Seattle train riders want service extended for ‘party hours’
Mar 29, 2016, 10:07 PM | Updated: May 6, 2016, 10:08 pm
While Seattle is enjoying light rail service as it expands through the city, some are arguing it could be better.
Seattleites are demanding Sound Transit serve “party hours.”
Remember the days — if you aren’t still living the days — when you would close a bar down? And bars could stay open until 2 a.m. That’s party hours and Seattle’s late night patrons are asking for access to a late night train ride home.
We just experienced our first weekend after U-Link opened in the University District, along with the new station in Capitol Hill. The last ride back from the University District on weekdays is at 12:34 a.m. and at 12:49 a.m. on Saturday evenings (Sunday mornings), with service ending in Capitol Hill shortly thereafter. But what if you’re popping in-and-out bars and restaurants until 2:30 a.m.?
An online petition on Moveon.org is hoping to get 20,000 signatures from people who support extending light rail service hours. About 2,592 people signed on by Tuesday afternoon. The author of the petition, Matthew Powell, believes, “expanding the hours would decrease drunk driving and be good for public safety.”
To put that in perspective, a Bainbridge Islander can come into Seattle and live it up on a Friday night before catching a 1:35 a.m. ferry home — or a 2:10 a.m. ferry after a Saturday night.
Getting the light rail hours extended might not be that easy, but it’s not totally out of the question either. The biggest challenge to stretching the service schedule is the maintenance schedule for the trains.
“When you factor in the time it takes to get all the trains back in the yard at night and back onto the line in the morning, we really only have about 22 hours a week to maintain our system and keep it running safely and smoothly for the thousands of riders to climb aboard every day,” said Sound Transit’s Bruce Gray.
“One of our operations people made a good analogy recently — slacking off on maintenance and upkeep is like buying a brand new car and never bothering to change the oil,” he said. “It’s going to wear out and cause problems a lot faster than it should.”
Yes, I think we can all agree light rail maintenance is important but could there be a way to extend light rail service to accommodate Seattle’s vibrant nightlife scene?
According to Gray, it might not be too far-fetched. He said, “we’re looking into the concept.”
