All posts by Brian Bundridge

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) on Monday approved the Point Defiance Bypass, allowing WSDOT to finish the design, begin construction in 2015, and potentially complete it in 2017.

The bypass, starting at Tacoma’s Freighthouse Square and rejoining the BNSF mainline at Nisqually, will reduce the travel time between Seattle and Portland from 3 hours and 30 minutes for Amtrak Cascades trains to 3 hours and 15 minutes. The time savings on the route comes from the decrease in overall mileage, increased speed, and improved reliability. The bypass also removes 5 minutes of padding that was needed due to the frequent interactions with freight traffic in the Nelson Bennett area. All passenger trains, including the Amtrak Coast Starlight, will move to Freighthouse Square, closing the old station currently in use.

This finding is open to appeal.  Lakewood Mayor Don Anderson told The News Tribune on Monday that “the City Council will consider its options, including taking the project to court.” Mayor Anderson and the Lakewood City Council have a long history of opposing the project.

The bypass will allow the State to start 2 additional round trips between Seattle and Portland, assuming it resolves the uncertainty of funding for Amtrak Cascades.

After 13 years, Sound Transit’s Sounder Commuter Rail service made its first run into South Tacoma and Lakewood. The train, greeted by media and dignitaries, completes the last piece of the original Sounder plan in Sound Move, an 81.8-mile corridor between Everett and Lakewood.

Testing now ramps up. Starting this week, a 7-car Sounder trainset will be making runs between Freighthouse Square in Tacoma and Lakewood Station at initial speeds between 10mph to 20mph. The following week will ramp up speeds to 40mph and eventually the maximum speed of 60mph. The testing will include emergency drills, including stop/slide testing on the hill between M Street and D Street; adhesion testing between M Street and D Street to ensure the train can start safely with maximum loading of passengers; crossing malfunctions, which may include an occasional blow of the horn at times; and certification of the right of way for passenger use. These tests will happen between 8am and 4pm, every 30 to 60 minutes, Monday-Friday. However, please expect ANY TRAIN at ANY TIME and do not trespass!

Freight trains that currently use the line will be permitted at 40mph between Lakewood Station and M Street. However, trains will still only have a maximum speed of 10mph south of Lakewood, due to the condition of the track. Reports that Tacoma Rail is running on the connector is not officially confirmed at this time, but during the testing phases I saw a Tacoma Rail train on the hill.

The start of service is currently slated for October but an exact date has yet to be determined. Simulated runs will happen 2 to 4 weeks before service starts. That is, trains that normally terminate at Freighthouse Square will continue onward to Lakewood Station without passengers. Each train will be “swept” to ensure to passengers are off the train at Freighthouse Square. When service does start, fares for passengers traveling between Lakewood and Seattle will be $5.50 one way with a total travel time of an hour and 10 minutes, 75 cents and 11 minutes more than the current end point at FHS. Sounder is in a boom right now with nearly a 20 percent increase in ridership and continues to keep that growth up with additional trains coming soon over the next few years. Expect a schedule change that will align the departures with a “clock-facing” departures to make it easier to remember. There will only be 5 round trips that initially will go to Lakewood:

AM Trains #1500, 1502, 1504, 1506, and 1510

PM Trains #1509, 1513, 1515, 1517, and 1519

The 8th and 9th peak-direction roundtrips to Tacoma start in 2013 and 2016 respectively. A third reverse-peak round trip also starts in 2016, and the next year ST will add an off-peak round trip. It is unclear which of these will terminate in Lakewood.

This has been a long time coming and looking forward to riding the train. My excitement for this has been growing and hopefully ST will keep extending the train South. More information on the project is available here, here, and here.

News from the world of heavy rail:

•  Amtrak Cascades and WSDOT debuted a revamped Bistro and Lounge car. The “Mt. Rainier” trainset is in the rotation currently featuring the new swag.
• Sound Transit’s Sounder D Street to M Street is moving along. D Street is open and C Street is now closed. Both of these crossings will be “wayside” horn crossings, meaning no loud train horns.
• Sound Transit’s M Street to Lakewood is mostly completed, with only punch-list items remaining. Testing is tentatively scheduled to begin in July.
• BNSF’s Auburn yard is getting additional capacity for coal and grain trains. These extra tracks will reduce/eliminate delays to Amtrak Cascades trains. This is a BNSF funded project, NOT part of ARRA funding…
• BNSF’s Delta yard in Everett to get 2 additional tracks as part of ARRA funding. Construction starts in shortly, providing additional relief for Amtrak Cascades trains.
• Canadian Pacific Railway is on strike, causing a delays to trains in North America. The ripple effect grows with each passing day. This does not affect commuter rail services or U.S. operations of Canadian Pacific Railway.
• The Mt. Rainier Scenic Railroad will be at the LeMay Auto Museum grand opening, June 2-3, providing train rides behind a 1922 Baldwin steam locomotive and a classic diesel locomotive. No advanced reservations are required. Fare is $10.
• Oregon’s new trainsets are due to arrive in July. Certification and testing will start shortly after arrival in non-revenue service with start of service later in the Fall.
• Could new coal trains prevent new Amtrak Cascade service? Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber believes so.
• Seattle City Council also opposes coal-export ports and the coal trains that would come with it.
• Could Coal Train traffic really be bad news for Public Health?
• Rail advocates continue to push for Blaine Amtrak Cascades stop. White Rock and Surrey councils are behind the project as well.

Washington and Oregon recently announced a new partnership that will develop a plan for managing passenger rail services between Eugene, Oregon and Vancouver, B.C., as a single corridor, rather than two separate corridors as today. Transportation officials in Washington and Oregon signed an agreement that begins the ground work for faster, reliable, and more frequent Amtrak Cascades service.

What does this mean for passengers? Right now, little will change on the ground, but cost management, productivity, capital planning, and scheduling will be under a single office. John Sibold is the new Cascade Corridor director. Sibold has been the Rail and Marine director at the Washington State Department of Transportation since August and will focus on improving the reliability of passenger-rail service and managing the state’s freight lines.

Plenty more information after the jump!
Continue reading “Amtrak Cascades Integrated Passenger Rail Corridor”

The Washington State Department of Transportation has some good news for the rail corridors plagued with mudslides, but the project won’t be finished until late 2015.

Early Wednesday morning, a mudslide between Mukilteo and Everett, caused cancellation of Sounder and Amtrak Cascades service for 48 hours*. WSDOT’s $16.1m Corridor Reliability Slide Management Project will review problematic locations and reduce mudslides along the route.

In 2011, over 100 Sounder and Amtrak trains were cancelled due to mudslides. While this project will not eliminate all mudslide dangers, it is a step in the right direction to minimize service disruptions. Anytime a mudslide occurs, BNSF Railway (owner of the tracks in our region) imposes a 48-hour restriction on passenger trains. WSDOT and BNSF are working together to reduce and/or eliminate this rule, depending on the severity of the slide.

This is positive and much needed relief on what plagues on-time performance and reliability of our trains.

*Empire Builder service will be truncated in Everett and passengers bused to Edmonds and Seattle. Eastbound passengers will be bused to Everett and board the train there.

It’s been a long time since I have done one of these updates but there has been plenty of work going on in our region. With the increase of rail traffic between Seattle and Portland, passenger train reliability has taken a noticeable hit. So what’s going been going on?

1. Recovery from the snow and ice storm added several slow orders. The on-time performance of most trains have mostly recovered and repairs along the BNSF Seattle Subdivision, Scenic Subdivision and Bellingham Subdivision are completed. Snow, ice, mudslides, downed trees, a small sink hole, and heavy wash from the Puget Sound all took its toll on the right of way. With these problems now fixed, track maintenance has ramped up. Those that ride Sounder and Amtrak should notice several pieces of Maintenance of Way equipment working between Tukwila and Tacoma for a tie replacement project and a rather rocky, rough ride on the corridor as the work progresses.

More below the jump:

Continue reading “Heavy Rail Update”

The Washington State Department of Transportation, Rail and Marine division, held a meeting at Clover Park Technical College regarding the Point Defiance Bypass on Monday, May 17th. The meeting highlighted several key and important factors regarding the project, including the highly debated issue of the 10 grade crossings along the route.

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), not the State of Washington, is requiring a project-level Environmental Assessment (EA) before Phase 2 of the funding can be made available for construction. The EA should be completed by the end of 2010 with the FRA issuing a finding in 2011. Construction of Phase 2 will start in 2012 with an estimated completion time of 2014. This will push back the 5th and 6th round trip of the Cascades to 2014/2015 as well. This does not affect the estimated start of Sounder service to Lakewood in 2013.  More after the jump.

Continue reading “Point Defiance Bypass Report”

Martin just tweeted that Seatac Airport Link Station will open on December 19th at 10am. This station will be the new south terminus of our light rail line. More details to come.

Ben: As a regular 194 user, I want to point out that the “32 minute” versus “36 minute” nonsense is just that – nonsense. On top of all the user quality points like offboard payment and plenty of space, both improving boarding times and reducing delay, your average wait for a Link train will be half that of the 194 – off-peak, you’ll probably save ten or fifteen minutes in door to door time.