Central Link unaffected by the mess that is SR 518

Shot around 4 pm Monday, the snow started coming down hard in the SeaTac area causing multiple spinouts on eastbound SR 518 towards the I-405/I-5 interchange. Multiple lanes were blocked and a few vehicles went off the road.

For more pictures of the accidents and of Link see http://www.flickr.com/photos/viriyincy/sets/72157625325888685/

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Sound Transit
• Link light rail
• WSDOT
• snow
• traffic
• weather
• storm
• accident
• King County Metro
• RapidRide

[ac6752]

Monday, I bought a Sound Transit Light Rail pass for $3.50, and spent the day joy-riding between Beacon Hill and Westlake!

I'm retired and got nothing better to do.

How do you spell "schadenfreude?"

:-o

[seawrx]

Nice vid Oran. Great testament for light rail. ST is probably glad they got those switch heaters in on the ST2 expansion.

[UsualMike]

@ac6752 s-u-b-s-i-d-y

[Floresd02]

Thanks for sharing your pictures from yesterday I'm glad I didn't go that way to go home (518), but still took almost 5 hours when it usually takes me 30 minutes

[cjustinow2]

great to see LINK working great during the storm, reports of people being stuck on a bus for 6 hours in comparison....

[cincodenada]

@OranViri Ah good call. My bad. I'm still pretty sure they've been running empty trains, but 4pm probably isn't rush hour for link.

[OranViri]

@cincodenada It's 4:29 PM. I don't know how many normally ride inbound during PM peak but generally outbound trains have more riders than inbound trains. See the response video for an example of how many rode away from downtown.

[cincodenada]

@transitanalyst I believe they've been running *empty* trains when they normally wouldn't specifically to keep the lines from freezing, which would explain the lack of passengers. If you note the clock when it's pulling in at the end, it looks to be 4:29am, which is 10 minutes before the first train is supposed to even leave Seatac.

[OranViri]

@compboy1 rush hour in Seattle spans many hours. Freeways start getting congested around 3:30 pm. I-5 was jammed at 4 pm and still is as of 2 AM.

[compboy1]

@OranViri Also worth that its around 4 PM - even with the snow, that's not exactly rush hour, right?