(The Center Square) – Sound Transit’s light rail reliability issues led its board of directors on Thursday to ratify an emergency measure to hasten work on necessary fixes. Goran Sparrman, Sound Transit’s interim CEO, declared an emergency in a written finding on Tuesday.
After Sparrman issued his finding, staff gave existing contractor HNTB Corporation permission to come up with a project management plan to improve operational reliability in terms of bettering performance, security and safety. HNTB’s work will not exceed $1.5 million.
Notably, Sparrman was a business development officer and vice president at HNTB prior to joining Sound Transit. However, Sound Transit Media Relations Manager John Gallagher confirmed to The Center Square that agency staff made the decision to recommend HNTB independent of Sparrman.
The original contract with HNTB was awarded in March 2022, before Sparrman joined the agency.
“When Goran joined the agency, we set up multiple guidelines to ensure that there were firewalls between HNTB and Goran, and we followed that process for this contract,” Gallagher told The Center Square in an email.
The emergency measure is a response to Sound Transit’s operational and network infrastructure facing reliability and stability issues.
“This is another step in how we are taking link reliability issues extremely seriously and how we have no time to waste making critical improvements to ensure that we get the operational dependability that our customers expect and need,” Sparrman said during Thursday’s Sound Transit Board of Directors meeting.
According to the newly-approved emergency motion, if HNTB does not conduct the work on operational and network reliability immediately and expeditiously, delays could threaten the light rail’s system-wide performance.
The agency has stressed urgency in fixing its reliability issues. In December, Sound Transit reported 376 hours of reduced or disrupted services out of 6,500 hours of total service through late November. That 6% of stalled service was deemed unacceptable to the agency.
Sound Transit stated that its service interruptions are due to issues with its newest light rail vehicles experiencing mechanical problems, signal malfunctions within the train control system, and electrical outages.
