Photo by Slack Action

Sound Transit is figuring out how to improve car, bike, pedestrian, and transit access to many of its South Sounder stations, and staff will collect feedback on-site from 3:30-7:30pm on the following days:

  • Thursday, Sept. 22 at Tacoma Dome Station (South Tacoma Station will also be discussed)
  • Tuesday, Sept. 27 at Kent Station
  • Tuesday, Oct. 11 at Auburn Station
  • Wednesday, Oct. 12 at Sumner Station
  • Thursday, Oct. 13 at Puyallup Station
  • Tuesday, Oct 18 at Lakewood Station

Face-to-face discussions are usually more productive than internet comments, but there is an option for the latter as well.

29 Replies to “Tell Sound Transit How to Improve Sounder Stations”

      1. … and Edmonds, Mukilteo and Everrett. But the study is for South Sounder because that’s what was voted for in ST2, and that’s where the parking is filling up. It doesn’t make sense to study Tukwila because it’s just a temporary station at present, and King Street has pretty good access to buses and light rail (but not to cars).

      2. Wouldn’t it make more sense to study Tukwila than any other, since you need to build an entire new station from scratch there? Or is that not down the pike?

      4. I think Tukwila has some sort of station master plan which was hashed out after long discussion? Perhaps they consider the Tukwila question “dealt with”.

  3. I’d like to see better signage for “Track 1” or “Track 2”, and a mention of which track northbound and southbound Sounder trains typically use. (I say “typically” because, occasionally, passengers have to use the opposite platform.) I’ll try to show up to submit my feedback in the coming weeks.

  5. I’ll be at Tac Dome today. On their FB Event page, users want “more FREE parking” (I myself won’t be a part of that – taking the bus everywhere)
    STB Mod: ignore my email, must have gone out after this was posted.

    Any idea where exactly at TDS it will be held at?

    1. The open house will be held in the Sound Transit concourse (the mid-section of Freighthouse Square where the ticket vending machines are located) from 3:30pm-7:30pm to catch Sounder riders as they arrive at the station.

      1. Because no one travels anywhere on the weekend? I don’t know.

        I never realized this until I tried to plan a trip to Auburn for a wedding in a few weeks.

        I’m from Long Island and grew up with the LIRR so I figured all major train systems ran all week long.

        Can anyone explain this?

      2. Why don’t they run at night either and both ways?

        Example, I’m attending the Symphony at Benaroya Hall tonight…leaving from 98030, Kent East Hill.

        I’d love to go in on mass transit.

        The best way in is to take the 2nd reverse commute Northbound Sounder from Kent Station where I would park. But getting back, I have to get on the 150 for a more than hour long ride at night!

        Alternatively I’ve been thinking maybe I would park at Tukwila LINK light rail…in 30 minutes, out 30 minutes.

        Although, then I think, I could park right inside Benaroya and it would cost me $11 or only about $6 more than the bus-train fees.

        Side note: Have we discussed the LINK online schedule:

        http://www.soundtransit.org/Schedules/Central-Link-light-rail.xml

        I like the colored band at the top that grades by frequency…but the “First Train, Last Train” stuff took me about ten minutes to comprehend.

      4. It’s because Sound Transit purchases operational spots from BNSF Railway to operate Sounder trains during weekday and some weekend runs. Of course, BNSF is in the freight business, so they’re not 100% gun-ho with NYC-style commuter operations on their busy mains. If we wanted more Sounder service, there needs to be three or four main line tracks. Current plan is to triple-track about half of the route to allow for more and longer trains. That was part of ST2.

        It would be awesome if the line offered awesome commuter service like Los Angeles Metrolink, SF’s CalTrain and Utah FrontRunner do. Utah has a cool feature where they have a state-owned track parallel to the freight lines to enable additional operations for commuter trains, similar to the Sounder’s south corridor. CalTrain owns it’s own tracks, as does part of Metrolink, so they have a lot of freedom in operational schedules.

        Long Island RR (MTA) owns many of its own tracks and does not have to compete for operating space with freight trains. And to be honest, NYC has the most robust transit system on the continent, so any other systems look bad by comparison. But the Sounder is by far one of the nicest and best-executed commuter trains east of the Miss.

      6. The thing is, Sounder is more expensive to run than either buses or Link. In the far future Sounder may run hourly off-peak but it will never run every ten minutes. Most of Link’s expense is the capital cost, but that’s a one-time expense that won’t matter once it’s built and paid off. So any money we put into Sounder is money we can’t put into Link, and thus it has a lesser net benefit. The reason Sounder exists is that the low capital cost was seen as such low-hanging fruit that we couldn’t pass it up, plus it got trains running sooner and it serves Kent/Auburn/Puyallup/Edmonds/Mukilteo which Link won’t directly serve. In New York and the Bay Area, the full-time HCT has already been built, whereas here it’s just being built now, so we have significant capital expenses those areas don’t have, and thus we have less money to put into Sounder.

      7. Because Sounder has high operating costs and the tracks are owned by BNSF so even if there was funding to run it all the time they couldn’t. Ideally the state would purchase parallel tracks and electrify the trains putting the cost per rider closer to Link. Then we could probably justify running more trains.

        I think an improvement would be just making the Sounder link up to the 603 at least ONCE a day. If someone wants to go from Lacey to Seattle they have to go west to Olympia then back east past Lacey to catch the Sounder. The buses that stop in Lacey on the way miss the Sounder by about 5 minutes. I also think that Amtrak needs to open up the Cascades for ORCA. They say there’s no capacity but there’s almost always 50 seats empty for Tacoma passengers. Might as well get something for them even if it’s only $4.

      8. The primary answer regarding weekend running is that it would require renegotiation of the contracts with BNSF.

        Unlike some other Cascades and Sounder proposals, where it has been publicly stated what BNSF wants in exchange (for instance, more trains per day on Sounder N, Sounder S, Cascades N, and Cascades S have specific track improvement projects as prerequisites, electrification and level boarding require track and structure work to avoid interfering with aircraft parts trains, etc.), I have not seen any public announcement of what BNSF requires in exchange for weekend Sounder service.

        I assume that Sound Transit does not consider it worth the cost at this time (weekend service is usually less patronized than weekday service, Albequerque excepted).

  8. I think charging a modest fee say, $2.00 a day is perfectly accptable for structured parking, provided it has on-site security. And even the fee will help keep some of the tresspassers away since they wont want to pay $2.00 to go steal a catalyitc converter or something….

    1. Where I used to live in SF, BART parking lots, you will need to pay for parking $1-2 a day based on location. Don’t know if it would work for parts of Puget Sound area.

  9. Auburn has shown that paid parking for Sounder is feasible. Before I started biking both ends of my commute, I was happy to pay the modest cost of a commuter parking permit in Auburn, because the fee was just high enough to make sure the lot always had empty spaces, even if I had to catch the last train.

    Sure, I could have parked for free in surrounding neighborhoods, but for a small cost I could guarantee myself a consistent parking spot near the station.

    Now, if they would consider adding ORCA card readers near the entrances to the platform, rather than only towards the center of the platform, that would certainly be more convenient for commuters who enter the station from the ends rather than the middle.

  10. They should also take a tip from commuter rail all over the world and add coffee and news stands (or at least newspaper boxes) on the platforms. Our amazing anti-business climate makes Sounder platforms some of the most desolate places to wait for a train…

    1. I really don’t understand this. I’ve heard trash as a reason not to, but just have clean up be part of the contract. Everyone else can figure out how to do it.

      1. And that excuse could be used to keep from doing anything. You can’t build a mall because parking will be bad, you can’t have movie theaters because people will leave popcorn on the ground etc… Commuters want coffee and a newspaper. Crap even the bus stations have newspaper boxes.

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