If you subscribe to Sound Transit’s accessibility alerts, you probably got a heads-up last week that two elevators at the north end of International District/Chinatown Station in Seattle will be out of service for the next few months.
This temporary pain (but don’t worry, the elevators at the other end of the station will still serve both platforms) will provide a major long-term gain for Link riders—it’s the kickoff of a multi-year effort to modernize all 58 of our elevators and escalators at four downtown stations.
Link light rail isn’t that old, but some of our infrastructure is. In the underground downtown Seattle stations, the elevators and escalators are more than 35 years old, and that’s well past normal retirement age for these types of machines.
While they’ve been valiantly (and, yes, sometimes intermittently) carrying the load through their twilight years, it’s time to upgrade to new, improved, “transit-grade” designs — bringing the elevators and escalators in our oldest stations, like Westlake, up to the quality of our newest ones, like Lynnwood City Center.
Back in business
Elevators and escalators are absolutely critical for many of our passengers to reach underground Link platforms, and over the past few years we heard loud and clear that reliability and maintenance issues were a major headache and a barrier to transit access.
And we get it; we’re riders too, with diverse mobility needs and preferences.
So about four years ago, we set out to tackle what turned out to be a big, hairy problem with an even bigger, hairier name: “Vertical Transportation Modernization.”
King County built the downtown tunnel in the 1980s as a bus-only route, and Sound Transit added light rail service in the tunnel in 2009. After buses moved to street level in 2019, Sound Transit and King County agreed that Sound Transit would take over tunnel and station ownership in October 2022.
But the elevators and escalators were in such dire straits — 28 of the 58 machines were inoperable — that we couldn’t expect our passengers to wait that long.
So in 2020, Sound Transit asked to take early possession of the machines so we could get to work with our maintenance vendor, Schindler Elevator Corporation, on a long-term strategy to first get them back in working order, and then keep them running until they could be fully replaced.
Then the pandemic hit.
Global supply chains were in chaos (especially for highly specialized vintage elevator and escalator parts), and so was the skilled technician workforce. An already daunting task became even tougher.
Yet starting Jan. 1, 2021, Sound Transit and Schindler have been slowly but surely bringing the machines back to life. And now, nearly four years later, the repair phase of our strategy is complete: monthly out-of-service hours are down 85%, and the average repair time has gone from 200 hours to seven.
Now it’s time to modernize.
Out with the old, in with the new
Installing 58 new machines at four of our busiest stations will take several years — until 2033, based on our current timelines. That sounds like a long time, but drawing the work out will help us limit passenger disruption and ensure consistent alternate access.
We’re starting with International District/Chinatown Station (IDS) because it’s the best location to test out our initial plan. Instead of shutting down the whole station and doing all the work at once, we’ll phase it by replacing the two elevators on the north end of the platform (Exit A) first, then shifting to the southern elevators (Exit B), followed by escalators in the same order.
This station is also first up because it’s closest to Lumen Field, which will draw soccer fans from around the world for 2026 FIFA World Cup matches.
Thanks to pre-work like replacing hydraulic jacks earlier this year, which set the stage for replacement, we plan to have eight fully modernized elevators and escalators installed at IDS by summer 2026 to carry thousands of tourists and daily riders alike.
We’ll pause our replacement work that summer, prioritizing keeping every machine in working order during crush load periods, then resume the modernization project on a grander scale later in 2026, beginning work at Pioneer Square, Symphony and Westlake stations simultaneously.
It’ll be a massive undertaking, but we won’t stop there. Today our system includes 250 elevators and escalators, and that number will keep growing as we open brand-new Link stations across the region in the years to come. And in the future we’ll invest in upgrades other older elevators, like at King Street and Everett Sounder stations.
If you rely on Sound Transit’s elevators and escalators, be sure to subscribe for text or email service alerts for accessibility. You can also sign up for station-specific updates.
And don’t forget, if you need assistance at any Sound Transit stop or station, call or text security at (206) 398-5268.