Link will have a few maintenance reductions in late July and early August.
On Sunday July 26 all day, the Crosslake part of the 2 Line will be replaced by shuttle buses between South Bellevue and International District. The shuttle will run approximately every 10-15 minutes. The 1 Line will run every 8 minutes from Lynnwood to Federal Way to mitigate the loss of westside 2 Line service. (It normally runs every 10 minutes on Sundays.) This is for “planned maintenance”.
From Tuesday July 28 to Thursday July 30 in the late evenings only, the Crosslake part of the 2 Line will be replaced by shuttle buses between South Bellevue and International District. The 1 Line will run as normal. This is for “monthly maintenance”.
From Tuesday August 4 to Thursday August 6 in the late evenings only, the 2 Line will be replaced by shuttle buses between BelRed and Downtown Redmond, to replace line surge arrestors. The 2 Line will run as normal between Lynnwood and BelRed. The 1 Line will run as normal.
See ST service alerts for any updates.
This is an open thread.
Yesterday there was an alert from ST that ORCA validators were inoperable and TVMs were out of service, but that fares were still required via the Go Transit app. That seems like a ridiculous position to take by ST and hurts their credibility. When the system that is used for 99% of fare payments isn’t working, that problem belongs to ST to fix, and it’s not realistic to expect customers to set up the Go Transit app for ST’s problem.
I re-read the alert and couldn’t believe it. The only thing to do may be to complain to the fare inspectors if asked, and maybe if ST gets a lot of those they’ll rethink it. I mean, that’s what I would do if a reader was broken and there was no adjacent reader that worked; I’d tell the inspector that the reader was broken; often ST knows it’s broken because it sent an alert about it. 99% of riders won’t have seen the alert, and if they get paper tickets from a TVM they’ll double-pay if they transfer to/from a bus. And I’m certainly not installing an app and putting credit-card information on it and navigating it just because the ORCA readers are down for a few hours. The solution can’t be that you have to take a bus alternative when an ORCA reader is out because ST’s policy is so insane.
“When the system that is used for 99% of fare payments isn’t working”
It’s not just “the system that is used for 99% of fare payments”. It’s Link’s fare payment system. ST could have chosen another system but this is the one it chose.
Metro had a policy and maybe still does, that if one payment method is broken, then nobody pays, and it covers the farebox or ORCA reader or tells people not to tap. ST should take note.
Sound Transit makes a lot of boneheaded decisions, but this takes the cake for me. It just isn’t defensible on any front. I don’t even think fare-conscious agencies like BART do this. They have to get strong negative feedback from anyone and everyone, I’d recommend giving it if you can
That’s funny. “The Orca reader failed. Guess I’d better download the official app on my phone, create an account, plug in my payment information, and pay before I get on the train!”
I imagine the fare inspectors just give up if literally everyone has failed to pay.
Wait you guys are paying?
“you guys are paying?”
A majority of passengers pay, contrary to rumors and misinformation. It just isn’t up to the 97% pre-covid level. I have a monthly pass that I pay full price for, and I always tap except on the rare occasions I forget to.
Last Tuesday or Wednesday I saw Fare Ambassadors on the 2 Line for the first time. They were just talking to each other on the platform at Judkins Park though so I’ve yet to see any sort of fare enforcement. Loads of contracted Transit Security/Safety and last Wednesday two Sheriffs Deputies with a dog boarded the train. I’d say about 75% are tapping or using the TVM. Others may have a pass and just don’t feel like pulling it out since nobody ever checks and I don’t even know if they’d know or say anything to someone with a monthly pass that didn’t tap on.
From what I’ve seen nearly everybody at stadium Station doesn’t pay. We could really use a fate gate there.
They don’t need to do anything if they’ve already bought a day pass. That’s a pretty typical purchase for occasional riders who expect to ride transit multiple times in a day.
ST’s signs encourage people to buy day passes to ballgames rather than single tickets.
This is fantasy. I can still walk straight onto transit without paying and will continue to do so until there are consequences. Why shouldn’t I? Many others do the same.
Because you feel a vague sense of responsibility to pay your legal obligations, something that isn’t strongly influenced by what everyone else is doing? I dunno, seems like a reasonable enough thing to do from my perspective.
You can also litter without personal consequence. Should we have a cop on every street to stop litterbugs?
If a fare inspector told me I have to install an app I’d hand him my flip phone and say knock your self out. I was wondering if the lightning storm yesterday had any effects on the system?
I’d show him my Orca card with a monthly pass, and say I have a pass and I’m not paying more.
The issue is what would you do if they asked for ID. Would you give it to them and let them write up a citation, or would you refuse to give it and then look like part of the problem?
That’s the crux of the fare enforcement problem. Anyone can refuse to show ID, and they get a generic warning, but don’t get entered into the system as having been warned.
They don’t even get escorted off the train at the next stop, or a trespass warning. (That said, please don’t hold up a train to escort someone off, unless they are endangering other people.)
The Legislature needs to give transit employees some power to see IDs or at least take pictures of refusers. Having authority to see IDs removes the appearance of anonymity that allows some passengers to disobey the Passenger Code of Conduct in other ways, including getting away with assault.
An app? Where did you hear that? Probably wouldn’t be compatible with my Linux phone.
I hope they work on the tracks on MI. They badly need realignment.
Some of the controversy over fare policies will become moot when fare gates are installed, because then if the readers don’t work, the gates won’t open unless an ST technician comes to unlock them.
In Moscow when the government turned off mobile internet in one of its insane war stategies, it knocked out all the mobile payment systems in the city too. Many people had stopped carrying a bank card or cash, and were miles from home. The metro agency unlocked the fare gates so everybody rode free.
There’s one aspect of ST’s fare gate plan that seems especially strange: when ST installs gates and reinstates tapout, apparently if you don’t have enough money it will let you in but it won’t let you out until you speak with a station agent. Why not just not let them in?
BART has Addfare machines at the exit, and manned stations so there’s a person to help with fare problems, but it won’t let you in if you don’t have the minimum distance-based fare. So if you end up at an exit without enough money to get out, you could go back to the station next to the one you started from and get out there.
Yes that makes sense, Mike. With a flat fare, that is how it should operate. Not enough money means you can’t get through the turnstile.
Of course that means turnstiles would need to be added at every station. I guess ST could make them all porous until every station has them.
Wait, why are we bringing back tapout? The fare is flat.
Some stations are very hard to add fare gates to (namely, the at-grade stations where one could simply walk on the tracks to bypass fare gates), so they are only installing gates at select stations for now. Tapout means that we can still cover riders boarding at those stations and disembarking at a station with fare gates.
I see. If you just add the fare gates to the section between Chinatown and U District, that covers almost all the riders anyway.
Is ST considering bringing back tap-off?
BART used to charge a premium fare if you entered and left the same station. I read now that you can enter and leave the same station within 30 minutes and you will not be charged as you use your fare card.
I guess people complained about paying a high fare when they entered a station and the train service was disrupted so they wanted out of the system.
BART also used to be rather porous, the gates and barriers could be hopped, and there was always a manual release gate around. Of course BART has a built-in disincentive to exiting without tapping out like ST used to have: you got the highest amount deducted on your fare card.
I guess the original intent was to discourage joyriding. But, there are legitimate situations where you might tap to enter a situation and then leave without boarding a train. A disruption in train service is one reason. Another is if train after train is completely full, and you give up waiting – especially if traveling with a bike. A 3rd reason could be if you realize you forgot something, or get an urgent text message that requires you to turn around and go back home. Either way, it isn’t fair to be charged.
Obviously this is a one of a kind thing, but a friend and I did enter and leave the Washington Park MAX station. She’s really interested in geology so I took her down to the drill cores they have on display there.
I was reading up on ORCA and they don’t describe a short “grace period” after a tap. I thought the system had one!
In the old ORCA system if you tapped in a second time within ten minutes it canceled the trip. If you tapped a third time it said “CONTINUE TRIP”.
The new ORCA system doesn’t have that so you can’t cancel the trip. If you tap again it says “You tapped twice” and ignores it.
I’m pretty sure the “pay on exit” situation is only related to riders who board at stations without fare gates, and deboard at stations with fare gates.
Sounder still has tap-off, since it’s regular fares are distance-based.
ST is planning a fare gate pilot later this year, expanding to all the downtown stations and the highest-volume grade-separated stations. The surface stations will remain as is.
I thought ST said it would require tap to exit at the gated stations, to give it a second chance in case somebody managed to evade it on the way in. I don’t see how ST could implement it only on people who entered at a surface station. It would need a tap to tell where the person entered.
“I thought ST said it would require tap to exit at the gated stations, to give it a second chance in case somebody managed to evade it on the way in. I don’t see how ST could implement it only on people who entered at a surface station. It would need a tap to tell where the person entered.”
That would only be necessary if the fares still weren’t flat.
I hope the region moves forward to a 3 dollar flat fare, no matter where you go or how far you go you’d always pay the same fare.
The issue isn’t whether it makes logical sense because of distance-based fares, it’s what the ST board arbitrarily decides do do. A logical agency would have scrapped the long train-to-train transfers between DSTT1 and DSTT2 and come up with something else, and it would move forward with automated lines.
A logical agency would have scrapped the long train-to-train transfers between DSTT1 and DSTT2 and come up with something else, and it would move forward with automated lines.
And they would not have the two tunnels so close to each other. The second tunnel would have served First Hill at the very least.
The fare gate presentation and study does require tap to exit. LA metro gas flat fares and uses tap to exit, and it has significantly reduced fare evasion rates vs when they were only tap to enter.
“The 1 Line will run every 8 minutes from Lynnwood to Federal Way to mitigate the loss of westside 2 Line service.”
Welp, it looks like IDC to Federal Way travelers are also getting an upgrade. It would be ideal if they only increased frequencies from Lynnwood to IDC but it looks like they’re sparsing out on the 1 Line rather than doing it on one segment on the line.
Maybe Sound Transit is doing this because IDC lacks turnback tracks so the train can go back to Lynnwood without going into Federal Way while still giving IDC to Federal Way riders an advantage in case they were looking to transfer to the 2 Line and they can’t because the maintenance closure is barring them from doing so.
The frequency increase on the entirety of the 1 Line will also be good for the upcoming Mariners game.
ST could run Lynnwood-Stadium trains as it does during large demand spikes. It’s an upgrade south of CID and a downgrade north of CID. That 8-minute service would be welcome in the south end at Mariners time but it would lead to full and possibly crowded trains in the north end. ST is doing it on a Sunday, apparently thinking that’s the least-crowded day. It’s unlikely to do it on a weekday.
I flew through LAX this week and decided to try the LAX/Metro Transit Center connection between the airport and downtown LA. I remember seeing a lot of press coverage when the connector opened, so I was hoping for a quick and easy way to get from LAX to DTLA. I know the shuttle bus is an interim service until the people mover starts service (maybe later this year), but I was very disappointed with the system, and I doubt that the people mover is going to make things much better.
The shuttle stops at LAX were easy to find and the bus is scheduled to run every 10-minutes, The bus did arrive after about 10 minutes, and it wasn’t crowded; the trip to the TC took about 15 minutes in evening traffic. The TC looks nice, wayfinding is easy and, unbelievably, all the escalators were functioning. I tried to buy a Tap pass at a TVM, but the machine I tried wasn’t working. I purchased my Tap pass at a staffed ticket window and asked if there were any system maps available to plot my journey. Nope! So, I pulled up a map on my cellphone and plotted my course. K to the E to the D. Looks easy on a map, but in reality, the trip from LAX to my destination took almost 2 hours.
Given that I was a rookie on this experience, the trouble with the TVM, “just missing” both the K and the E trains obviously added extra time to the trip, but I was shocked that public transit could be so slow.
Heading back to LAX (as an experienced rider), I still needed almost 90 minutes to get from DTLA to LAX following the same route (D>E>K). Most of the time was spent creeping along Exposition Blvd on the E and then riding the K at slower than streetcar speeds. When I arrived in Seattle, I rode the 1 Line back home and even though the train stopped 5 times for crossing signal, it felt like I was riding a magic carpet compared to the E and the K in LA. We all gripe about the mistakes ST has made with transit service, but compared to LA’s rail service, we’re living in Shangri-La.
Sounds like an ordeal. Did you consider the direct LAX Flyaway bus from Union Station? I think it leaves every 30 and would definitely beat 2 hours at most times. Destination dependent I suppose (and not a fancy new connection).
LA is so polycentric that transit can be sort of brutal, and LAX is unfortunately not well situated in the region to make trips easier. SeaTac is easier to get to on transit in part because it’s just in a better location for most trips. And I think that extends more generally – since LA is so big and dispersed transit has a hard time functioning well at a regional level. Metrolink is good, but doesn’t serve most of the City of LA. LA Metro has some good lines (like the D) but they aren’t expansive enough. Buses are all fairly slow, but frequent.
ST has made mistakes, but Seattle has a more forgiving urban geography. LA Metro is doing (in my opinion) better projects, but LA is still a punishing place to ride transit for reasons that most transit projects cannot address.
“Seattle has a more forgiving urban geography.”
What? I never thought I heard that. Jarrett Walker called Seattle “three penninsulas coming together”, and said there are very few places where a bus could go in a straight line more than a few miles without hitting the water or a cliff, and SODO is notable for having almost a complete lack of east-west streets between West Seattle and southeast Seattle.
By urban geography I don’t mean just the physical layout, I mean where people live and where they may want to go. LA by virtue of its size and history has a lot of different combinations of places that people want to go, but in ways that aren’t always conducive to good transit. And even when things are better for transit, there’s 4 freeways that offer the same option. It makes it hard to compete.
Seattle’s major travel corridors are more concentrated than LA’s, which means plopping a train down has a wider margin of error. Early rapid transit planning in LA is evidence of this, as the main corridor of note (Wilshire) was avoided for bad political reasons, while ancillary routes got built out of convenience. The A Line to Long Beach is a solid light rail line, but it gets Portland-level ridership in the second largest city in the country. Some of these issues are being rectified now with the D Line extension and the Sepulveda corridor project, but the sheer scale of LA really makes things harder than they are here. LA needs something more akin to the NYC subway, but it’s rebuilt the old Pacific Electric network instead.
Yeah, LA is a lot tougher situation because of what you mentioned. There is moderate density pretty much everywhere. The centers are quite far from one another. This is a very tough combination. You have demand between the centers but you also have demand at every step of the way. It will take a massive amount of effort to deal with this massive issue.
In contrast Seattle is relatively simple. Almost all of the density is in Seattle. Almost all of the rest is in the East Side. Most of that is in Bellevue. There are places like Microsoft, Boeing and SeaTac that are challenging to reach. They are not in the heart of the city or even in big, central suburbs. But at worst you run express buses to them as they aren’t that far from the freeway. You also want regional buses and rail (using existing tracks). The system should integrate with the freeways (and not try and duplicate them). It isn’t a trivial exercise but it isn’t that difficult either. The best part about it is that you can start small and grow. The bus tunnel did that to a certain extent. The next step should have been a subway line from downtown to the UW (with more stops). Then expand to Roosevelt (of course). At that point I start thinking about connecting to the freeway (for the express buses) while cutting over to Aurora. But I could also see an East Side line by the time you reach Roosevelt (or even right after the initial line from the U-District to downtown).
But instead we built a hybrid of a hybrid. It is long, like regional rail. But most of it is new rail so it is very expensive. It has urban stop spacing where the old tunnel used to be but commuter rail stop in the rest of it. It is light rail even though it is mostly grade-separated. It is the type of thing that might make sense for L. A. but is a poor choice for Seattle.
All the while Vancouver has built a system that matches its city much better. They aren’t spending billions running trains to North Vancouver, let alone West Vancouver. The express buses and ferries are fine. They aren’t skipping stops to make the long distance commute a little bit better. It is a more traditional subway but with a strong emphasis on bus to rail interaction. It is the type of thing we should have built but at least we didn’t screw ours up too badly. That would have been difficult given our geography (although pretty easy to imagine).
I would say that the sprawl in LA is a real challenge. And when combined the historical devotion to the motor car, transit planners have significant obstacles to overcome for building an effective and efficient transit network. Theoretically, Seattle’s geography has concentrated our population centers in a more connected manner that could be more leveraged to build a more efficient transit network, if the money and willpower could be gathered for the task.
In LA, the A, the B and the D lines are all pretty effective. The E has some good parts and some terrible parts. The K is absurdly slow. I don’t know about the C, but it does serve the LAX/Metro Transit Center, so I hope it’s useful.
The thing that makes Seattle easier to serve with transit is that a large proportion of places that people want to go to (offices and retail) are in just a couple places (Downtown and the U District). Los Angeles has a downtown, but in practice the center of gravity is well west of downtown, and there’s no commercial center in the Los Angeles area that makes up such a large proportion of commerce as Downtown Seattle does for the Seattle area. Seattle is has a larger proportion of jobs downtown than most American cities.
Some have argued that this concentration is due to the way water constrains Seattle, but I’m not so sure. I think it has a lot to do with how quite a lot of our growth happened after our Growth Management Act made it impossible to sprawl in quite the same way Los Angeles has.
I think it’s more a constraint of water but more so terrain.
Many parts of the LA basin are flat to gently rolling even though they too have hilly areas. Pretty much all of our urban terrain has hills. Sure there are various flat areas like SODO and Kent Valley but most of the entire region has terrain challenging for through-routed arterials and tract housing. So development naturally is more concentrated.
It is more history than natural geography. Sure, Seattle’s natural geography concentrated things. But mostly it is just that Seattle dominated development until recently. Places like Federal Way and Shoreline were just farms until recently. The small towns that did exist (like Auburn, Kent or Edmonds) didn’t become really big. Almost all of the density over the years happened right in Seattle proper.
This is dramatically different than the way L. A. developed. L. A. itself was fairly small but lots of other small cities also grew at the same same time and next thing you know you had this huge, sprawling multi-centered metropolis.
Are maintenance needs this early on for brand new segments normal?
Thanks for sharing these service updates. Posts like this are incredibly useful because planned disruptions are much easier to deal with when people know about them in advance. The clear breakdown of the dates, affected sections, and shuttle replacements makes it much easier to plan around the maintenance instead of being caught by surprise.