My only real quibble is the station locations and potential storage track location.

Not sure the 4th & Jefferson site works as a station since trains more than 3 or 4 cars long would block 5th or even Legion. Also a parking structure would need to be built nearby. It is close to the transit center though. BTW the building at 4th & Adams with the sporting goods store used to be a train depot and there was once a small yard in the area.

Perhaps a better location for a Station and Storage would be the old depot and yard at 7th & Columbia? Not ideal for a station but plenty of room for a long train. Bit of a question where you would put parking though.

The brewery warehouse/bottling plant site near E street might be a good spot for a Tumwater Station or at least storage tracks if one of the downtown Olympia sites doesn’t work out. If there is already a downtown station this location might be a bit close though.

Then of course you’d want a station at Centennial. Have to find room for a parking structure, a siding, and crossovers though.

Next station should be DuPont, the transit center is close to the tracks already.

Not sure about Ft. Lewis or Tillicum. You only need one or the other and either would be a bit close to another station. Also to get base personel to use Sounder or ST Express the arrival/departure times would need to correspond to base shift changes and there would need to be shuttles to various employment centers on the base.

Sounder to Thurston County would be ideal but I don’t see how to serve anything other than Centennial Station easily. The ROW Nathan points out above has some promise but has some problems as well and would take quite a bit of money to develop.

Sounder and Link don’t run on the same tracks and can’t due to FRA regulations. Joint light rail and heavy rail operation has only been approved on lightly used branch lines with strict time separation. The line used by Sounder is a heavily trafficed Class I main line.

Sounder would more closely parallel the old interurban than Link at least South of Seattle. North of Seattle the interurban ran more or less in the same corridor as 99 (in fact you can see the old ROW from 99 in a number of places).

There are provisions in ST2 that could allow Sound Transit to extend Sounder down to Olympia without annexations:

Sound Transit may extend new services beyond its boundaries to make connections to significant regional destinations and allow areas outside of the district to function as part of the regional system.

Such service extension would require agreements with the affected local transit agency and/or other appropriate government agencies.

Sound Transit will enter into agreements with agencies beyond the district boundary to integrate fares. This will allow flexible transfers between various transit operators and prevent people who live outside the district from being penalized financially for making regional trips by transit instead of by automobile.

I would love to be able to use transit from Olympia all the way up to the Canadian border and pay with a single ORCA card.

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&ll=47.007182,-122.827148&spn=0.157558,0.30899&z=12&msid=115248289259666793295.0004608aaa5f9b1f47f3f

copy and paste into your browser…

As far as Sounder being separate from Link, I thought it already was? Aren’t the two ROW’s decidedly different, ad serve entirely different rider bases?

As far as extending Link to Olympia, definitely not. And as far as the ST district extension, I only mean Olympia itself and the I-5 corridor, to include the 6xx buses and an extension of Sounder.

Click for a map made by myself explaining my crazy heretical rants:

The moment we go from a one lane HOT system to a two lane HOT will be the time – say within 5 years.

Tacoma Community College (via UPS??) is a great priority destination, the Tacoma Mall likely ranks about the same for local priority. In my mind we need to build some sort of grade seperated service to access both of these areas, presumably with some sort of ‘Y’ near 705. In any case this design should be a hot topic soon. Substantial portions of the existing track will need to be rebuilt, at least all of the single track portions (1/2?).

From 272nd, the currently funded southern terminus the route is very straight forward, just a shot down 99, until somewhere around the Puyallup River. The Puyallup Tribe has offered to put up some money for an EQC stop and this will likely drive the planning from this end as much as TCC, Mall, and Airport Connections.

From observing the heavy rail folks from ST here in Tacoma I don’t think the organization is working all that well. Through South Downtown they’ve been trying to bully through a rural track design through a decidedly urban area.

The Sounder could be seperated from the Link, theoretically. Getting that alternative on the table would be a good thing, but it would take some work, and quite a bit of ‘bridge’ building….

Increase in Sounder Service – We are getting 23 trains a day by 2015. That is fine but in order for tolling to work, we would need to run at least 40 trains a day (20 each direction) in order to provide “buffer” service. During “light” hours, use those MCI buses as a “TrainBus” option (see, http://westcoastexpress.com/trainBus.asp?PageID=STATIONTRAIN&MenuSubID=STATION-TRAINBUS) ((This should be done anyways….))

Link would need to be extended to Tacoma Dome Station. This would benefit those whom need to go between Tacoma and Federal Way, etc. We already know the service frequency would be every 6 to 15 minutes, so no worries there.

Tacoma Link would need to be extended to Tacoma Community College at least, in order to serve those in Fircrest, etc.

Frequent bus service would also be needed in all 3 counties, in order for tolling to work. Once the transit end of the system is completed, King, Pierce, Snohomish and the State of Washington could realistically toll I-5, I-90, SR-520, SR-99, SR-167 to their hearts content at the same or more than what the transit fares are currently and into the future.

Either way, if we were to do tolling without transit, you can imagine just how bad things would get on every mode of transport in our region. If you thought the gas hit was bad, just wait sit back and think about just how many people would use the bus system instead of paying $0.50 to $10.00 for variable/congestion price tolling.

If I had a Benz, was making that $500 a month payment, and had to add nearly $20 bucks a day for tolling, another $70 to $120 for gas every week.. I’d look for alternatives real quick…but then again, there is a reason why I got a motorcycle (G)

For that matter, convert the entire interstate system to toll roads. Then the FHA can pay for itself, and it would encourage transit use.

Bus to Seattle stands at $3.00 from Tacoma.
Sounder to Seattle is $4.75.
Gas is hovering around $2.10 a gallon, and the family car gets ~15 mpg, I-5 Tacoma to Seattle is roughly 30 miles give or take. Plus parking fees, etc. =~$4.20+.

When (not if) it hits $3.50 again I’ll not be worrying, I bike and bus everywhere as it is. Also, I can walk out my front door out to the bus line (PT 501 here in Milton) and thanks to the beauty of the Puget Sound interoperability, getting to Seattle will cost me no more than $4.75. Period.

An added benefit to I-5 being a toll road: People will be less inclined to drive it. They will want to ride-share, or take transit. I am not proposing that every stretch of asphalt have a price tag for each time you drive it, but rather just the principal routes like 512, 167, 405, 90, 520, and 5 in the major urban areas, from say Olympia to Everett. Extend ST to cover the I-5 corridor to Olympia. I’d bet that we could even extend Sounder to Olympia (Not Centennial Station, To downtown) and make that work too. The tracks are there to be improved.

And the tertiary effect: gas prices will go DOWN. There will be less demand for the product, and the price will drop. At least until the supply tightens up at least…