Light rail breakdowns lead Sound Transit to seek urgent repairs

A light rail train was climbing toward Tukwila International Boulevard Station late Monday afternoon, about 70 feet above ground, when it slowed, then halted on the concrete trackway.

Passengers sat quietly. A few teens looked out the window, thinking they missed their stop. About 10 minutes later, the operator announced, “We’ve lost propulsion.”

Eventually, a rescue train pulled up on the northbound tracks. People hopped down from the stalled southbound train, then were helpedinto the other train, for a total delay of an hour, as described by rider Grace Reamer, stranded for her first time since service began in 2009. The stall, at about 5:15 p.m., caused cascading delays of 15 to 30 minutes afterward, according to Sound Transit rider alerts.

“I love light rail, and I can’t wait for it to keep going farther,” said Reamer. “As we’re extending the new lines, if we can’t keep the existing ones going, that doesn’t get us the future we need.”

Train stalls and outages, of many kinds, have become so common that Sound Transit CEO Goran Sparrman on Tuesday declared “the existence of an emergency,” to seek a no-bid work order for engineering firm HNTB to provide up to $1.5 million in technical services.

A bigger contract or contracts to fix unreliable components, ranging from electric supply networks to train dispatching systems, will be sent to bid later. Sound Transit has previously predicted that projects will be needed through early 2026.

Transit managers say that after a rugged 2024, when trains were blocked or reduced for an unacceptable 376 hours, or 6% of the time through November, its customers deserve better.

Reliable trains matter because ridership has grown 25%, to an average 100,000 daily passengers in October, since the 1 Line’s four-station Lynnwood extension opened last summer. Another 6,000 are using the Eastside’s local 2 Line. Agency executives are fond of saying it’s become the fourth busiest light rail system in America.

An independent report on power supply failures is expected to be released by early March, Sparrman said recently.

Sound Transit is getting started on some short-term fixes now, including cleaning rails and inspecting slack train-power wires downtown, Sparrman told a Sound Transit committee last week.

Tacoma Councilmember Kristina Walker, chair of the transit board’s Ridership Experience and Operations Committee, said riders generally have a good experience, as “things work very well and they’re very clean and on time. But when we can’t count on that, we’re not meeting the mark yet,” she said. “We’re getting there, in terms of addressing these issues.”

Here are problems Sound Transit has identified, as contributing to delays:

• A damaged train power wire next to University of Washington Station that has delayed every northbound train by 2 minutes since mid-September is to be replaced during a weekend station closure Feb. 1-2. Officials say a bent pantograph, the triangular piece on a railcar roof, damaged the overhead wire, but Sound Transit hasn’t pinpointed exactly why that happened.
• Overhead wires in the downtown tunnel, about 16 years old, must be inspected and tightened. Meanwhile, train operators have been told to coast into some stations instead of drawing power, Sparrman said.
• Grime on rails inside the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel has hindered the flow of electricity and caused high voltages, Sparrman revealed last week. “Through dirt pileup and other, frankly, deferred maintenance that has deteriorated that system.” Crews have started cleaning them, he said.
• Dispatch center flaws. Sparrman cited an “unauthorized use of a port that tied into that whole system” that disrupted the control center in Sodo sporadically in December. It took three or four weeks to pinpoint the problem. A network modernization this year will make the network more secure, he said.
• Outages within railcars. According to transit executives, newer Siemens railcars have shown mechanical problems including valve control problems and hydraulic fluid contaminating the brakes.
• Signals have falsely said a train was blocking tracks, a problem workers addressed by shifting the gravel ballast and rail supports.
• Fragile software in Bellevue, where a power loss near Spring District Station tripped off two adjacent substations, halting 2 Line trains twice last spring for a total of nine hours. The agency already solved the simplest weaknesses, such as having only one laptop available that contained the debugging information, but further long-term engineering fixes are needed.
• A couple North Seattle tunnel power losses, including a three-hour slowdown Oct. 19, that will likely be diagnosed in the March electric study.

Railcar stalls accounted for 77 of 166 system slowdownsin 11 months last year and were solved in 34 minutes on average, for instance by sending an extra train into the corridor while towing away the idle train, staff said. Sometimes, passengers have caused train stalls by prying doors open.

The Federal Transit Administration doesn’t collect data on reliability for the National Transit Database, but Sparrman’s emergency-declaration report mentioned “regulatory expectations” to keep trains on time.

“We tell the FTA what the headways are going to be, and we have to keep to that,” said Sound Transit spokesperson John Gallagher. In other words, the public promise of a train every four to five minutes justified Uncle Sam’s $1.2 billion grant to help finance the $3 billion Northgate-Lynnwood extension that opened Aug. 30. (Trains run every eight to 10 minutes until a Bellevue-Seattle link over I-90 is completed, perhaps next winter.)

In the most recent monthly performance report, 92% of scheduled 1 Line trips took place at all (95% on the 2 Line) and only 85% ran on time during October. Sound Transit’s targets are that 98.5% of trips happen and 90% are on-time.

Portland’s MAX light rail, which travels next to car lanes downtown, reported a range of 74% to 81% on time performance, worse than buses, during the first 10 months of 2024. Dallas light rail, a mix of surface and elevated rails, was on-time for 90% to 94% of trips in 2024. Utah’s TRAX line achieved 86% on-time travel, along surface tracks with crossing traffic, a spokesperson there said.

Vancouver, B.C.’s SkyTrain, an automated system on a separated trackway, was on time for 93% to 95% of trips. A full 27 miles out of Sound Transit’s 33-mile 1 Line operate in tunnels, overhead or on hillsides away from traffic, which should make trips relatively dependable.

In other words, frequent mechanical or power stalls erode the advantages that riders on Seattle’s premium network should enjoy, compared to peer cities where trains lumber along ordinary surface rails.

Between the reliability question and people wary about crime, Sound Transit and King County Metro have left behind potential customers. Major redecking of I-5 is approaching March 1, when two or more northbound lanes at the Ship Canal Bridge will close for nine months — a chance to grow transit’s clientele if the system runs smoothly.