UW light rail escalators are being replaced, and yes, some will become stairs

Is it too late now to say sorry?

Bad escalators have stranded you at light rail stations, and Sound Transit says they want to make it right.

So how about this: stairs ... and some new escalators!

All the escalators at the Husky Stadium light rail station are going to go. Starting next year, Sound Transit will swap out 11 of them for better, heavier duty models.

Sound Transit didn’t install the sturdiest models on the market when it built the station at Husky Stadium, costing the agency more than $1.5 million to fix and maintain them since the station opened in 2016.

The original cost of the equipment was $3 million.

“We made some bad decisions back in 2011 as it related to design and equipment choices,” Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff said at the agency's board meeting Thursday.

All the new escalators and stairs will take three years to be installed, as the agency is phasing them in to minimize disruption, director of facilities Bruce Polnicky said. 

"Based on highly conceptual work, we estimate the capital cost to be over $20 million," Polnicky said.

In the meantime, Sound Transit is re-configuring its emergency stairs at the Husky Stadium station with new lighting, signage, and security so passengers will be able to use them all the time.

That should happen by no later than March 2019, said Moises Gutierrez, Sound Transit deputy executive director for design and engineering.

“We are not happy with the escalator system, and our riders deserve better,” Gutierrez said. 

Here’s a diagram of where those stairs will be:

Also starting next year, new stairs at the Capitol Hill station will help customers get from the platform to the mezzanine. The station now only has stairs up from the mezzanine level now.

Stairs will also be installed next to escalators at the new University District station.

If you want to read about how Sound Transit got into this mess, read this story, inspired by a listener question to our SoundQs team.