Traffic Lab is a Seattle Times project that digs into the region’s transportation issues to explore the policies and politics that determine how we get around and how billions of dollars in public money are spent.

Sound Transit trains had nearly as hard a time gaining yardage in Seattle as the Kansas City Chiefs over the weekend, all because of a power-supply snafu at a single substation.

Light rail service was suspended or delayed six times between Shoreline South/148th and University of Washington stations, the busiest corridor in the Seattle area’s 58-mile network. In all, service was blocked or slowed a combined four hours. The problem came even as the agency is increasing overall maintenance this year.

Software within a high-voltage substation next to Northgate Station detected a problem and told other substations to trip off, spokesperson Henry Bendon explained Monday. That sequence, called transfer-trips, is designed as a safeguard to limit equipment damage, such as from a power surge.…