency’s first alert on the disruption (Thursday at 8:16pm) said “2 Line trains are temporarily disrupted until further notice due to power issues.” and encouraged passengers to use local bus service instead. Ten minutes later, a second alert clarified that 2 Line service was only suspended between Overlake Village station to Redmond Technology station. Trains were still operating from South Bellevue station to BelRed station, and from Downtown Redmond station to Marymoor Village station. This alert mentioned that shuttle buses had been ordered between Overlake Village station to Redmond Technology station.
About twenty minutes after the second alert, a third alert announced a complete 2 Line closure and free shuttle bus replacement for all stations on the Eastside. Ten minutes later, a fourth update said “2 Line Shuttle buses are replacing the 2 Line from BelRed Station to Downtown Redmond Station until further notice due to power issues”. The update continued: “Regular 2 Line service continues from South Bellevue Station to Spring District Station”.
After four conflicting alerts, the replacement service plan had stabilized. Around 9:30pm, a fifth alert announced the 2 Line would end service at 10pm. Prior to the start of simulated service, the 2 Line ran until about 10pm each night. However, since February 14, 2 Line trans have operated until midnight. Cutting the 2 Line’s operating hours with little notice certainly left some passengers stranded. The same alert reported the suspension of 2 Line trains between Seattle and Lynnwood.
Along with the service alerts, Sound Transit staff play an important role in assisting passengers during disruptions. Unfortunately, some reports suggest staff on the ground did not have the necessary information to help riders. One passenger documented their experience in a series of Bluesky threads (Bluesky sign-in required to view).
Service Alternatives
For minor Link disruptions, Sound Transit usually relies on local bus service to fill in the gap. On the 1 Line, this is an okay option as every station has bus service and most routes are frequent. This is not the case for the 2 Line.
As the diagram above shows, several 2 Line stations only have bus service from one route. Spring District station does not have any local bus service. Worse, many of these routes run every 30 or 60 minutes during the day. The bus network on the Eastside is not inherently an issue, though it could be better. The problem is Sound Transit’s default option to rely on it as replacement for Link service. Link provides fast frequent service while many of the bus routes are infrequent coverage routes. Instead, Sound Transit needs to have replacement shuttle service quickly deployed for all 2 Line disruptions.
At the end of the day, this situation is why transit agencies run simulated service before opening a new route. Sound Transit should dissect what went wrong and improve it’s procedures to ensure clearer communication and faster replacement service during the next disruption. The agency plans to open the full 2 Line on March 28, 2026.
Update (Feb 21, 10:30am): In a statement to Seattle Transit Blog, Sound Transit confirmed “the 2 Line simulated service suspension is directly [related] to the recent power issues and damage to the OCS. The issue is not connected to copper wire theft. We are continuing to investigate the root cause of the damage and the associated service disruption.
There is no apparent damage in the Crosslake section, and the Crosslake opening date has not changed.
2 Line service has resumed. Simulated service is expected to resume shortly, with a gradual ramp up and a return to steady state by noon.”
So do we have confirmation that the simulated service suspension is related to the Bel-Red to Redmond power issues and not an issue with the physical plant of the unopened segment? Just seems odd to me to suspend simulated service when the affected section appears to be operating as usual this morning.
Yes, ST confirmed in a statement (updated the post).
Misplaced, your faith in ChatGPT may be.
I hope that suspending the simulated service won’t push back the opening day?
I was wondering about that too. I think there is a legal requirement for the days of simulated service. If so, I would imagine delaying service for a few days would also delay the opening. But I don’t know the actual rules (maybe it is based on hours). Nor do I know if they built some float into the schedule.
From what I’m finding online, it appears as though there is not a fixed number of hours or days to meet the safety requirements, and some references actually say 4-6 weeks as a range. Surely ST built some added days when they set the opening day to account for this.
What we dont know is whether the problem is more extensive than a one-day disruption. The simulation period appears focused on safety —especially with driver training. It does not appear to be a systemic problem — but ST has a history of avoiding bad press as long as they can.
Simulated service tedting for TriMet’s “better red” project lasted 6 nights.
https://www.koin.com/news/portland/trimet-to-test-max-red-line-ahead-of-hillsboro-extension-debut/
However, I don’t think MAX has quite as sophisticated signals as Link.
Also, they did run a bunch of test trains during other segments of the project. It could be that those tests were close enough to simulated service they didn’t need much additional testing.
The Better Red extension was along track already served by the Blue Line, so I don’t think that’s comparable.
Some copper wire thieves tested what carnage can result from stealing the wires while the train is in operation. The trains are able to safely come to a halt, apparently. I don’t know if every train was able to make it to the next station.
For the continuance of various services, the Legislature needs to act on the various bills that attempt to dissuade copper theft.
There was a bill in the most recent session that the republicans essentially killed by stalling legislation until the end of session. Ridiculous stuff.
DM, I wanted to verify your claim that it was the Republicans killed the bill by stalling the legislation, but I can’t find any information supporting your claim.
I did read that HB 2213 died in the Consumer Protection & Business Committee, but that committee is made up of 9 Democrats and 6 Republicans. The committee Chair is a Democrat. And, as you know, it only takes a simple majority to move a bill out of committee. But only the Chair can put the bill up for a committee vote. So you must be talking about a different bill. Can you tell me the name of the bill you’re referring to?
Ryan Packer from the Urbanist post some information on their Bluesky about this.
https://bsky.app/profile/typewriteralley.bsky.social/post/3mff74iggcc2x
Electrical problems sound concerning. It reads as though the issue is on the Downtown Redmond Link Extension segment. Let’s hope it’s not revealing some bigger problem.
The outage is just one more reason that I’m glad that ST chose/ was forced to begin 2 Line service before the crosslake segment could open. A combination of opening all the Eastside stations and track all at once — combined with interlining with the 1 Line — could easily have not gone smoothly.
Plus the public gets three parties rather than one! That reminds me: what’s going on with party planning?
All of our extensions have had and continue to have serious electrical problems. Idk who’s more to blame the engineers, contractors, or maintenance folks but the extent and lack of resolution seem to indicate problems at multiple levels.
Maybe 2 lines are doing simulated service again. The service alerts are contradictory, but I see 2 Line trains heading to Lynwood online.
And the Westlake arrivals have “2” entries, I saw a few minutes ago.
At ID now hoping to spot a 2 train. I just missed a train, and the display says it was a 2.
But it also says the next one south from Westlake would be a 2, and it was a 1.
Your tireless rider experience researcher is waiting 10 extra minutes at Westlake after my train arrived to see if a 2 Line train would come. One did come southbound. The first northbound train just said “Lynnwood”but it had a blue square. The display had said the first one would be 1. The second it couldn’t make up its mind in: first it said 1, then it changed to 2, then it changed to 1 again.
The second northbound is 1. The third southbound was 2. Again the second entry in the northbound display said 2 but then changed to 1.
The 4th southbound is 2.
The third northbound is 1. The display says the one after that will be 1.
I’ve spent 14 minutes trainspotting so that’s it. I’m such a dedicated transit monitor, I should get a reward, right, Sam?
Thank for the trainspotting. I did 2 hours and 48 minutes of I-90 train/Peregrine Falcon-spotting yesterday until near sunset, so I just barely missed the beginning of the disruption. Too wet for the birds and me today.
P.S. my round trip to ID was to Uwajimaya.
This alert is useless. It states that 2line will ONLY operate from S Bellevue to DT Redmond but that is the entire operating section so what does “only” mean? Is it only 1-way?
“Starting Feb. 21 at 6:30AM, 2 Ln trains will operate only from South Bellevue Sta to Downtown Redmond Sta https://SoundTransit.org/alert/st/16159”
It means it’s only operating in the Eastside and not crossing the lake, like before simulated service. Obviously it can’t operate one way or all the trains would stack up with nowhere to go, and ST would say something special if that was the plan.
I watched the Arrivals online for the joint section for a few minutes. They did not match between the two lines, and were offset (though not very evenly) between the two lines. So it appears the Arrivals linked from the 1 Line schedule page are just for the 1 Line, and similarly for the 2 Line.
As of right now, though, the 1 Line page has no Alert about this morning’s disruption, and the 2 Line page still has the 6:30 Alert about only operating between South Bellevue and Downtown Redmond.
And now, there are no Alerts about this morning’s partial shutdown.
Might be a wind related outage?
I surely hope not. Catenary should be able to withstand seventy mile an hour sustained winds and higher gusts. Did the wind in Overlake exceed that?
There’s been no wind to mention on the eastside lately. My guess is something to do with the catenary tensioning system that has caused problems in the past. It must be especially challenging on the steep section between Marymoor and Microsoft. I know the roller coaster ride to Capitol Hill is steep but that catenary is supported by the tunnel roof. What/where is the steepest grade on Link outside of the tunnels?
It is not just the 2-line messages that were not clear but it has been the same when there are problems on the 1-line.
The text messages say there is a problem but nothing more so you wonder if the whole line is down or just a section.
Communications from ST to the public on problems with Light Rail is not one of their strong points and to be honest it is just plain poor.
How soon of a response with a detailed description of the problem, a resolution, and time to resolve is acceptable?
ST could at least tell the people on the platform immediately whenever there’s new information, with a much as it knows. They’re ST’s paying customers who most need to know. People hate waiting more than practically anything else, especially when the wait is indefinite. And doubly especially when there are only a few seats so they have to stand the whole time.
Operators readily inform passengers of what they know. But I don’t recall ever hearing ad hoc messages over the station loudspeakers. Just AI pre-recorded messages, with occasional mispronunciations of station names.
I wonder if messages can be pushed out from the control center.
Another transit failure. As you know, the Westlake exits have a series of 2 escalators. I went to the southwest one and up the first escalator. I had a fleeting thought, “Maybe the second escalator will be broken”, but I dismissed that as unlikely. But when I got there, the escalator was moving but had a barrier in front of it. It’s painful to take the stairs, so I wrlebt back down to take the elevator. But the elevator wasn’t working either! The door wasn’t quite all the way open, and the floor button was akready lit, so it looked like it wasn’t going anywhere. I went up again to the mud level, resigning myself to taking the stairs, but then I thought no, and went down again and to the northwest exit. At the same time as the 2 Line is on-again, off-again.
ST has Station / Elevator Alerts on the front page. Westlake was not in the list. IDC is, though.
As I said, how long should it take? If they’re in the middle of debugging a situation, what level of accuracy are you expecting?
10 minutes?
5 minutes?
When situations occur, sometimes it takes a while to resolve. There are times when the situation is dynamic, so the level of messaging can’t be that specific.
I know how those generic AI messages can be annoying. I feel as if they are designed by a committee of lawyers (or Pointy-haired managers)
(“Don’t say anything that will be held against at a later time.”)
I agree, there should be some sort of matrix to help decide when, and what details are helpful for those on the platform.
“ST has Station / Elevator Alerts on the front page.”
Again, information inaccessible without a smartphone and looking it up on it. Sometimes ST is good about putting a sign at the bottom of the first escalator saying the second escalator is out and you can’t get through that way. Not this time. And I wonder if ST could put in a little more effort to avoid the escalator and elevator being out simultaneously.
Simulated service is going exactly as actual service: a total unreliable mess of power issues that are now the defacto standard for operations. So the simulation is working as intended.
By the time your wrote this comment, trains were already running again. I would call Link reliable in my experience, but definitely poor communication is a consistent issue
It sure beats having crashes every day, even when WSDOT is doing a better job of informing the masses of its travails in a timely manner.
Roger that! ST could take a lesson from WSDOT regarding PR, notifications to travelers, etc. WSDOT’s website is pretty good. Really good on providing Cascade Pass conditions. You can even get AM radio reports (yes, I still listen to AM radio). And freeways are compromised way more than light rail for maintenance. Maybe that’s why WSDOT is better or maybe it’s because there’s an order of magnitude more people who care about road conditions than transit?
“When issues occur, transit agencies should clearly communicate the situation with passengers”
I assume this was all due to changing decisions rather than an inability to say which parts are closed. When an anomaly occurs, ST often shuts down an entire segment, then, when it’s able to identify and contain the problem, it reopens everything except the one station or the surrounding station, or single-tracks through it. But sometimes they start single-tra ckibg but it fails, so they have to close the smaller segment again. This can happen with power failures, where they think they’ve fixed/contained it but then it goes out again or goes out elsewhere, so they have to change strategy. This has happened at least two times in the last few weeks before this incident. ST can’t do anything about power failures except try to fix them or di preventative maintenance, which they’re doing.
There’s still the other issue of ST not telling people in the platform what’s going on or how long it will last, even though it’s issued an online alert with more details. You shouldn’t need a smartphone at a Link station to know what time the train comes or that service is suspended or why it when it will come back.
Sounds like a usual ST CF. Im relieved I had already decided not to go to my meeting at the beacon hill l8brary today so I got to miss this chaos.
Was the 1 Line impacted by a closure south of Beacon Hill this morning?
I’m surprised you find the 1 Line to be a useful transit option during the vast majority of time it is running more-or-less on schedule.
As conceived, designed, built and operated Sound Transt Link is, at best, operationally challenged.
Link Rail Supervisor 2007-2022 – Retired
And they can’t be bothered to proofread for basic typos. It’s hard to trust y’all to get much right.
[Ed. Renamed to “Sam 2” after clarification it’s not the original Sam.]
If this is the famous Sam under a different account, you know what you’d likely say to confirm it. If not, please choose a different handle or add a word to keep the two people distinct.
That’s not me. Someone new is using the name Sam.
As they say in Highlander, “There can be only one.”
And Mike, for your train spotting I nominate you for a Good Sam award ;-)
Hey, Sam, [the acerbic and funny real one] good to see you! You’ve been quiet lately; I hope that’s just because [gasp] ST is doing things better in your eyes and that you’re fine.
You definitely add to the blog.
Re typos, everyone’s an unpaid volunteer here, and if you don’t like the quality, we offer a 100% refund on the subscription fee. Michael is generally an excellent writer, as anyone who has read his other articles would know. If this article has a couple typos, well, it could be for the same reason one of my comments was so bad: I was away from home typing on a phone with a visual keyboard, which is cumbersome, and it sometimes changes words and you don’t realize it. Or he may have thought he added a word but it didn’t register, and he didn’t have time to reread it. If somebody thinks that invalidates all our analysis and opinions, that’s their problem.
Based on my experiences with auto-correct, I will blame auto-correct.
Grrr, this!
Simple solution
Convert the systen and energize to 25kV.
I come from a developing country where nearly 100% of the rail is electrified. Yet nobody steals the wires. This is why. Nobody messes with 25kV.
While the Siemens light rail cars are available in 25 kv versions for operating on European main lines, I’m not sure how easy it would be to convert many other parts of the system. Insulators and clearances would need a complete analysis. The tunnels would probably need to be converted to a direct fixation method with an insulated sheet across the top of the tunnel.
It’s probably not impossible but there are better investments to be made.
I’m not entirely certain they’re stealing the contact wire itself. Even at 1,500 volts, you’d have to really know what you are doing and have specialized equipment just to get up there and grab it without killing yourself. They may be stealing some of the other wiring, which is still needed and will still be vulnerable no matter how high a voltage the contact wire.
The catenary can’t be copper wire. It’s not strong enough and it would wear super quick. From what I’ve read in past capers is they are stealing the grounding wire. To do this they almost need help on the inside. Also, fencing the copper takes a professional organization.
How many places besides NYC run a third rail system?
Shhh!
Don’t give them any more help than they need! [inappropriate]
Even if they stole just those, it means quite a lot of hazard for relatively little benefit. Federal Way Link is mostly elevated, so they’d have to get on the track structure somehow. It’s not a particularly long segment of wire that’s exposed. On MAX it’s only about 2 feet. It’s an especially inert type of insulation that’s difficult to remove, and the scrap dealers only pay about $2 per foot for that type. For about $15,000, you can buy a stripping machine for it and make it something the scrap dealers will buy, but anyone with that much capital to invest in their theft operation isn’t going to steel $5 of copper wire and turn it into $30.
The contact wire is typically a copper alloy that is formulated for high wear resistance. The contact shoe is more easily replaced and therefore that is made from the material that wears out. The suspension cables and the actual literal “catenary” wire from which the contact wire is suspended (in cases where full catenary is used) are made from a different formulation as those need to be under tension and need to be able to withstand their place in the structure rather than be conductive or survive contact.
The fact is:
People who steel copper wire from railroad facilities routinely get themselves killed. I’m pretty sure one of the reasons this doesn’t happen on MAX especially often is the have been several high profile cases of people walking on “grade separated” sections of MAX with no explanation, apparently not knowing trains move around even when the timetable shows MAX as not operating..
I don’t think it’s a good idea to give people the idea there’s a safe way to steal this stuff.
The first high profile copper heist was down south; I believe just north of Tukwila Station. Anyway, it was elevated track and the thieves were able to gain access through the service doors at the bottom of the towers. Of course any proficient thief can open a lock but there were other things, mainly knowing the maintenance and security schedules that pointed to an inside assisted job.
It does seem ST could do something to make it less easy/desirable to steel copper. Aluminum is a better conductor. The reason it was band from house wiring was because the connections at the panel and outlets got hot with current and the expansion and contraction cycles created a condition that lead to arcing. The light rail system grounding should only be carrying stray current and never get that hot. My other hot take is they could just spray the system with shotcrete or slime it down with a thick layer of Cosmoline. Maybe add a permanent dye so that anyone touching it is marked “for life”. Or just store radioactive waste from Hanford in the elevated sections, a two-fer! ST just needs to think outside the box :^)
That’s not the way these systems work. The “grounding wire” you are probably thinking of serves as the return current path. It might sit at nearly 0 volts relative to ground, but it typically carries about 400 amps or more if there’s a train there.
Oh, and just because it’s 0 volts doesn’t mean it won’t kill you if you steel it. Cut into a conductor carrying that much current and the arc flash is pretty substantial.
Ir-regardless of if or how much current the wire being stolen carries the issue is how to prevent thieves form making off with it. Clearly, the threat of being electrocuted hasn’t and won’t work. News outlets publicize the thefts which make more would be criminals say, “hey, I can do that”. And no, I don’t think muzzling the people reporting the news is a good idea. My take is ST has just made themself an easy target and failed to respond effectively which just is going to make it more and more common.
As I remember physics, V=IR. For volts (V) to be approaching zero and current (I) to be high the resistance (R) would have to approach zero. That’s just not the case. And for an arc to occur it depends on the dielectric (hope I’m remembering the right terminology) of air would have to be low… which it’s not. Trying to scare the thieves, who have a high success rate and zero failures, ain’t going to work.
I’m pretty sure that zero volts, which by definition means zero potential means zero current.
Or maybe because they cut off the hands of people who steal?
Probably has a lot to do with being able to make large transactions in scrap metal without being noticed. Although they’ve done a lot in this country to track stolen recycled metal. If you bring even a small amount of copper to Schnitzer in Woodinville you’re finger printed, swabbed for DNA and they take a mug shot. OK, it’s not that extreme but you do have to provide ID comparable to boarding a plane and they keep a coordinated data base across all recycling locations. It seems the scale of the thefts points to the material being shipped out of this country.
Kudos for Schnitzer. Good folks.
Really, it doesn’t even have to leave the country if organized crime is doing it. They really only need to own one facility with the industrial-scale equipment to strip and reprocess the copper, and then just have a network of hundreds of individual criddler types who funnel a steady supply of small-scale stolen copper upwards until it eventually gets there. It works like drug distribution, but in reverse. Heck, it might even be the same network.
Sri, you wanna fry ST’s overhead maintainers? Twenty-five kilovolts can jump quite a way if a ground comes near it. And not very much is an insulator against it.
I guess it’s technically true that Spring District doesn’t have service right at the station, but it is a short walk away from the 226 or the B.
In fact, given the infrequency of most alternative routes, if the 2 is unexpectedly shut down, for most of the line, your best bet is to walk to the nearest B stop. The only real exception to this would be South Bellevue, where you should take the 550.
I tend to agree that there should be a backup 2 shuttle service for situations like this.
There may be a nearby bus route, but if occasional riders or visitors can’t see the bus stop from the station entrance, they don’t know it exists, or they may have heard it’s on Bel-Red Road but they don’t know where Bel-Red Road is. And maybe that’s a station they’ve never been to because they have no reason to go that area, but that’s where the train happened to be when it broke down with them aboard.
There should be a 2 Line replacement shuttle on the Eastside just like there is on the 1 Line. I assumed there was.
It’s a short walk to Bel-Red from Spring District or 130th P&R or about the same distance north to the 249 (I think it still runs on Northup/20th). But as Mike pointed out, people would need to know to go there and which way to go. RR-B is a hell of a hike. And if you’re not fit or have small children even Northup and Bel-Red are a hike. Plus the headways are dismal.
That said, from the local TV news reports it seems ST did a good job of providing shuttle service during the outage even if the ST PR machine was a fail.
Sound Transit completely collapses when there is any service irregularity, planned or unplanned. Other major transit agencies (see BART) are able to handle this without causing chaos and tripling and quadrupling passenger travel times. Do better, Sound Transit!
You’re comparing apples and oranges, totally different system
Wow, in the tank for ST much? Sure, BART has had fifty years to learn hard lessons, but you know? They are willing to share their conclusions with any and all ST never picks up the phone and dials them.
Ditto TransLink.
The first thing to do is to determine how much an orange is an apple. That would tell you how much of BART’s lessions can be applied to Link. But we don’t need to take just BART. There are industry best practices. Reports comparing what strategies have worked across agencies. Reports on the similarities between traditional light rail/trams, light metro (the closest to Link), and heavy rail metro (BART). That’s what management types and engineering types do all day in consulting firms and universities.
The first thing comes down to priorities. The ST Board has to prioritize this, hire some people with experience in the most well-functioning agencies (especially from outside the North America and the English-speaking world — its blind spot), and put a small amount of resources into gathering the existing research, doing new research as necessary (since Link is a unique kind of light rail — such a hybrid), and coming up with a strategy plan to become as well-functioning operationally as those agencies.
Everyone has all this wrong. The issue is poor design and installation. Why was it there were never any major issues on the airport to angle lake line before. Now all these additions have major issues. Poor installation of the OCS. Not to mention people in charge now with no knowledge of the OCS or how it functions. Plus you’re trying to implement the same installation in all the substations, which anyone knows , the more stations you add, the whole system changes. There are no upgrades to the new system or lines to compensate for the changes.