Stanwood Station, photo by WSDOT
Stanwood Station, photo by WSDOT

Interwest Construction of Burlington has been awarded the contract for Stanwood Station. Construction on the $5 million dollar project will begin mid-April and due for completion in late September. Service will start in October serving 4 trains, 2 Northbound and 2 Southbound trains.

The platform will be an unattended open air platform, like Tukwila Station. The station area will have room for expansion for a enclosed building and could be turned into a full multi-modal station.

The platform will be 17×750 feet which will accomodate the future 14 car long Talgo trains or a 9 car long bi-level train. The last passenger train that served Stanwood was in 1969 when Great Northern Railroad stopped in the town. Fares is expected to be around $13 to 20 dollars.

16 Replies to “Stanwood Station Contract Awarded”

  1. I can’t wait to see this! Travel to Canada will be so much easier. One bus ride to Stanwood instead of 2 buses to Everett! Nice. It would be even better if Amtrak took the Sounder Puget Pass (like from Everett Station). With the new ORCA cards is that program (Rail Plus) still running?

    1. Surely RailPlus will continue. The point was to provide more options for Everett Sounder commuters by giving them 2 more round trips, since their choice is limited considerably compared to the south line. I can’t imagine that ORCA would make a difference.

      1. I e-mailed Sound Transit and what they gave me was this “Unfortunately, at this time ORCA will not be accepted on Amtrak Cascades RailPlus trains.” Doesn’t mean they won’t ever but not now. I hope you get a better answer Brian.

  3. I think the ultimate decision will rest on WSDOT and Amtrak if they want their conductors to be trained on the ORCA readers to verify if they actually have the funds to take the train. With the Puget Pass you can simply just look at the face value for the fare, with ORCA, the conductor will need to check via a reader on top of the passengers with the regular ticket fare.

    1. True, but if ticket controllers on Link and Sounder already hold handheld card readers to check riders, I don’t see how Amtrak controllers between Everett and Vancouver couldn’t do the same. At worst, you may be obligated to print a Sounder ticket at a TVM and verify with your ORCA card.

      1. If Amtrak and WSDOT decide to allow ORCA cards on the trains then it wouldn’t take much to allow the use of the e-purse to pay for tickets! The problem with allowing this would be reservations. Amtrak would not be able to track reservations to ensure there is room for passengers. It wouldn’t be good to overpack the trains! I wonder if Amtrak already has this problem with the existing RailPass program? Ben, you said fares would be $13 to 20. Is this 20 to Portland and $13 to Canada?

      2. It will be from $13 to 20 from Seattle to Stanwood. I would estimate that it would be around the same to Vancouver BC and around $30-60 to Portland.

        As it is, it is $28 dollars from Seattle to Portland/Vancouver at the low end and can be as high as $60 one way.

      3. And actually, if Amtrak/WSDOT were to adopt ORCA, they could use the number on the card when entering the payment information then charge it that way but I think that would be a bit more complex that it sounds.

      4. Don’t forget that there are the “multi-ride” tickets available for frequent travelers between Seattle and Bellingham. Those do not require prior reservation (I think). They could allow those to be loaded on ORCA in a similar manner to WSF multi-rides.

  6. Excellent news!

    Brian, what is the latest on Leavenworth?

    By the way, I have been meaning to ask this for a while, but does Monroe have a station planned or a possible site for one? Isn’t this on the Empire Builder line or am I mistaken?

    Tim

  7. I haven’t heard anything official regarding Leavenworth Station. For some reason, getting information from guys is darn near impossible. The Icicle Station website has been totally remodeled though and looks great. It says November 2009 for opening

    http://www.iciclestation.com/index.shtml

    As for Monroe, they have a bus stop but that is all with a Amtrak station code. I haven’t seen any plans for a station and don’t think there will be unless Sound Transit was to extend its reach into Monroe and extend Sounder that way.

    http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/am2Station/Station_Page&code=MEW

  8. I see this is an older comment string but I am wondering now that the Stanwood station is open, will Amtrak extend the Rail Plus benefit and let Seattle commuters go past Everett and all the way to Stanwood? Currently you can take the 6:40 pm Amtrak to Everett using a Puget Pass. I know things are switching to Orca but do you see what I’m getting at in my question? Thanks.

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