Rail can also re-route via Eastern WA, but I believe the tracks through both Stampede and Stevens pass are closed for much the same reasons the cross-cascade highways are.

The simple fact is geography limits surface transport into fairly limited corridors. Any surface route between SEA and PDX on the west side of the mountains would have to cross the Chehalis river which would subject it to the same flooding closing down the BNSF mainline and I-5.

There are plans to improve flood control in the Chehalis basin, but even with funding from WADOT, and various Federal sources there still isn’t near enough money to even start much less complete the project. Presumably this will also protect the rail line from flooding as well.

Note that any sort of mitigation to protect surface transportation corridors from mudslides, avalanches, or flooding has its own costs in terms of environmental protection and wildlife habitat.

Hopefully this is just temporary and service can resume as normal when the waters recede.

What part of “record flood” is confusing, here?

Ooops! As we say in England, “don’t throw stones in glass houses”

similar weather, similar problems =) happens everywhere where the weather isn’t “normal”.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7815537.stm

The 3 routes across the Cascades are all subject to avalanches, mud slides, and rock slides. In the lowlands most of the routes are either in river flood plains or along shorelines. In the former case the rails flood when the river gets high enough, in the latter the steep banks are slide prone. Note that many of our major roads are subject to the same issues (I-5, I-90, US 2, and US 12 are closed as well).

Even if the money was there to make the BNSF rails less subject to flooding or slides you have to wonder if current environmental regulations would let them. Even then the mitigation might not be enough. You can raise the rails through flood plains but you still have to stop running trains if the ground under the roadbed becomes unstable or if bridges are in danger of washing out.

On another point, has anyone noticed that the greater Seattle area is now cut off by road access by all major routes to the south and east. Hwy 2,20,I-90, I-5, Hwy 12, and Hwy 101 at places on the coast are all closed along with numerous county roads used to bypass these routes.

Even BNSF doesn’t spend on infrastructure, because then they have to pay more in property tax on the improvements. We, the US government, built this system to fail.

Look, I am just expressing the frustration that people must be feeling if right now, they are waiting on trains to arrive or depart at King Street Station or other Wash. stations. Wouldn’t you be feeling frustrated and pissed off? I thought this was a country that demands solutions, not excuses

We have to be able to do better than this – I can just picture the blogs in a year’s time getting pissed off because Link has been cancelled because of rain on the tracks.

At the end of the day, we have all had a bad three or four weeks of mess up here and we are all looking forward to it ending and to not having to see hysterical headlines in all the papers trying to sell tragedy to make profits for themselves.

On top of this, I am out of work, and I don’t have a lot of hope right now and all of this external stuff just mirrors what I feel about life at present.

This is a very, very, bad flood. My apartment complex just brought in 15 pumps to ensure we stay “dry” here and I’m only near a little creek.

And traction motors, especially DC traction motors, don’t like water and tend to arch, leaving said DC locomotive useless.

Snow is one thing, this is a entirely different scale of difficultly and uncontrollable to anyone.