At 6:47 this morning, Sound Transit issued an ominous alert stating “1 Line and 2 Line trains are experiencing delays until further notice due to power issue near University of Washington Station”. Less than 10 minutes later, Link service between Northgate, Stadium, and Judkins Park Station was suspended due to the power issue, with shuttle buses ordered to provide replacement service as Sound Transit investigated the issue. Later in the morning, some 1 and 2 Line trains began operating through Westlake Station.
On Bluesky, Ryan Packer shared comments from Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine during this morning’s meeting of the Sound Transit Board:
University of Washington graduate student William Wixson was onboard the affected train and shared some posts, including a photo of riders evacuating through the tunnel.
In a video posted on various social media channels (including Bluesky and instagram) midday today, Sound Transit Public Information Officer Henry Bendon shared a photo of the damaged section of overhead wire (above). Photographer Bruce Englehardt spotted a damaged Link vehicle parked on the tail tracks at Northgate Station and shared some photos on Bluesky.
On September 17, 2024, Link experienced an extended outage due damage to the overhead power system near UW Station caused by a damaged pantograph. An emergency repair was implemented and service restored the following day.
As of 5:00pm, Link trains are still not operating between Northgate and Capitol Hill stations and repairs are reportedly underway. Seattle Transit Blog has reached out to Sound Transit for more information and will update this post accordingly.
Update: Service has been restored as of 9:47pm.
Why have they kept the station gates open and why have the realtime transit feeds been showing trains running as normal thru the tunnels and closed stations all day without better communication about this? From the photos I am not sold they can fix this over night even.
Roosevelt station has the entrance gate closed. When I went to Westlake midday, it had reopened and trains were running. Capitol Hill was running one-way to the south. I went past UW station on the shuttle midday but I didn’t look at the entrances.
Oh they actually must have closed the gates at some point. Still the realtime has been showing normal arrival info for the stations outta service :( hope they can get the repairs done quickly!
Is overhead catenary wire always this unreliable, or is it something unique about our system?
Many of the overhead wire issues on at-grade and above-grade sections are attributable to copper wire theft.
The last time this happened, though, it was caused by a damaged pantograph. It’s hard to tell if that’s what happened here, but if it happened again, how come? Is there something damaging pantographs in the vicinity of UW Station, or is the overhead wire around UW Station especially vulnerable to damaged pantographs? Or is it just bad luck?
Apparently a lock on a rooftop hatch of a Gen 1 vehicle failed, causing the hatch to pop open and hit the overhead catenary wire. That’s when sparks fly and breakers trip. (And apparently, the wire was snapped too)
UW station has had lots of power issues.
The lines for the bus shuttles are down the block at Capitol Hill station.
The communication has been disappointing. Go to Sound Transit’s website and it shows a banner with an alert that’s been up since about 7am and… that’s it.
Nothing giving an update on what went wrong, what they’re doing to fix it, how long it’s going to take, an acknowledgment that this is a major disruption. I’m glad there’s some updates on Bluesky, but for the 99% of people that are going to just visit the website, it makes it look like the system is hard down all day and the response is just business as usual 🤷
Sound Transit needs to replace their communications department. The only time I heard shuttle buses mentioned today was as we arrived Northbound at Capitol Hill. Even the outages were barely mentioned: not the conductor, nor announcements at the station, nor the overhead signs. The feed to Google maps was apparently unaware that trains were running just fine south of Westlake, because no matter what I tried I was recommended the bus instead of Link.
I did not use Link today. Was there any warning of the disruption posted at station entrances? The question is not only about the closed stations but ALL stations.
No, I did not see any notices at Westlake, Mercer Island, or Capitol Hill.
“Service on the Eastside’s 2 Line was also reduced; while half the trains crossing Lake Washington reached downtown and Capitol Hill, half were turned back at Judkins Park Station, because the system ran out of room downtown to take more.” –Second Seattle Times article by Mike Lindblom and Kai Uyehara.
Per ST Alerts, full service is restored.
Unofficial word is that a panel dislodged from a train and struck the OCS.
I know I am repeating what others have said but ST needs to do a better job of handling outages. There are a few issues:
1) The buses should not always try and mimic the routing of Link. The shuttles should complement Metro and be more efficient. For example, if Link is broken between Westlake and the U-District at 2:00 pm they should just run express buses from Westlake to U-District Station. Riders trying to get to the stations in between should use Metro. There are bound to be trade-offs with this approach (people will complain) but that is true with the current system. A long bus ride with huge backups isn’t good either.
2) This gets very complicated but there should be a plan in place for every potential outage. It should be in a database somewhere. It should be public knowledge. We should have an idea of what will happen when these outages occur (instead of just “we will run shuttles”). This happens when there is a planned outage and it should happen when there is an unplanned outage.
3) Communication is an issue, based on some of the comments. I’m not sure what they do or how well they do it. It is quite possible the following suggestions are happening and done well. There are numerous ways to communicate. An alert should show up on every navigation tool (Google Maps, Apple Maps, One Bus Away, etc.). There should be people inside the station and at every entrance telling riders about the outage and where to take a bus. This goes back to the first idea. This goes back to the first idea. It may take a while to figure out the particulars of an outage. The outage may grow. But at every step there should be a simple plan in place. Each outage type should have a set of explanations and alternatives. For example:
Outage: 19
Explanation: Trains are not serving Roosevelt Station but they are continuing beyond it.
Alternatives: Riders can take Metro bus 67 from Northgate to Roosevelt. Riders can take buses 45 or 67 from U-District to Roosevelt.
Outage: 20
Explanation: Service is suspended between Northgate and the U-District.
Alternatives: A shuttle bus will run from Northgate to the U-District. Riders can take Metro bus 67 from Northgate to Roosevelt. Riders can take buses 45 or 67 from U-District to Roosevelt.
Just to be clear, I wouldn’t expect the outage number to be common knowledge. But that is the idea. Of course there are times when you need to wing it. But the less often you do that the better.
Some riders will have trouble understanding the Metro alternatives or have limited English.
Yesterday I got on a Metro bus at Roosevelt, and a woman standing outside asked the driver what to do with Link closed. The driver didn’t seem to have a ready knowledge of the shuttle stops so I went up to help. The woman said she spoke Russian and had limited English, so I dragged up my 1990s Russian and asked, “North or south?” (Sever ili yug.) I repeated it a couple times until she understood and said “Costco”. I asked “In Lynnwood (v Leenwud)?” and then remembered the Aurora Village one: “Aurora Village”? She had a hard time understanding this too, but I guessed it must be what she wanted. I pointed to the northbound shuttle stop around the corner. She said the train isn’t running. I said, “train not running, bus around corner (poezd net, avtobus na ugol)” and kept pointing. My teacher would flunk me for not remembering the case endings, but I was too busy trying to confirm that the words coming into my head were Russian or another language (Spanish, Esperanto). I hoped they were Russian, and I think they were. (I remembered yug is definitely south because of the юг spelling, and poezd is train, and a few minutes later I remembered ugol is correct because of its inflected form “na uglu”, which the other languages wouldn’t have.) I think she would have gotten even more lost transferring to a Metro bus or if the shuttle was different from Link and didn’t say “1 Lynnwood”.
That’s another reason to have a plan in place for each particular outage: Sound Transit (or a hypothetical actually-good transit system that replaces them) can translate the explanations into other languages in advance.
Once that’s done, the question is where it’s best to run the shuttles. Perhaps we can have one route serving each station, and another running straight between the ends? Or maybe some other route? But sending each bus to each station is not best.
Mike Orr you my friend are a wonderful human being
Friday 6:30pm: Coming back from Lake Hills. 2 Line displays say service is being restored. Was there another outage today? Or is this a leftover message from yesterday? Link was fine when I came eastbound this afternoon.
Now the train is stopped at Bellevue Downtown. The driver said something but it was quiet and I couldn’t understand it.
Sound Transit needs to stop the performative politics and put their alerts back on Twitter/X.
The email alerts are functional. Ive gotten email alerts before the announcements show up on the displays at the station.