Today, King 5 did an interesting story regarding how fuel prices are improving ridership on Amtrak Cascades. Check out the crowd getting off Sounder!
On another note.. King Street Station needs to hurry up and get remodeled.. the brief video clips they showed were terrible….
Oh man, you’re telling me ridership is up. I have been taking the train home to Bellingham for a few years now. I used to just be able to walk into the station, buy a ticket, and have basically a train car to myself.
Now for a morning ride North you have to book AT LEAST a week in advance, and that is with an $8 increase in price.
Also, since there was so much demand, they have now started running a midday bus for people who cant get train sitting.
As much as I miss the days of being lazy about purchasing tickets, its pretty awesome to see people actually utilizing this beautiuful, relaxing ride.
josh, I know, it’s really overloaded. A friend of mine from Vancouver is going to be down here this weekend, and she had to take a bus on account of sold out trains.
Soon enough, though, both trains will go all the way to Vancouver. That will make B’ham residents’ lives harder.
If Link ever gets extended to Everett, hopefully that means Sounder gets extended at least to Mount Vernon, Bellingham, or even Vancouver. I wouldn’t say no to an extention to Olympia as well.
morgan, those would likely require amendments to state law, or very expensive partnerships. It would be nice, but don’t hold your breath.
The likelihood of Sounder making it beyond Stanwood is next to impossible. Stanwood would be the next logical location based upon traffic conditions but with Amtrak ramping up to 2 r/t to VBC with a possible third in 2009 and shuttle service in 2010 to the Olympics, that would merely be only a dream.
Sounder to Dupont and Olympia would have happened if Thurson County was part of the regional transit zoning. This is one of the many reasons why ST and Pierce County shot down a Dupont Station.
Yeah Pierce county residents are against a dupont station because it would be used mostly by thurston county residents.
I definitely do not want Sounder extensions beyond Lakewood and Everett.
The last thing we need is more transit-hostile voters diluting the influence of places like Seattle.
I don’t really think all of the people beyond Lakewood and Everett are transit hostile. It’s the fact that they don’t vote for it because they don’t see any benefit in it for themselves at this point. All of the projects are getting built in the urban areas and they see no benefit. The other side of it is that you have a significant portion of people with no experience with mass transit in their lifetimes, since the last time any of those towns were served by any sort of passenger rail was over 40-50 years ago. I’m really only going to talk about beyond Everett though since I was raised up there though.
The bus service sucks beyond a certain point and takes forever to go from point A to point B. Commuter Rail is non existant at this point. With gas going up and up, they will either start carpooling or move. I’d rather try to start serving them where they are are at now than to try and make everyone do a mass exodus back into the urban core.
Solution to change minds: Start ramping up bus service so that its convienient(i.e more direct town to town routes,currently everything runs into Everett first and than you have to transfer, there are no buses up there that run directly down the whole length of HWY 9 from say Arlington to Woodinville) , run Sounder from Stanwood with stops in Lakewood/Smokey Point, Marysville. Run shuttle train/DMU from Mukilteo Station up Japanese Gulch in Mukiliteo to Boeing Factory Plant to serve Boeing workers (which is 1/4 to half the commuting traffic on I-5 and Hwy 2 in the peak rush hour anyway) in Snohomish County.
Beyond that, start seriously thinking about ripping up the Centennial Trail and rebuilding the rail on it or just alongside it to provide direct rail transit links to the towns of Arlington, Lake Stevens,and Snohomish and linking these to the Snohomish to Bellevue rail line.
Pie in the sky thinking? Maybe. But start proposing common sense solutions like these and you will see these people vote for transit en masse. But someone is going to have to be willing to subsidize the first runs in order to get it all rolling.
Does anyone know the market share that Amtrak Cascades has between Seattle – Portland? Like percentage who take plane vs train vs driving?
The sense I get is those in Thurston County aren’t adverse to paying their fair share of the cost of bringing commuter rail to DuPont or Centennial (Olympia/Yelm highway) station.
There is also the old BNSF ROW between Union Mill and downtown Olympia via Lacey that could in theory be brought back for commuter rail service or light rail.
Give it a few years and you may even see areas adjacent to the current Sound Transit district begging to join. My guess is the first will be North Thurston (Olympia/Tumwater/Lacey) and the parts of Snohomish County like Marysville, Arlington, and Snohomish that aren’t currently part of the ST district.
Oh and King Street is an embarrassment. Especially when compared to Portland’s Union Station.
Union Station is quite the embarrassment as well.