LYNNWOOD, Wash. — This story was originally published on MyNorthwest.com.
Expect service disruptions for the next couple of months along Sound Transit’s Link Light Rail 1-Line traveling between Lynnwood and Angle Lake.
Starting tomorrow, Jan. 4, through Feb. 27, trains will only arrive every 12 minutes from 5:30 p.m. until the end of the service day instead of its usual eight to 10-minute intervals. This disruption is due to Sound Transit installing a roof on the upcoming 130th Street infill station.
Train wait times are even longer for three specific weekends — Jan. 4-5, Jan. 25-26 and Feb. 8-9. These wait times are expected to be approximately 15 minutes, according to The Urbanist.
“(The disruptions) are related to work that we’re doing at the 130th Street Station that’s being built,” John Gallagher, spokesperson for Sound Transit, told KIRO Newsradio. “That’s scheduled to open next year. We’re putting a platform there and, in order to do that, we have to single-track the trains through the area and add a little bit more time.”
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Weekend downtown station closures coming in January, February
Later this month, the 1 Line is expected to shut down through Downtown Seattle in order for Sound Transit to complete the work needed to connect the forthcoming full 2 Line with the 1 Line near International District/Chinatown Station. For the weekend of Jan. 10-12, trains will reach Westlake Station, but the following weekend, in addition to Feb. 14-16 and Feb. 21-23, trains will only reach the Capitol Hill station.
“We have to close all the downtown stations starting the Jan. 10 weekend in order to complete the work to get the 2-Line across Lake Washington,” Gallagher said. “These are issues that are related to the expansion of the system, so this is necessary work that we have to get done in order to keep building the system out.”
University District station closure coming early February
Sound Transit crews are expected to repair a damaged overhead catenary system (OCS), the system that provides power to the Sound Transit trains, in the northbound light rail tunnel near the University of Washington (UW) station, meaning Sound Transit will have to disrupt its service over the weekend of Feb. 1-2.
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Trains have been running extra slowly near the damaged OCS in order to ensure no additional damage occurs. The OCS was first damaged in mid-September. According to Gallagher, a bus bridge will connect the University District, UW and Capitol Hill stations during this closure. The delays between each train are expected to be 12-15 minutes.
“We know that there are a lot of people riding the trains and we appreciate their patience, but generally speaking, this is the time here we have the lightest ridership,” Gallagher added. “We also know that Revive I-5 is coming up soon, so we want to get this work done because when that happens, people are going to be turning to transit and we want to have all this out of the way so that we won’t have any disruptions as we get into that Revive I-5 work.”
Frank Sumrall is a content editor at MyNorthwest and producer of the Seattle Seahawks podcast, The Reset with Gee Scott. You can read his stories here and you can email him here.
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