Why does @SoundTransit still use this worthless info sign that provides false information?? QUIT using it until you can get it right!! @jseattle #capitolhill pic.twitter.com/qBuTKp2wtb — davey jones (@daavey) March 3, 2018

Next Monday will mark the second anniversary of the opening of Capitol Hill Station. And, yes, the station display signs showing train arrival and departure information still don’t really work.

“We’ve found that the display signs show significantly inaccurate arrival predictions when: (1) trains are deployed (or removed) outside of the schedule that’s been loaded into the legacy system; (2) a major service disruption occurs, such as a disabled bus blocking the tunnel,” a Sound Transit spokesperson tells CHS. “The legacy system cannot account for these situations, resulting in wrong arrival times.”

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Sound Transit says the problem comes down to a system initially developed for the original Central Link station that doesn’t mesh well with the new hardware used in the U-Link stations on Capitol Hill and at Husky Stadium, and the Angle Lake station. You can’t just turn the screens off — they can display vital information in the event of an emergency.

The result is screens Capitol Hill riders have learned to pretty much ignore in favor of listening for the squeal of brakes or feeling the rush of air that accompanies an arriving train. It’s one wart (OK, maybe two… or three?) on an otherwise life changing transit service that often makes Capitol Hill commuters blissfully unaware of the painful travel days on the city’s freeways and downtown streets.

Sound Transit tells CHS it has three things it will try out to help make the information signs more useful starting with an upgrade planned to be started soon that will hopefully eliminate the inaccurate information at Capitol Hill Station and its new siblings while adding real-time info at the older stations along the line:

Our Systems team has recently received approval for an upgrade to the current system that will enable our service technicians to manually suspend arrival predictions when rail service is not aligned with Link schedules; and, in addition, provide real-time arrival information on legacy signs (Link stations south of Capitol Hill to the Airport). The team expects to start this project in the next few weeks and complete it this year. (Note: Turning off the signs in the current system has actually proven quite labor-intensive; we also can’t completely turn off these signs since their lower portions display critical fire/life/safety information.) We’ll also investigate the message or content that can replace the arrival times when signs need to be turned off. For example, riders have advocated using headway messaging – i.e., “Trains arriving every 10 minutes.” We’ve looked at this content before and will need to re-scope this and other options in more detail. Thirdly, after the upgrade, Sound Transit will re-deploy Quality Assurance teams to test the accuracy of displayed arrival times. When we’ve done QA checks in the past, the accuracy levels were as good as One Bus Away, except during the situations described in the opening paragraph above.

The result, Sound Transit hopes, will be displays Capitol Hill Station riders can finally grow to trust.