Safety concerns postpone monorail reopening

On foot and in strollers, they came to ride the resurrected Seattle Center monorail, only to be turned away.

Tuesday's planned restart was canceled when last-minute tests uncovered at least two safety problems — but not until after the city announced the monorail was ready to roll, after an eight-month shutdown.

Operators discovered Monday night that when they triggered the monorail's new automatic crash-prevention system, the brakes stayed locked, making it difficult to restart the train. In addition, some doors failed to open, said officials from Seattle Monorail Services, which operates the city-owned trains.

Tom Albro, the firm's executive director, predicts a restart within days, but said it's unclear whether the monorail will be ready for this weekend's Bite of Seattle food festival. The $3.6 million to $3.9 million project, funded mostly by insurance proceeds, remains ahead of schedule to reopen by Aug. 1, he said.

"We're not going to put into service anything that has a safety issue at all," he said. "We're going to test the heck out of the trains, until we're satisfied."

The monorail has been idle since a sideswipe collision of the two trains on Thanksgiving weekend. A driver entered a tight spot near Westlake Center station, where there is only enough space for one train at a time, before the other train cleared out. An automatic train-control system was supposed to be installed in 1988 when the station was designed, but the city dropped it to save money, relying on operating procedures to avoid a crash.

Monorail mechanics and contractors from Seattle-based Pacifica Marine have worked overtime and weekends to rebuild the crumpled train bodies, while set designers from Seattle Opera completed new doors just last week.

The trains had performed well in several days of testing, said SMS partner Stu Rolfe. "Probably, it was a little bit of underestimation on our part, about how much testing was needed to get to the point where we could open," he said. "There was pressure from everyone to reopen, but it was not unbearable."

The monorail typically carries 2 million riders a year between Seattle Center and the downtown shopping district.

Sue Psaty of Shoreline brought four relatives from Indianapolis, including her 2-year-old niece and 1-year-old nephew, only to meet with yellow barrier tape and an employee's sheepish grin.

"I was so excited. I woke up to the news this morning," she said, but she understood the delay. "We really wouldn't want to get stuck with two little ones and climb down. That's fine."

Two years ago, passengers were evacuated on ladders during a Memorial Day fire.

Mike Lindblom: 206-515-5631 or mlindblom@seattletimes.com