Did you know that light rail service downtown is going to be interrupted for 10 weeks starting in January?
We'll see the first glimpses of this—what Sound Transit has dubbed "Connect 2020"—starting this fall with construction over three weekends (Oct. 12-13, Oct. 26-27, and Nov. 9-10) of a temporary center platform in the Pioneer Square station. You may have seen the beginnings of this already cropping up at the station. That platform will be key during the January shutdown.
Connect 2020 will be the monstrous undertaking of connecting the new light rail track on the Eastside (Mercer Island, Redmond, Bellevue) to the existing track downtown. The construction downtown will occur at the International District/Chinatown station. The functionality of the light rail during that time is going to depend on the Pioneer Square station which will oversee two separate lines.
"One line will run from the University of Washington to Pioneer Square, and the other will run from Angle Lake to Pioneer Square," Rachelle Cunningham, a Sound Transit spokesperson, told The Stranger in an email. "The two trains will meet at the center platform, passengers who are continuing on their trips will transfer to the train on the opposite side, and the trains will both turn back in the opposite direction."
Service throughout the entire line is going to be impacted and slowed down. Think about waiting for a train currently during rush hour. Six minutes already feels like forever. That will be slowed down to 12 minutes with four-car trains servicing all light rail passengers. "Currently, Link operates with two- and three-car trains," Cunningham said. Despite the extra car, the light rail is expected to be more congested as well. Here's hoping it doesn't look like a train from SODO after a sports game every day for 10 weeks.
To top it off, southbound riders will have to transfer at the Pioneer Square station. That's where that center platform that's being built in the fall comes in. Due to limited capacity on the platform, Sound Transit is banning bikes from the Pioneer Square station. So, if you're riding with a bike you will have to exit the train before getting to Pioneer Square.
We survived the Seattle Squeeze this year when the Viaduct shutdown. According to Mayor Jenny Durkan's report on that period, people drove less, took transit, and biked more. Let's see how we fare this time around when transit and biking are both impacted. And when, as Erica Barnett reported earlier this week, the man (or, General) tasked with overseeing these periods of "maximum constraint" has long stretches—literally "36 full eight-hour workdays," Barnett writes—of unaccounted-for time in his schedule.
