No Monorail Service For Rest Of The Year

No Monorail Service For Rest Of The Year

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Story Published: Nov 27, 2005 at 3:20 PM PDT

Story Updated: Aug 31, 2006 at 2:08 AM PDT

By KOMO Staff

SEATTLE - There won't be any monorail trips this holiday season. Both trains are out of commission indefinitely after a crash Saturday night.

The trains were packed with a total of 84 passengers when they sideswiped each other on a curve near Westlake Center, at 5th and Olive Streets.

Two people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, everyone else was okay.

Seattle Center officials say the tracks narrow at the entrance to the Westlake Center station and the trains are supposed to yield to each other.

Spokesperson Perry Cooper explained the monorail has it's own traffic light system and communication between the operators is supposed to happen frequently.

"Something failed within those procedures here this time and that will be part of the investigation, too," he said.

Cooper said they are also trying to figure out how to separate the trains and take them down.

"We're bringing crane engineers in as well as working with our engineers to determine what's the best way to separate the two, to get them out of this crush that they're in, and then we'll try to take them into the Seattle Center maintenance yard, to figure out what the damage is."

"We aren't sure, at this point, if there is any more structural or mechanical damage within the insides of the two cars, that will be determined when we get them separated," Cooper added.

The soonest the trains could be removed is Monday night

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