Next up for the 2 Line: Linking Redmond and Bellevue’s downtowns to Seattle’s via the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge

A week ago today, Sound Tran­sit inau­gu­rat­ed rev­enue ser­vice on the 2 Line, delight­ing thou­sands of peo­ple across the region who turned out to try Link light rail. The 2 Line cur­rent­ly serves eight sta­tions in Belle­vue and Red­mond, but it won’t be long before it expands east and west, con­nect­ing the East­side to Seat­tle and the 1 Line and adding two sta­tions to the east in down­town Red­mond, NPI’s hometown. 

For many Puget Sound res­i­dents, that expan­sion can’t hap­pen soon enough. While it’s wrong to say the 2 Line in its cur­rent incar­na­tion does­n’t go any­where, the 2 Line was always sup­posed to con­nect to the 1 Line, and when it does, it will be pos­si­ble to get to a lot more places on the train with­out hav­ing to trans­fer to a bus. 

Those who aren’t trans­porta­tion reporters, urban­ism-focused activists, or rail­fans might be won­der­ing what’s going on with the part of the 2 Line that’s still under con­struc­tion between down­town Seat­tle and South Belle­vue. Why was­n’t it ready for last Sat­ur­day’s open­ing like the rest of the exten­sion? What’s the holdup? 

In a cou­ple of words: Bad workmanship. 

Sound Tran­sit’s inten­tion was to open the entire 2 Line last year, but con­struc­tion defects on the cross-lake seg­ment, known inter­nal­ly as Con­tract E130, forced those plans to be scrapped. The agency found that con­crete plinths sup­port­ing the tracks on the east and west approach­es to the Homer M. Hadley Memo­r­i­al Bridge had­n’t been built prop­er­ly by the con­trac­tor, a joint ven­ture between Kiewit and Hoffman.

This dis­cov­ery prompt­ed a review that led to even more unhap­py rev­e­la­tions, as recount­ed by for­mer Deputy CEO Kim­ber­ly Far­ley in an August 2022 memo to Sound Tran­sit’s inter­im CEO Brooke Bel­man (who was lat­er suc­ceed­ed by Julie Timm):

We first began iden­ti­fy­ing these issues in 2019. 

They includ­ed con­crete place­ments that were too low, and, in some cas­es, com­prised of poor­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed con­crete, with voids below rail fasteners. 

To address the low con­crete place­ment and voids, the con­trac­tor installed repair mor­tar that was approved by Sound Tran­sit to make up the difference. 

Begin­ning in fall 2020, repair mor­tar placed under the fas­ten­ers was first observed as fail­ing. This led to an inves­ti­ga­tion by the project team that iden­ti­fied fur­ther qual­i­ty issues encom­pass­ing sev­er­al types of poor con­crete work­man­ship, includ­ing con­crete place­ments that were too low, too high, con­struct­ed to the wrong geom­e­try, or result­ing in voids under rail fasteners. 

Work­ing with Sound Tran­sit, the con­trac­tor pro­posed sev­er­al solu­tions to address these var­i­ous issues. First, the fail­ing repair mor­tar was removed. 

Where installing an approved repair mor­tar was a viable solu­tion, the con­trac­tor pro­posed doing so. Where that solu­tion was not viable, the con­trac­tor has been demol­ish­ing con­crete from the plinths to a lev­el that would allow recon­struc­tion to the qual­i­ty required by the design.

Most of 2021 was spent deter­min­ing the extent of the need­ed repairs, fur­ther devel­op­ing solu­tions and start­ing the repair mor­tar removal/replacement and ini­tial con­crete demo­li­tion. In some cas­es, entire plinths, or the top por­tions of plinths, need­ed to be demol­ished and replaced. In the process of imple­ment­ing those repair mor­tar fix­es, Sound Transit’s inspec­tors dis­cov­ered fur­ther defi­cien­cies, such that the over­all scope of the chal­lenges has increased rather than decreased. 

Begin­ning in 2022, the repair work pro­gressed to a point where the steel rein­forc­ing bars (rebar) embed­ded with­in the plinths could start to be seen. 

At this stage, addi­tion­al qual­i­ty issues and devi­a­tions from the design were iden­ti­fied, includ­ing instances where there is 1) too lit­tle or too much con­crete cov­er­ing the rebar; 2) incor­rect rebar spac­ing and embed­ment with­in the plinth; and 3) miss­ing rebar. These defi­cien­cies raised con­cerns regard­ing the integri­ty and dura­bil­i­ty of the plinths.

Kiewit and Hoff­man have done a lot of oth­er work for Sound Tran­sit — work the agency has been very sat­is­fied with — so it’s espe­cial­ly per­plex­ing that this high-stakes project went so awry. Dur­ing the 2 Line pre­view ride last week, I caught up with Ron Lewis, Sound Tran­sit’s Exec­u­tive Direc­tor for Design, Engi­neer­ing & Con­struc­tion Man­age­ment (DECM), to talk about what’s hap­pen­ing with the rest of the 2 Line.

“Any one [of the defects] per­haps could have been accom­mo­dat­ed,” Lewis told me. “But when you add them up togeth­er and look at it as a sys­tem, we were uncom­fort­able. So, you get to a break­ing point where you say the cumu­la­tive work­man­ship means you’re not get­ting the prod­uct that we designed. And you have to make a decision.”

“Are you able to live with that or not? We said no.” 

Kiewit and Hoff­man are “approach­ing eighty per­cent build back now,” Lewis said. 

“When you com­pare what was built before and what’s built today, there’s a notice­able dif­fer­ence in qual­i­ty, and that means safe­ty along with dura­bil­i­ty,” he added.

The two con­trac­tors brought on dif­fer­ent staff, insti­tut­ed addi­tion­al train­ing, and imple­ment­ed stronger qual­i­ty con­trol mea­sures to ensure tax­pay­ers get what they’re pay­ing for. Agency staff under­stand­ably want a qual­i­ty prod­uct that lasts. 

Once Kiewit and Hoff­man final­ly deliv­er the infra­struc­ture they were sup­posed to have com­plet­ed sev­er­al years ago, Sound Tran­sit will be able to start test­ing out the tracks and prepar­ing for rev­enue ser­vice — a mul­ti-step, mul­ti-lay­ered process. The agency is hop­ing to have light rail run­ning across Lake Wash­ing­ton some­time in 2025, but it isn’t ready to com­mit to an open­ing date yet. 

Here’s what you can look for­ward to when the 2 Line links up with the 1 Line:

• Two new sta­tions will join the sys­tem: Mer­cer Island and Jud­kins Park (you can get a bird’s eye view of both by check­ing out our 2021 aer­i­al tour)
• Train fre­quen­cy on the 2 Line will increase to every eight min­utes in peak hours
• It will be pos­si­ble to get to T‑Mobile Park, Lumen Field, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton, the Krak­en Com­mu­ni­ty Ice­plex at North­gate, Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, Benaroya Hall, the Seat­tle Cen­tral Library, Wash­ing­ton State Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, and many oth­er des­ti­na­tions on foot with­out hav­ing to switch modes
• The 2 Line will con­sist of four­teen miles of track and ten stations

Addi­tion­al­ly, work con­tin­ues on two new sta­tions to the east: Mary­moor Vil­lage and Down­town Red­mond. When those are done, adding 3.4 miles of track, the 2 Line’s ter­mi­nus will no longer be in the heart of Microsoft­’s cam­pus, it’ll be the mid­dle of Down­town Red­mond, which is see­ing an explo­sion of new development. 

Sound Tran­sit’s best guess is that the 2 Line will attract 43,000 – 52,000 dai­ly rid­ers by 2026, once these four sta­tions have joined the sys­tem and peo­ple become aware of all of the places that Link light rail can take them. If we’ve learned any­thing from build­ing the 1 Line, it’s that sys­tem expan­sion makes a tremen­dous dif­fer­ence for ridership. 

To get light rail across Lake Wash­ing­ton, Sound Tran­sit need­ed to fig­ure out a way to put a fixed guide­way (mean­ing, rails) on a buoy­ant struc­ture (mean­ing, the Homer M. Hadley Memo­r­i­al Bridge, one of the world’s longest float­ing bridges). It devised a “bril­liant solu­tion” that is respon­sive to surge, roll, yaw, pitch, and track expan­sion. The ST ani­ma­tion below explains the design of the cross-lake track system. 

Below is a col­lec­tion of new NPI pho­tos show­ing the con­struc­tion progress on the cross-lake seg­ment. These pho­tos were all tak­en this past week. 

And this sped-up video will give you a bird’s eye view of the lake sec­tion of the tracks.

It’s unfor­tu­nate that Con­tract E130 had prob­lems, but the days when those prob­lems will be behind us are like­ly not far away. We’re look­ing for­ward to the rest of the 2 Line open­ing to rid­ers just as many of our read­ers are. In the mean­time, don’t for­get that the 2 Line direct­ly con­nects to ST Express routes like the 550 for cross-lake trips!