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Cellphone Service Finally Coming to Seattle Transit Tunnels

The ever-frustrating occurrence of dropped calls in tunnels will be remedied in Seattle. Cell phone coverage will be extended through downtown tunnels beginning this week.

(TNS) — After years of requests by passengers, cellphone service is finally coming to Seattle’s transit tunnels, beginning with the 3-mile segment between the University of Washington and Westlake light-rail stations.

A phased rollout began this week for T-Mobile customers only. Verizon and AT&T will join the network next month, followed by Sprint, according to Sound Transit.

Cellphone reception will be extended through downtown from Westlake to the International District/Chinatown Station sometime this fall, followed by service inside the Beacon Hill Tunnel in spring 2017, said transit-agency spokesman Bruce Gray.

To make it happen, contractor Mobilitie needed to install wires and transmitters in the tunnels. The UW segment was equipped first because crews could install equipment before passenger-train service opened in March, said Gray. For downtown and Beacon Hill, it has to be accomplished during about four hours per night when trains don’t run, he said.

The contract with Mobilitie includes an option to extend cellular service in the UW-Northgate tunnel when it opens in 2021.

Mobilitie is paying Sound Transit $250,000 plus $7,500 a month, according to a deal signed in 2015. Mobilitie is expected to recoup its fees and make a profit through license deals with cellphone companies.

The service starts amid a ridership surge. With the addition this year of the Capitol Hill and UW stations, light rail is serving 30,000 new passengers a day, and many spend 11 minutes or longer underground.

Sound Transit itself relies more on Twitter and mobile alerts to communicate with passengers, Gray said. “We do wish this service had been up years ago,” he said.

In past years, transit officials said it would be a challenge to add cellular service to the downtown tunnel, which was built in 1989 and renovated in 2007, without disrupting government emergency communications and transit radio frequencies.

A potential drawback: noise. Light-rail passengers now will have to listen to the loud and occasionally profane one-way dialogues bus riders already endure from their neighboring straphangers.

“We encourage people not to have loud conversations on phones,” said Gray.

Besides allowing more personal and work use, the cellphone signals will improve the public’s ability to report crimes or emergencies.

For now, non T-Mobile customers can make 911 calls only, until their carriers join the tunnel system.

©2016 The Seattle Times Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.