Continuing operational excellence

How Sound Transit is advancing a state of good repair in the midst of historic expansion

By Dow Constantine, CEO | Sound Transit

Sound Transit is fulfilling its vision to develop a world-class transit system for Pierce, King and Snohomish Counties in the state of Washington. In 2025, we marked the opening of the Federal Way Link Extension, adding 7.8 miles of light rail and three new stations to the 1 Line. We also are making history with the East Link 2 Line, the first light rail system in the world to cross a floating bridge, connecting Seattle and the Eastside across Lake Washington. By summer 2026, we will have expanded to 63 miles of light rail and 51 stations in just 20 years, extending our reach to 1,000 square miles and 53 cities.

Providing service of this scale demands a disciplined stewardship and a relentless focus on maintaining a state of good repair. To meet our commitment, we are deploying two intiatives that are providing significant insights and value:

The Enterprise Initiative: Aligns Sound Transit’s capital, operations, maintenance and finance under a unified framework to ensure affordability, reliability and seamless service.
The Link Light Rail Operating Systems Resiliency Assessment: Evaluates and identifies vulnerabilities and guides upgrades to enhance reliability.

Aligning under a unified strategic framework

Sound Transit’s historic expansion is backed by a strong financial foundation thanks to voter-approved local revenues. Yet we recognize that operations and maintenance costs will rise as the system grows. To meet that future with confidence, Sound Transit created the Enterprise Initiative, a strategic integration and risk‑management framework that puts us on a course for long-term stability.

The Enterprise Initiative aligns capital investment, operations, maintenance and fiscal stewardship under a single cohesive governance system. This provides a holistic, integrated approach that harmonizes expansion with a state of good repair, ensuring transit service remains affordable, reliable and sustainable for decades to come.

As we make choices about capital programs, for example, the Enterprise Initiative exercise allows us to determine and evaluate how those decisions will affect operations, the customer experience and our ability to maintain assets. Having our capital planning team’s creative and ambitious ideas tested by the operations team, finance and maintenance — the teams that will inherit the asset once it is built — is critically important. For example, if we reduce the dimension of a crossover to save costs, we may unintentionally slow trains or accelerate wear, leading to expensive retrofits later. The Enterprise Initiative ensures we identify and address those risks before major capital projects are finalized.

Assessing operations, bolstering performance

While the Enterprise Initiative brings our long-range planning into alignment, maintaining reliability requires an equally focused look at day-to-day operations. The Link Light Rail Operating Systems Resiliency Assessment provides that lens by evaluating how operating systems respond to disruptions, identifying vulnerabilities and outlining targeted actions that strengthen performance as the network grows.

The assessment has surfaced several insights that are now shaping our operational approach to state of good repair:

Build dedicated maintenance capacity: The assessment has reinforced the need for predictable, recurring windows for proactive work. Each month, we now close sections of the Link system early to support inspections and upgrades, with quarterly extended windows for major improvements. This structured maintenance program has already reduced unplanned disruptions from an average of 38 hours per month in 2024 to nine hours in October 2025. By front-loading maintenance, we are moving toward a system where riders experience seamless service. Our goal for 2026 — even with major extensions coming online — is to keep unplanned disruptions to 10 hours or fewer per month across the system.

Deploy advanced train control technologies: The assessment has highlighted opportunities to strengthen operational flexibility. We are implementing automatic train protection in the downtown Seattle tunnel, enabling East Link to interline with the 1 Line. This work also lays the foundation for future communication-based train control, allowing more frequent headways and creating greater capacity across the system.

Integrate legacy and new infrastructure: To manage a multi-decade, multi-technology network, the assessment has underscored the value of unifying system information. We are developing digital twins by combining 3D infrastructure models with sensor data, creating a single platform to visualize, analyze and manage assets delivered across different eras of system growth.

Prepare for AI-supported asset management: The assessment also has highlighted the importance of clean, robust data to drive predictive maintenance. As we build toward an AI-enabled asset management program, we are working to collect and standardize systemwide data that can identify emerging issues before they affect passengers.

Together, these actions strengthen the reliability of our growing network and support our commitment to maintaining a state of good repair, so riders experience a system that feels seamless as we continue to expand service across the region.

Focused on stewardship

Sound Transit’s progress is measured not only in miles of track or new stations, but in the reliability and resiliency of the system we preserve along the way. Our commitment is to deliver a world‑class transit network that knits the Puget Sound region together and consistently provides reliable service, maintained in a state of good repair — because that is what our constituents expect.

By embedding the Enterprise Initiative and the Resiliency Assessment into daily operations and long‑term planning, we ensure that every expansion is matched by disciplined stewardship. We are safeguarding the investments voters have entrusted to us and strengthening the foundation of our growing system.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dow Constantine
Chief Executive Officer
Sound Transit (Seattle, Washington)

Dow Constantine is the CEO of Sound Transit in the Puget Sound region. He is responsible for overseeing one of the largest, most ambitious regional transit systems in the United States. Before accepting the position as CEO in 2025, Constantine served nearly two decades on the Sound Transit Board, including multiple terms as chair and vice chair. He also served four terms as King County Executive, leading one of the largest regional governments in the United States. This included leadership of King County Metro, one of the largest bus agencies in the U.S. and long-time operator of Sound Transit’s Link light rail. Constantine is also a former member of the King County Council and the Washington State Legislature, serving in the Washington State Senate and the House of Representatives.