I wanted to add a separate post from the Amtrak Cascades series regarding expanding Sounder. Martin touched on this slightly but I wanted to continue this onward since it will eventually happen. More beyond the fold.
First and foremost, we do not want to become like California where we have several different commuter rail agencies providing basically the same service under a different name. We already have several agencies with GNP Railway coming soon on the Eastside Rail Corridor and Sound Transit possibly running on the corridor as well. Competition is fine and dandy but I for one do not want to carry a bunch of different fares.
Expanding Sounder is easier said than done. I wholeheartedly agree that Sounder NEEDS to be expanded to Olympia, Dupont, Stanwood, and Monroe. Orting and Graham would best be served by frequent bus service… yes, buses. D Street in Tacoma next to Freighthouse Square could be a stop that would be used for service to Graham. Service to Orting would be out of Sumner Station. It is much more realistic to use bus transit on this route than rail. Both are prohibitively cost restrictive and fuel cost just climbing the 3.5% grade out of Tacoma would be outstanding, even with DMU’s.
I’ll run down a list of just what might be required of Sound Transit;
Service to Olympia - New third main track between Nisqually and East Olympia. Why? This corridor sees anywhere between 60 to 110 train movements a day, including Amtrak. When Amtrak expands, the corridor will be even more strained than it is today. With additional trains from Sound Transit, something will need to be done. From East Olympia to the best location (I think it’ll be around Union St in Olympia) will need to be upgraded to at least 60mph. Sounder could also use the Olympia/Lacey Amtrak Station. Public vote is required to expand taxing district into Thurston County and bring in Intercity Transit into the “circle”. I do not see a true cost benefit to this service as it would be at least an additional 40-60+ minute trip. There is very little demand for this service from various newspapers. If a third track is needed, this project could reach in excess of $2 billion dollars for the total project. 5 of the 13 trains would probably serve Olympia.
Service to Marysville, English, and Stanwood - Current track work would allow additional trains to these locations with no extra track construction needed besides a storage track in Stanwood. There is only 10-20 trains a day between Everett and Vancouver, BC, most of the trains are local freight movements with a few through trains and 4 Amtrak passenger trains. This would benefit the I-5 corridor the greatest and travel time will be near driving times. It would handily beat the Community Transit bus service as well but I would see it as a compliment of service than a competition of service. There is a higher demand for Sounder to Stanwood than there is Olympia and is vocally talked about. As above however, these communities needs to be brought into the ST taxing district which requires a public vote. I would foresee this cost no more than $20 million dollars which would cover the cost of new stations and parking facilities (Sounder would use Amtrak Stanwood Station) 2 of the 4 trains would serve Stanwood.
Service to Snohomish and Monroe - This is also a low traffic corridor with no more than 35 trains a day that use the line between Everett and Wenatchee. This is a capped capacity by BNSF Railway due to the Cascade Tunnel which needs to be cleared of diesel exhaust. With the recent track work on the line adding an additional Sounder service would be a simple task. If anything however, I could foresee BNSF asking Sound Transit to build a new siding at Snohomish to compliment the service and increase capacity. As with the other 2, a public vote will be required to bring Sounder to Snohomish and Monroe. At a maximum, $50 million would be needed for the new siding and stations at Snohomish and Monroe along with parking facilities. The other two Everett trains would serve Monroe.
ST Bus Service to Spanaway via Tacoma Dome Station - This route is part of the Sound Transit taxing district. This route would be a new service providing runs every 30 minutes when Sounder is running. The community will need to continue being reliant of Pierce Transit for daily bus service. Service could began in Graham to Spanaway and terminate at Freighthouse Square.
ST Bus Service to Graham via Puyallup Station - This could be done now as Graham is part of the Sound Transit taxing district. This route could be a continuation of the service that serves South Hill but a 60 foot bus would be needed. Service every 30 minutes in conjunction with Pierce Transit service would bring service to Puyallup every 15 minutes with connections to Sounder Commuter Rail. The buses however would only run when Sounder is running and the community will continue to be reliant upon Pierce Transit for transit service.
ST Bus Service to Orting via Sumner Station - This service can also be started as it is part of the ST taxing district. As the above, they would run every 30 minutes when Sounder is running but communities will need to be dependent on Pierce Transit for daily transit service.
I could continue this list on and on but it gives an idea of what could be now or later and what is needed to be done or what could happen. Again it all comes down to money. Buses can be used to compliment rail service instead of competing against each other. They both benefit each other greatly. These buses can be shifted, moved, etc to what ever works best. All of the mentioned routes have hourly bus service but does not serve the Sounder stations. Once the routes no longer support buses, rail is the next option.
That is all that really can be said about expanding Sounder… it comes down to the agency and the people how they want the service to be expanded. Public voice is the biggest winner as we saw for Prop 1, now it’s time to use that voice to get the outlining areas bus transit to connect to rail service. We can add trains until we turn blue but that won’t fill trains up when people no longer have a way to park at the station or a suitable way to get to the station. In my opinion, buses serving communities whom doesn’t have direct service to rail benefits best by bus, such as Bonney Lake, Graham, Orting, and Spanaway but money is the key when it comes to adding key service to those whom may not exactly desire a bus but knowing that there is a big comfortable and quiet train awaiting them is what they desire most.
Your thoughts and comments are welcomed as always!
Olympia… Lacey… Spanaway… GRAHAM??? AMAZING. All places I grew up in, all places that prompted me to move permanently to the city after college. Those are places that have been 100% reliant on cars for years. (Heck, you even have to be driven to the school bus stop because it’s so far away!) This literally made me choke up in a good way. My dad still commutes from Graham to Seatac Airport every Monday morning and Friday night. He will save literally thousands of dollars in parking fees and mileage expenses on his work travel. Not only good for his company and the customers that won’t have to pay as much for their machine repair, but amazing for the environment.
Plus, have you ever been in traffic in East Pierce County?? Ugh, it’s horrible. Graham to Spanaway takes at least 30 minutes. Not to mention the 15 year old drivers who have 2 rear-end collisions on their learner’s permit.
Heck… I might even consider moving back closer to the family if they start bringing more transit out that way.
They should market the route like the sounder … in ST colors with ST passes/fares/et al … all operated by GNP Rail.
Would make it much less of a hassle than a separate line …
Whatever can be done to bring regular commuter rail service between Seattle and Olympia should be done. There would be immense political benefits in doing so.
It’s hard to recruit talented young political staffers to work in state government because many don’t want to move to Olympia (or make the 60+ minute daily commute). The result is that there are fewer urban-minded politicos staffing the capital, and urban issues get short shrift.
How did Denver get 119+ miles of light rail built? Well, one big reason is that Denver is the state capital in addition to being the biggest city. Phoenix, too.
Seattle and Olympia are relatively close (compared to SF-Sacramento, Portland-Eugene, Vegas-Carson City, etc.), and it would be relatively easy to ease the commute between the two (heck, plenty of people commute between SF and Sac, and that’s 2.5 hours by train!). The smartest thing that Sound Transit could do to ensure its political future is run trains between Seattle and Olympia, even if it doesn’t pencil out financially in the short term.
Running Seattle-to-Olympia mornings and Olympia-to-Seattle evenings would require even MORE upgrades, including potentially a FOURTH track between Nisqually and Olympia, for reasons mentioned in the comments for a previous post.
A flyover to avoid the BNSF mainline would save the cost of adding a fourth track on that steep sidecut. It may even benefit the movement of southbound Amtrak trains joining the S.B. main by crossing over the N.B Main.
Sounder ridership from Olympia/Lacey may surprise some. Fort Lewis is a HUGE choke point on I-5. The 80,000 (and counting) soldiers, civilains, contractors and dependants at the fort create their own traffic and many people going to Tacoma or beyond get caught up in it.
Of course if Sounder goes beyond Lakewood, that means we have to do something about the at-grade crossing at the North Fort I-5 exit…
Sorry, I’ve gotta jump in and say that Oregon’s capital is Salem, not Eugene.
Couldn’t agree more - there definitely needs to be more service between Seattle and Olympia at commuter times to say nothing of the rest of the day.
Does anyone know if ST has plans in ST2 to run Sounder at the weekends - they did at one point but not sure if it has survived into the recently approved version?
Tim
Lets say that Snohomish and Monroe wanted to have Sounder service, would they have to join the Snohomish ST Subarea, or could they togather create a new ST subarea?
If they were to create a new subarea, would they automatically have to be at the .9¢, or could the tax be set at a different level?
On another point once the inter-regional backbones have been completed, would it make sence to partially seperate ST so that a proposed expansion that is contained entiorly in one region, only has to pass in that region? (all regions would have to pay their share of the ongoing operations and upkeep expenses)
Lor Scara
That is a question I will forward onward to Sound Transit Lor Scara.
To see the big picture and lay it completely out on the table - if we wanted a full rail network and also funding that would fix the freeway bottle necks in Washington State, it would be $100 +/- billion dollars.
That would be the full Amtrak Cascades plan that WSDOT has currently, new service via Stampede Pass, new daylight service to Spokane, hourly Sounder Service, service to Stanwood, Monroe, Olympia. Link to Everett, Issaquah, West Seattle/Ballard, Tacoma. Extensive Streetcar network on select bus routes, etc, improving Metro, Pierce, Sound, Community, Island, transit agencies, fixing I-5 in Downtown Seattle, rebuilding interchanges, etc.
Yep… it’s just money.
Hi Brian
Any chance that the new Obama administration could send funds our way through Senator Murray - she is on the Transportation Committee of the Senate.
Also, what is the GNP (is that Great Northern Pacific)plan for the Eastside Corridor? I understood that WSDOT pulled up some of the tracks when they got rid of the Wilburton Tunnel in Bellevue?
Any news on the old Spirit of Washington train?
Tim
Isn’t the typical use of commuter rail to bring a group of commuter from the burbs or a secondary city center into the main city center? I can see linking to Olympia since the political machinery is there and it could use some mobility, but Marysville, Stanwood, etc. — all these places, are these folks really going en masse to Seattle to work?
I mean, Stanwood: No way many people do that daily commute. Marysville: maybe, but their life already revolves around a one and a half hour commute. Snohomish doesn’t have a good highway to Seattle and Monroe’s route 522 would also take more than an hour to get to the city in even minimal traffic. Beyond these concerns, I wonder why we’d expand Sounder to the North when the Everett trains are much emptier than the Tacoma trains.
I think Sound Transit needs to focus on light rail expansion. And annexing any place — particularly a more suburban or exurban place — for Sounder service likely creates “no” votes for light rail expansion since Link will *always* be attacked as too Seattle-centric.
You’d be surprised. This is all ancedotal, but I work with two people currently who commute from Stanwood to Bothell every day. I worked with a guy in downtown Bellevue who commuted from Mount Vernon every day for years(He just switched jobs though to something closer to where he lives). My dad worked with a guy who commuted from Oak Harbor to Marysville every day by going through Burlington, etc. Plenty of people live in Stanwood or Camano Island and work at Boeing in Everett or points south. Once for a summer when I was home from college, I commuted from Lake Stevens to Factoria every day for 3 months and another summer from Lake Stevens to Redmond. Gas was cheap than, so it wasn’t much of a factor and the jobs up there sucked.
Also once when I was taking back roads home to Lake Stevens, I ended up following a guy all the way from Redmond to Lake Stevens who took the same route I did.
Like I said , all ancedotal, but look at the traffic volumes on I-5 at 6am. Short of tracking people though ,its hard to measure where they all go to work at though.
Mayb a different type of tax district should be created. An annex status. They only vote for their added service. For Thurston County, they would only pay for Sounder service to Olympia, and could not vote for LRT projects in the main tax district. Yes, it is less money, but it is a way to grow an extensive rail network by only giving the locals what they want.
My father, several of his co-workers and my uncle make the Mount Vernon to Seattle commute daily. Anoter uncle makes a La Conner to Mukilteo commute. My mother drove from Monroe to Bothell for many years. It’s anecdotal, but I know quite a few people that do long commutes like that. What starts way out in the rural areas eventually becomes Seattle’s traffic problem. Better to offer commuters an alternative where they live. Once they get past Everett, they won’t pull off for anything.
I think it is hard to make a case for expanding Sounder outside the current ST taxing district. This is particularly true on the north end where you don’t have to go far to get outside the taxing district and it gets very rural very fast.
However, on the south end their might be some opportunities.
On the south, assuming the grade issue can be worked, it might be advantageous to split the Sounder runs south of Freighthouse Square and run a few of them south towards Hillsdale, Midland, and the junction with SR512 instead. I believe most of these locations are already inside the ST taxing district (TBV).
Also on the south end, it might work to extend Sounder further south to Du Pont and potentially to downtown Olympia. I believe Du Pont would work because ST already owns the tracks all the way to Nisqually Junction. DT Oly is definitely outside the ST taxing district, but comes with the advantage of being an established urban center with a great station location (right across the street from Fish Brewing, oh ya).
The other advantage of a DT Oly Sounder station is psychological – it’s right in the heart of the seat of government. Having a station there would be a great reminder to our electeds that rail transit works and they should get onboard. Maybe a few of them would even give it a try.
It seems a little redundant to extend Sounder to Olympia, especially for only 4-5 trains per day, when Amtrak is in the midst of extensive upgrades that could greatly increase the frequency and reliability of train service between Olympia and Seattle. Expanding the Sound Transit district to encompass Olympia would be a pretty big undertaking just for the sake of creating redundant service on that route.
Amtrak doesn’t go to DT Olympia. It really just goes to Lacey (pretty much in the middle of nowhere). This is because Oly isn’t on the mainline.
Extending Sounder into DT Oly would both increase frequency and serve the heart of Oly where ridership could potentially be higher and the sprawl inducing affect would be less because the area is already developed.
Essentially I’m talking about using the line from East Oly to DT Oly (the old Oly brewery line that also serves the Port of Oly).
i still like the idea of having it go along I-5, which would dramatically speed up the trip. it looks on google maps like there is rail row along almost all of the corridor. i’m thinking stops in nisqually, lacey, and dt olympia, maybe even an underground stop in that rail tunnel with the above ground part in part of the park in front of the ospi building.
The grades are too steep coming up out of the Nisqually River Valley. That’s why the tracks loop south through St. Clair. The river itself is also an obstacle. Bridges are expesive.
John,
I’ve work with several people whom work North of Everett whom commute into Seattle or Bellevue. Stanwood and Mt. Vernon aren’t as far as you may think it is but a quite a few people make that drive daily, thus why the need for Sounder.
Monroe and Snohomish would mainly benefit with the Eastside Rail Corridor which would free up Hwy 2 and Hwy 522.
Believe me, as hard as it may seem, there are hundreds whom would ride Sounder from Stanwood if it worked out for them schedule wise. I understand the need for Sounder into Olympia but that is just for political points. I highly doubt there will actually be a huge backing of it. Even if there was a backing, you’d need to have reverse commutes all the time. That means people would need to travel TO Olympia in the mornings and go FROM Olympia in the evening which Sounder is not setup for and again why the high price tag would be on that route.
Olympia is probably the only situation where I would prefer to see a separate rail operator have service from Olympia to Dupont or Lakewood because it would make much, much more sense, at least for me.
I favor creating a commute-oriented rail nexus between Seattle and Lacey/Oly and don’t care WHO the operator is. Arguably, Amtrak already serves, but not in a commute-oriented way ($14 each way is not a commuter fare). Based on my experience as a vanpooler, I have to believe there are several thousand folks living in greater Seattle that commute daily to the greater Oly area and Intercity Transit runs a great, highly connectable system of buses that could get folks to their offices from the Lacey station.
David
I always thought Sounder should be extended to English, more commonly called Lakewood.
Then Sounder would go from Lakewood to Lakewood.
I agree here. Lakewood (North) is the northern edge of Marysville which is increasingly urban. Stanwood is still pretty rural. I don’t understand why Amtrak is getting a station there. Senator Haagen might oppose Sounder if it went to Lakewood but not Stanwood. Politics…
I have several practical tips to share about expanding the service area of Sound Transit.
First, there is a far easier alternative to expanding the Sound Transit boundary. Existing law allows other entities to contract with Sound Transit to provide service. The ST Express bus route 595 to Gig Harbor is an existing example. Gig Harbor is in Pierce County but outside the Sound Transit boundary. Pierce Transit contracts with Sound Transit to provide the service, and PT pays for it out of existing revenue. No vote required!
Second, getting to Olympia would be better done with buses, at least initially. Replacing the rail bridge over I-5 near downtown Olympia, which was removed about 15-20 years ago, would cost a big pile of money. The only realistic way to get support for such an outlay is to demonstrate strong demand with high ridership on buses.
Third, Intercity Transit (Olympia/Thurston County bus system) could contract with Sound Transit, as described in my first point. IT routes 603, 612, and 620 all meet up with ST routes 591, 592, and 594 at the I-5/SR-512 Park & Ride. The 600-series routes are currently almost as frequent as the ST routes. It wouldn’t take much money or ingenuity to combine these services, accomplishing what these routes currently do, while adding the convenience of a one-seat ride between downtown Seattle and downtown Olympia.
North of Everett makes a better case for commuter rail. You might do best by thinking of Mukilteo as the destination, not Seattle. You may be surprised to know that the largest employer in Skagit county is …
… Boeing. Boeing is a major employer in Whatcom county too.
Wow! Imagine if you could take half the Boeing traffic off I-5! How about a “Boeing Special” timed to shift change running from Moun Vernon or Burlington straight up Japanese Gulch to Boeing? How about that for revolutionizing our transportation network?
The Lacey line into Oly is no longer intact, however the old Oly Brewery line is still intact and still has occasional trains running on it to serve the Port of Oly.
The Brewery line goes past the old Oly Brewery then UNDER I-5 and past the Fish Brewery, then goes under part of Oly in a tunnel somewhat similar to what the BNSF does in DT Seattle — but on a smaller scale.
Graham service could be provided by rail in a cost-effective and efficient manner by using *ELECTRIC* rail. Very good at climbing hills; and in the Seattle area, the fuel costs are going to be a lot lower than diesel. Small EMU units would do it.
This isn’t the BNSF mainline, it’s Tacoma Rail (I think), and they might actually be willing. Talk them into buying an electric freight engine and it could save *them* money too. :-)