SEATTLE — Starting this weekend, Sound Transit light-rail passengers will shimmy through crowds and detours for 10 weeks while workers build new track connections from Seattle to the Eastside.
Pioneer Square Station will be the last stop for trains arriving from both the north and south, so an estimated 30,000 daily riders must change trains by walking across a concrete median there to continue traveling toward the University of Washington or SeaTac.
Train operators will try to synchronize, so trains from the north and south arrive together to exchange passengers. Riders are encouraged to allow for up to 30 minutes delay, in the first few days.
These temporary, wishbone-shaped train paths will give contractors room to attach new rails at the International District/Chinatown Station. The new tracks will lead to the former express lanes of Interstate 90, where the world’s first transit rail on a floating bridge is being installed.
As part of the project, the downtown transit tunnel will fully close this weekend and the weekends of Feb. 8-9 and March 14-15. Buses will shuttle people between Stadium Station, the four downtown stations and Capitol Hill Station. Sound Transit calls it Connect 2020.
The track-connecting work could have been deferred until 2022, because the Eastside extension reaching Mercer Island, Bellevue and Overlake won’t open until 2023. But the agency chose to do it now to inconvenience fewer riders.
Trains now handle about 80,000 daily boardings, but that number is expected to jump to 130,000 when U District, Roosevelt and Northgate stations open in 2021.
Trains will be lengthened to four railcars, for a standard capacity of nearly 600 passengers, instead of the usual mix of two- and three-car trains. (As many as 800 people could fit in a four-car train when packed, such as after a stadium event.)
But the trains will run less frequently, every 12 minutes all day. Shorter intervals would mess up the timing at Pioneer Square. Normal frequency varies from six minutes at peak to 10 minutes midday and 15 minutes late at night. The 12-minute intervals provide less capacity overall and more crowded trains at times.
During construction, trains will share a single track through Westlake, University Street and International District/Chinatown stations. Only one boarding platform at each stop will serve both train directions.
More railcars aren’t available to boost capacity. The transit board, surprised by fast ridership gains mid-decade, didn’t order new, spacious Siemens railcars, intended for the 2021 extension to Northgate, early enough to bring them into service now.
Four temporary speakers were installed in Pioneer Square Station south mezzanine, so staff can issue instructions to passengers below or announce when the next train is due, as conditions change. The tunnel’s permanent public-address system is limited to broadcasting prerecorded messages.
Railcars could be 15% more crowded than usual, Sound Transit says. Many will exceed the standard load of 148 people per railcar and occasionally hit 200, said agency spokesman David Jackson.
