On Monday afternoon, Sound Transit train service in downtown Seattle was paralyzed for nearly two hours after a northbound train stalled near the University of Washington station. The incident, which occurred around 4:14 p.m., caused delays of 35 to 40 minutes and disrupted many riders, including those heading to the Seattle Mariners baseball game. By 6:00 p.m., crews had resolved the issue after evacuating passengers from the disabled train into a "rescue train," using the opposite direction tracks.
Service was run in a special pattern to minimize the impact. Line 1 trains, which connect Seattle and Lynnwood, took turns using a single track to bypass the stalled train. Trains on the new Line 2, which recently opened between Bellevue and Seattle, were held at Judkins Park station and turned back to the Eastside to avoid adding pressure to the central tracks. King County Metro buses were deployed to carry passengers on the segment to the International District/Chinatown station.
Resolving the incident was complicated by the lack of necessary infrastructure in downtown Seattle — crossover switches and reverse facilities that would have allowed trains to turn more quickly and sped restoration of service. At the Line 1 terminal at Seattle Center, trains must change tracks on a stub-end platform, which takes time and limits frequency. That constraint stems from dense urban development, challenging geography and the high cost of construction. Sound Transit plans a permanent fix — extending the line to Ballard with a loop turnaround — but that project is still in planning and funding stages and is not expected to be completed until the 2030s at the earliest.
Sound Transit spokesperson Henry Bendon noted that evacuating passengers in a tunnel is a last resort that they try to avoid. He recalled an incident 4½ years ago when fans after the Apple Cup, the annual football rivalry between the University of Washington and Washington State University, exited an overcrowded dark car on their own, an action that nearly led to tragedy. In 2019, an Amtrak special train carrying fans derailed at high speed near the city of DuPont, south of Seattle. That derailment killed three people and injured many more, in part because the route was new, the train was traveling faster than permitted, and the automatic speed control system had not yet been activated on that segment.
This disruption came shortly after the celebratory opening of Line 2 in late March, which was a major success for the transit system. On its first day of operation, the new line crossing the I-90 floating bridge recorded 205,000 trips compared with the usual ridership of about 120,000. The stalled-train incident highlighted the challenges the expanding public transit system faces as ridership grows.
Based on: Sound Transit clears stuck train that delayed Mariners fans, commuters