The Everett Herald has a piece about Eastside Rail from the Snohomish perspective. Nothing new for King County Transit heads, but nice quotes like this:
A private company’s bid to run commuter trains from Snohomish County to Bellevue is gaining traction with the Snohomish County Council.GNP Railway is proposing six commuter trips from Snohomish to Bellevue weekday mornings and six return trips in the afternoon. Supporters say the figure could someday double to 12 each way.
Growing traffic woes and a dearth of cash for road projects makes the idea is so appealing that county attorneys are drafting cooperation and confidentiality agreements between the county and train operator, County Council chairman Dave Somers said.
I don’t know much about GNP (I have sent the mails around), but if they are promising twelve trains a day, I sort of disbelieve them. Sounder costs a lot of money to operate, and they don’t run that many. Though the idea of private transit companies makes me optomistic. If a company can run transit, we should absolutely let them.
Private Transit! WHAAAAAAAAAT!?!
This is America, isn’t it?
There is one difference between GNP Railway (Tom Payne’s company) and BNSF.
BNSF runs freight and needs to keep their mainline as open as possible. The Seattle – Tacoma corridor alone can see up to 100 train movements in a day which equals to a very congested railway.
12 trains on the Eastside is simple. How? They would be the only ones on the line except at night and only 3 times a week on top of that when BNSF would run the Bellevue turn to serve Safeway and a few other spurs out there.
Other than that, GNP would be on the line by them selfs. If GNP wanted, they could run at least 30 trains but I doubt they would need to go to that extent.
If and when this starts running, the call to have the trains serve Monroe and Everett will get pretty heavy I’m sure….
Here is some notes I found.. your not going to find much on Tom Payne or GNP Railway. I’ve met him and even rode in the cab of the 2100 and thought he was a great guy. Heck, it was fun cleaning up the 2100 before it departed for Eastern Washington.
http://www.ci.snohomish.wa.us/PDFs/Agendas/2008/Agenda030408.pdf
Search for Tom Payne (You’ll have to double click on the link and copy it. Paste it into a browser.
BNSF paying the local govt for trackage rights on the Eastside Corridor?
Now that would be sweet irony.
This is awesome. ANYTHING to preserve that corridor is better than letting it get decommissioned.
I’m a little disappointed that the upcoming destruction of the Wilburton tunnel is not getting much coverage amongst transit fans.
The tunnel is getting destroyed this summer as part of the I-405 widening and once this occurs, the Eastside corridor will be permanently cut in half.
Don’t worry Brad, in 20 years when they need more trains they will spend 500 million to make a new tunnel…it’s the Seattle way!
They’ll be able to use the same train(s) to make multiple round trips, unlike on the BSNF where the trains can only make one trip each direction due to distance and congestion.
The cost for a prefab steel rail overpass to replace the Wilburton tunnel (which was a cap over 405) is not very high. I thought I saw it was already funded, but I can’t find a link.
i’ve heard that trains can only go 15 mph on the eastside BNSF railway because it turns a lot and is almost never straight… is that true, and, if so, how would this be feasible?
Not only that, Jonlin, there are a whole lot more level crossings on the Woodinville Subdivision than Seattle’s line. Just try going through Totem Lake, for example.
phil, Wilburton replacement would be in excess of $200 million, because you still have to include mitigation costs.
And, of course, you can’t build it until the 405 work is complete.