In the aftermath of two mechanical snafus that forced passengers off light rail trains, a Sound Transit executive says the public should expect increased planned outages for maintenance, in hopes of preventing surprise shutdowns in the future.
Deputy CEO Ed Cobean, hired three weeks ago to lead service delivery, said his team is drafting plans to make night projects routine for a few days each month, and close portions of the trackways before the customary 1 a.m. finish. That way, crews accomplish more than they could during the usual four-hour service shutdown overnight.
The more maintenance we do, the better the system will become," Cobean said in an interview Monday afternoon.
Specific dates aren't determined yet, but he proposes an ongoing effort, based on consultation with Sound Transit's governing board of local politicians.
As of May, trains made only 78% of trips on time, missing the 90% goal as usual. About 90% of scheduled 1 Line train trips happened, missing the 98.5% target, partly because of planned track improvements.
The enhanced nighttime maintenance would be in addition to three scheduled closures during weekends this fall — one of which targets emergency-ventilation fan breakdowns that blocked the 1 Line three times this summer.
Such work nights, with shuttle-bus support, would become routine on less-busy dates, a tactic Cobean said he used at San Francisco Muni.
Monday morning's glitch blocked commuters between U District and Westlake stations, from 4:30 a.m. to 7:30 a.m., so many had to take shuttle buses. That followed a three-hour fiasco Saturday, when crowds headed to the Savannah Bananas baseball game in Sodo were ousted at University of Washington Station. Similarly, tracks at Beacon Hill Station closed Aug. 6, so riders had to take buses around the pinch point for 11 hours.
"That's not the level of service we want to provide, and we're going to make it better in the long run," Sound Transit spokesperson Henry Bendon said.
All three happened because of problems in emergency ventilation fans. Seattle and national fire codes forbid Sound Transit from operating passenger trains unless all life-safety equipment is functional.
On Monday morning, Sound Transit tried a more assertive tactic than it has typically used: converting some technicians to "emergency fire watch" workers inside stations, so that if smoke or fire did start, somebody could turn on the fan circuits, Cobean said.
Nonetheless, service wasn't restored until 7:33 a.m. And that remedy wouldn't always be available, for instance if the fans were inoperable, or power was lost outside the station, he explained.
He was asked whether Sound Transit could operate by surging transit workers trained in evacuations, or firefighters, into a station as a substitute for 100% working fans. That's not being considered and Cobean said he's unaware of any U.S. transit agency doing so.
Similar fan issues caused a daylong downtown blockage in February 2023 and a four-hour disruption in January 2024.
Five years ago, experts cited a need to start replacing 30-year-old components, including fan components, other emergency systems, station walls and escalators, The Seattle Times reported, at an expense of more than $200 million.
Transit board member Claudia Balducci of Bellevue, who chairs the board's system-expansion committee, said Monday, "We are a new enough system that we should not be having that kind of problem, but we do."
Nine months have passed since former CEO Goran Sparrman declared unreliable train service to be an emergency, followed by a searing report from HNTB Engineering about many ways "a single point of failure can block Link light rail.
One theme is the patchwork of new and old electronics, some built for Metro's former tunnel buses, others for light rail that started in 2009, outside experts found.
Sound Transit this year stepped up its work solving cheaper problems, such as replacement of broken downtown Seattle rails.
Twelve of 15 stations have been equipped with new ventilation switches, which communicate better as a network. Three more are planned at Capitol Hill, Beacon Hill and University of Washington stations.
Sound Transit is spending $5.5 million for fan switches and related work in 2024-25 and $10.9 million in 2026-28, the budget says.
However, executives are late with other crucial information about costs and benefit, including the first draft of future resiliency projects, due in June then rescheduled for September from Moises Gutierrez, chief oversight officer. It's not public yet.
New CEO Dow Constantine has recognized the need to improve. He suggested $5 billion be dedicated to boost reliability through 2046. This would include a rebuilt dispatch center, and a crossover track switch at Symphony or Pioneer Square station so trains can bypass blockages, he said in an Aug. 27 news briefing. Constantine left his post as King County executive for a salary of $450,000 at Sound Transit, with a chance for significant raises.
Why fans failed
Saturday's tunnel outage was triggered by a power loss near Pine Street that affected a control panel to ventilation fans, said Bendon. Electricians restored those parts, he said.
The outage Monday happened during a fan breakdown between Capitol Hill and UW stations.
The 33-mile 1 Line carried 100,300 average daily passengers in July between the cities of Lynnwood, Seattle and SeaTac, with a three station Federal Way extension to open Dec. 6. Sound Transit's local 2 Line is undergoing tests on the Interstate 90 floating bridge, before adding its connection from Bellevue to Seattle in early 2026.
What's next
To the average traveler, a blockage is a blockage, and one is too many.
Dire as things seem, performance is worse at Bay Area Rapid Transit, where a computer equipment failure Sept. 5, after routine overnight work, closed the whole system serving 170,000 riders. Back in May, the system lost an entire day when engineers in the control center couldn't monitor the train positions, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
The Seattle-based agency has a $4.4 billion yearly budget and $7.2 billion cash right now, and won't reach its fiscal cliff until the late 2030s, when risks are high of canceling or delaying some extensions.
One lesson, Balducci says, is to learn from older agencies that didn't invest in major maintenance soon enough.
Perhaps the best-known is Washington, D.C., Metro, where fires, derailments and station damage forced the agency to fix all six lines, causing 16 slowdowns or closures in 2016-17 that lasted anywhere from seven to 40 days. Officials say they still need $15.2 billion in 10 years to reach good repair.
As Sound Transit tackles its smaller-scale problems, more staff are going out in 2025 to help passengers navigate planned shutdowns, and the agency asks for public understanding.
On that note, Beacon Hill Station and its tracks will close all day Oct. 26 for train-control system work. Then on Nov. 8, a temporary closure will allow workers to replace old ventilation fan switches at UW and Capitol Hill, said Cobean. A downtown five-station closure is planned some time in November to test automatic crash-prevention systems on the new 2 Line.
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