A mere seven months after Sound Transit's epic launch of light rail on a floating bridge, the corridor will be blocked all weekend for power-line adjustments, meant to help the trains cross nearby Mercer Island faster.
Those repairs will overlap with a full northbound closure of Interstate 405 in downtown Bellevue, making it even harder to reach that city's core.
Let's consider transit first. Service across Lake Washington, between the South Bellevue and International District/Chinatown stations, will be suspended all day Saturday, Oct. 17 and Sunday, Oct. 18.
Shuttle buses will go every 10 minutes through the 8-mile closed corridor between Bellevue and Seattle, to include intermediate stops next to the Mercer Island and Judkins Park stations.
Eastside service will run as usual on the 2 Line within Redmond and Bellevue.
West of the lake, tracks will carry only the 1 Line, every eight minutes. Eastsiders can transfer from a 2 Line shuttle bus to the 1 Line trains at International District/Chinatown Station, for trips north to the University of Washington and Lynnwood, or south toward Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Federal Way.
Sounders FC fans will also need the shuttle bus to cross the lake for Saturday night's match against CF Montréal, at Lumen Field.
Sound Transit has operated at reduced speeds of around 40 mph at Mercer Island, since the grand opening March 28. That slowed trains less than one minute, spokesperson Henry Bendon said.
This weekend, crews will install additional supports for overhead power rails, that are attached to the underside of Mercer Island lids (commonly called tunnels), to make those parts more stable. Last winter in test runs, electric arcing appeared between power rails — which serve the same purpose as the familiar overhead catenary wires throughout the network — and the trains at high speed, Bendon said.
Despite that anomaly, project staff chose to open the cross-lake and Mercer Island tracks on schedule, and finally they're reinforcing the overhead equipment.
We would like to get the speed back up to a full 55 mph, Bendon said. He cautioned it probably will take one more weekend of work to get the job done.
Meanwhile, the Washington State Department of Transportation will close all I-405 northbound lanes between the Southeast Eighth to Northeast Fourth Street interchanges, from 11 p.m., Friday, until 4 a.m., Monday. City streets parallel to the freeway will likely be clogged. WSDOT contractors are still working on a toll-lane expansion between Bellevue and Renton, causing many weekend closures, in hopes to finish in 2027.
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