Did you ever have one of those days? We did on June 13. And we know a good number of our Link riders did too as a result.
Link experienced two separate problems yesterday afternoon that had a major impact on our service during the evening commute.
First, a piece of equipment that keeps the tension in our overhead wires between the Mt. Baker and Columbia City Stations expanded due to the heat. That led to the wire sagging, which in turn led to two of our trains becoming disabled.
For several hours, we had to single-track trains through the area, slowing service while we identified and fixed the issue.
About an hour later, the entire Link system came to a halt when our train operating system suffered an unexpected outage. This issue was unrelated to the previous one, but it compounded the difficult commute.
For about 35 minutes, no trains were able to run. Making matters even worse, the outage affected our platform signage and public address system, which meant that we couldn't effectively inform passengers on the platforms of what was happening.
We did send rider alerts and tweet updates (sign up at this link.)
Trains were able to return to service by 6 p.m. and all the problems were resolved by 7:45 p.m.
We have isolated the problem that caused the system-wide outage and have taken the necessary steps to prevent it from happening again.
Our riders look to Link for reliable service. When things go wrong it's very frustrating. We appreciate your patience and commit that we will do our best to make sure days like yesterday are rare.