The 58 existing cars, which were manufactured by Bombardier, are all between 22 and 26 years old, and have been in use since Sound Transit started launching commuter rail service in 2000. Sounder South service started that September between King Street Station and Tacoma, with the only stops at Auburn and Sumner, as the fledgling transit agency continued to build out the other stations along the line that had been promised to voters in 1996.

Service on Sounder North up to Everett didn’t start until late 2003, after lengthy negotiations with BNSF over the payment to operate commuter rail on its tracks.

Mid-lifespan overhauls are common for a set of vehicles that the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) expects to last 39 years, a fairly long timeframe when it comes to transit vehicles. The overhauls are actually coming a bit later than they might otherwise have been expected, according to Sound Transit.

“Due to Sounder’s duty cycle being somewhat lower compared to most peer agencies, Sound Transit has been able to extend the schedule for this overhaul, which otherwise might have begun several years ago, as some cars are up to 26 years old,” a staff report on the new contract stated. “However, the original passenger cars are showing signs of wear that are beginning to impact service reliability. By beginning this overhaul work now, it will allow Sound Transit to obtain the full useful life of the vehicles and ensure the reliability of service stays at a level expected by customers.”

The aging cars will be overhauled in stages, with an average of five cars out of service for overhauls at any given time over the next six years. Those cars will be subbed out for new railcars Sound Transit purchased from Alstom, which acquired Bombardier in 2021. Those 11 cars were purchased in 2020 for $46.5 million, as part of a joint order with two California transit agencies, the San Joaquin Regional Rail Commission and North County Transit District.

The most substantive change expected with the new cars is the replacement of the pneumatic door systems, which are becoming more unreliable with age, with electric motor door systems. Improvements to the bike storage area could be welcome news, with the existing Velcro tie-up system not great for securing bikes in many cases.

Without a significant change in ridership dynamics, the second half of the Bombardier cars’ lifespan will bring significantly less wear-and-tear than the first.

Sounder has experienced a big decline in ridership since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, with total usage still below 50% of where it was in 2019. Compared to Link light rail, which offers frequent service throughout the day at predictable intervals, Sounder trips remain clustered during peak-hours, with only a few trips outside of morning or evening rush hour or in the reverse commute direction.

A presentation to the Sound Transit board earlier this year noted that many of the planned capital upgrades included in the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) system plan are built around the old model of ridership, including construction of longer platforms and longer trains, along with larger parking garages. It also noted an opportunity to reassess Sounder service with Sound Transit’s planned program reset, which is being called the Enterprise Initiative. That reset is now tasked with handling a 20-25% budget deficit at the agency through 2046, but will be responding to the ways that ridership has been evolving over recent years in ways that can better meet demand.

The public is fairly unified in articulating what it wants from Sounder: more trips. A 2023 Sound Transit survey found 89.6% of riders would prefer to see added Sounder trips over longer trains on existing trips, with 82% asking for trips on the weekend. Currently, the only weekend Sounder service is scheduled around events, primarily sports games. In the post pandemic era, transit agencies have broadly acknowledged a need to shift toward more all-day service, but moves to actually make that happen are slow in coming.

Meanwhile, construction is well underway for an additional 1,500 new parking stalls along the S Line, new garages in Kent, Sumner, and Puyallup that are expected to cost $240,000 per parking stall.

With Sounder now at a turning point, the Bombardier cars will either return from their makeover to the same stagnant service levels that exist today, or to the next generation of Sounder service. That choice will be up to Sound Transit leaders.

The post Sound Transit to Overhaul Sounder Railcar Fleet first appeared on The Urbanist.

Service reductions on Sounder first began on Thursday, February 13, following discovery that there had been a “maintenance lag” on equipment. Sound Transit had initially reported that Amtrak, which is responsible for maintaining Sounder vehicles, was in the process of ensuring inspection and preventative maintenance on various systems, including train doors and communications. 

Sound Transit had to take 23 train cars out of service. As a result, Sounder had been operating service with shorter trains than normal for more than a week and suspended two roundtrips per day on both the Sounder S Line and N Line. While Sound Transit is yet to restore those trips, all trains are now offering five-car service on the S Line between Seattle and Tacoma/Lakewood and two-car service on the N Line between Seattle and Everett.

As Amtrak has ramped up maintenance efforts, at least 11 of 23 Sounder sidelined cars have been put back into service. Sound Transit had originally estimated maintenance work would take six weeks to complete, but it does appear that the pace of recommissioning vehicles for service could greatly shorten that timeframe. Both Sound Transit and Amtrak have stressed, however, that they don’t have a definite timeline for full restoration yet.

Sound Transit cited ridership patterns as the reason it has opted to restore longer trains rather than increasing trips as it brings more train cars into service. 

“Our three-car and four-car trains currently lack the necessary capacity to accommodate our existing ridership,” agency spokesperson John Gallagher told The Urbanist. “Restoring five-car trains on the S line has been our top priority, as we are committed to providing our customers with a safe and comfortable travel experience. While three- and four-car trains are safe, they can become quite uncomfortable when at full capacity.”

Details still haven’t been provided on the full scope of the maintenance issue, but Amtrak said that the issue stemmed from a review of inspection records that found discrepancies. Despite the maintenance lag, Sound Transit has said that riders and Sounder personnel were never in present danger.

On Wednesday, Sound Transit reported that extra Amtrak maintenance staff have been brought in to address the backlog, including staff from as far away as Los Angeles. Amtrak has also put more maintenance bays into use in SoDo at its Lander Street base to expedite maintenance work. 

“Amtrak is expediting inspections and maintenance of certain Sound Transit rail cars,” Olivia Irwin, a spokesperson for Amtrak, told The Urbanist. “We expect a sufficient number of cars to return to service over the coming weeks to permit normal service levels and train lengths.”

Amtrak has pledged an internal investigation and conveyed their apologies to riders. 

“While reviewing inspection records, Amtrak personnel proactively identified an inspection data discrepancy that required a number of Sound Transit cars to be removed from service,” Irwin told The Urbanist. “We apologize to our partner and the customers impacted by these cancellations. An investigation is underway to determine the root cause and take appropriate action.”

Nevertheless, four daily weekday roundtrips remain canceled on the S and N Lines, with two roundtrip cancellations on each line. That makes for a bigger impact on the N Line since there are normally only four roundtrips — not counting Rail Plus access via Amtrak Cascades. 

For now, riders may want to consider alternative transit service to supplement canceled Sounder trips or using Amtrak Cascades service. Under a temporary expansion of the Rail Plus program, ORCA card holders can access Cascades trains that share common stops on both Sounder corridors. That gives Sounder riders along both the S and N Lines access to Cascades trains with stops at Tacoma Dome and Tukwila, in addition to Everett, Edmonds, and King Street in Seattle. Riders opting for Cascades trips should refer to the current schedule.

“Passengers board from inside the station, not on the Sounder platform, and are encouraged to arrive at least 15 minutes early,” Irwin told The Urbanist. “Riders must show their ORCA card or ticket to the conductor as they board the train.” Riders may also want to check in with an Amtrak station agent prior to boarding a Cascades train.

The post Amtrak Ramps Up Sounder Train Maintenance Work, but Service Still Reduced first appeared on The Urbanist.

The agency initially issued a notice last Wednesday night that all morning Sounder service would be canceled Thursday, but the agency quickly issued a revised notice that only some trips would be canceled until required inspections were addressed and that regular afternoon service would operate. 

Nonetheless, by that afternoon some service remained canceled. About a quarter of all Sounder trips remain canceled this week, with the Sounder N Line, which runs from Seattle to Everett, most impacted. Service on the higher ridership Sounder S Line is less affected — though both lines have struggled to regain their pre-pandemic ridership levels.

On Sunday, Sound Transit spokesperson David Jackson described the situation as fluid and said that Amtrak was conducting the required maintenance and inspections of train cars over the weekend. 

“The cars pulled from service lacked documentation of preventative maintenance that Amtrak provides under contract. We are investigating how this occurred,” Jackson said. “At no time were passengers or Sounder personnel in danger.”

The preventative maintenance that was not documented includes regular inspections of communications systems and train doors.

Initially, 16 Sounder cars were deemed out of compliance, but by Sunday afternoon the agency hoped that some cars were ready to be put back into service, Jackson said. Due to the remaining sidelined cars, however, some trains are operating with fewer cars than normal. 

Sound Transit has published Sounder-specific information on alternative travel options. The agency has also received temporary authorization from the Washington State Department of Transport to extend the Rail Plus program to both Amtrak Cascades routes. 

Normally, Rail Plus access to Cascades trains is only available along the Sounder N Line corridor and with a monthly ORCA pass, but all riders can use their ORCA cards for travel on Cascades trains that share stops with Sounder for now. That gives Sounder riders access to Cascades trains along the Sounder S Line corridor with stops at Tacoma Dome and Tukwila, in addition to Everett, Edmonds, and King Street in Seattle. Expanded Cascades access should help a fair number of Sounder riders, though Cascades services aren’t necessarily designed to support peak-hour travel patterns.

To avail of Rail Plus on Cascades for the duration of Sounder service impacts, riders need to check in with an Amtrak station agent prior to boarding a Cascades train, Jackson said. 

Information about the service disruption has been a little patchy on the Sound Transit website over the course of the disruption, but the agency has posted revised schedules that include trip information for Amtrak Cascades along the Sounder N Line. Additionally, riders can refer to the Cascades schedule to time their trips south of Seattle. 

For now, riders will have to contend with cancellation of four Sounder roundtrips, with two each on the Sounder N and S Lines. The S Line normally offers 13 daily weekday roundtrips and the N Line four, after a recent service restoration.

The post Sound Transit Pulls Sounder Cars Out of Service, Temporarily Reduces Trips first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sound Transit has been working toward restoration of the two round trips that were cut from the N Line’s schedule in early 2020 in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Compared to the approximately 1,300 riders per day that were using the N Line before that service cut, average daily ridership currently hovers around 300. That’s around 5% of the S Line, which runs 13 round trips every weekday. The N Line has long suffered from low ridership compared to its southern counterpart, but the restored trips are expected to play a small but needed role in Sound Transit’s expansion plans over the coming months and beyond.

The new trips are planned to leave Everett Station at 6:15am, 6:45am, 7:15am, and 7:45am weekday mornings, and return via King Street Station at 4:05pm, 4:33pm, 5:15pm, and 5:41pm. Full travel time end-to-end is just under one hour. ORCA users can also access Amtrak Cascades trips along the same route, with service at Edmonds and Everett — but not Mukilteo — via the Rail Plus program.

These additional N Line trips will start running just two weeks after Sound Transit starts Link light rail service in Snohomish County with the launch of Lynnwood Link on August 30. While light rail trains are expected every eight minutes during peak periods, Sound Transit is still expecting to experience significant crowding on the extended 1 Line. The agency hopes the additional N Line trips will help mitigate that, along with maintaining express bus service between Everett and Downtown Seattle.

While N Line trips remain one-way, riders alighting at Sounder stops in Snohomish County will have additional connections to make, with Community Transit’s bus network seeing a significant reorganization at the same time as Sound Transit’s service change. While bus frequencies aren’t as robust as Community Transit envisions in its long-range plan, there are new bus connections that will connect Sounder stations with Lynnwood Link stations as well as Community Transit’s Swift bus rapid transit network.

Community Transit’s new Route 130 will connect Edmonds Station to both Lynnwood City Center and Mountlake Terrace Link stations, running every 30-60 minutes. The Route 909 will connect Edmonds Station to Mountlake Terrace Station, running every 50 minutes and timed with the Edmonds-Kingston state ferry. Riders disembarking at Mukilteo Station can connect to Lynnwood City Center with the new Route 117, running every 30 minutes until after 8pm. And riders in Everett will be able to use Sound Transit’s express bus Route 512 to connect with Lynnwood City Center.

The trips restorations are happening against the backdrop of Sound Transit giving Sounder’s S Line a full reset, with the potential for increased frequency that would move the line away from being primarily focused on weekday commute trips at traditional times of day. But a similar reset for the N Line is unlikely. While The Urbanist has made the case for looking at additional N Line stations that could potentially increase ridership, additional trips would need to be negotiated with BNSF railroad.

The four existing easements that Sound Transit purchased from BNSF in 2003 cost $258 million, a price that was dramatically higher than the $65 million had been assumed when Sounder North was promised to voters in 1996. That existing agreement is set to expire in 2030, which may prompt another round of discussions about the future of Sounder service in Snohomish County.

With Sounder’s costs per rider well over $40, some transit advocates argue that N Line funding could be more wisely invested elsewhere in the Sound Transit system. Concerns about the high cost-per-ride on the N Line are nothing new. In 2012, Sound Transit’s Citizen Oversight Panel took a long look at Sounder North operations and came away with a fairly bleak assessment of the line’s finances.

“At a certain point in the future, Sound Transit may have to come to terms with a reality that one of its services is not living up to a reasonable definition of viability,” the final report issued by the panel noted.

But for now, Sound Transit seems intent to utilize the easements that it has already negotiated with BNSF and getting the N Line back to pre-pandemic service levels.

The post Sound Transit Doubling Sounder North Service This Fall with Four Runs/Day first appeared on The Urbanist.

At an agency board meeting on Thursday, Sound Transit planner Melissa Flores Saxe offered some insight into the change of priorities. “Data indicates that there may be more demand than Sounder is currently serving for midday on weekdays and weekend service,” she said. “And there may be more demand trips for cities south of Seattle than we are currently serving.”

Beyond strong public feedback in surveys indicating support for midday, evening, and weekend service, Sound Transit has looked to mobile phone data to understand general travel patterns in the corridor. That data shows that about 70% to 80% of all weekday travel — across all mode types — happens when there is either limited or no Sounder service. Likewise, the data shows that Saturday travel demand is fairly similar to a typical weekday. On top of this, demographic data from transit riders shows that low-income bus riders make a significant number of trips throughout the corridor during weekday middays.

In early 2020, Sound Transit adopted a strategic plan for the South Sounder (S Line) commuter rail corridor. The plan outlined two key strategies — lengthening trains and adding trips — and the specific investments required to achieve those aims, such as platform extensions, additional coaches, expanded storage and maintenance facilities, and track and signal improvements. But that plan was informed by pre-pandemic travel and ridership patterns that were heavily weighted toward 8-to-5 commuters, and as a result the first priority was longer trains.

Since the pandemic, transit travel and ridership patterns have shifted significantly. Ridership is less peak-heavy since many white collar workers telecommute a large proportion of the week. Rules in many offices are more flexible about when workers should report to jobsites and how long they should be physically present at the office, with many employers only requiring or encouraging two or three days per week in the office. 

Consequently, this has meant spikes in ridership during commuting hours on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and relatively sparse commuting the rest of the week. But even the peaks of travel demand during the heaviest ridership days are less extreme than pre-pandemic equivalents, with ridership demand being spread out more across the day.

Surging ridership toward the middle of the week does mean seating on trains is a little harder to come by than on other days, when seats are mostly empty. But even with seven-car trains, ample capacity remains readily available on the busiest days.

Sound Transit’s recent modeling projects that rider capacity on trains is not expected to become an operational issue until at least 2036. Three ridership growth scenarios were modeled along with differing train car lengths at peak hours. The agency assumes that a medium growth scenario is the most likely.

Consequently, the model shows that increasing trains by one extra car — totaling eight cars per train — could handle ridership demand projected in 2036 under the base scenario. That wouldn’t require any platform expansions, delaying a more capital-intensive solution for capacity. However, 10-car trains with extended platforms might become necessary to meet peak-hour demand projected by 2046 under the base scenario.

Postponing construction of longer platforms, acquisition of a larger number of cars, and additional space to store and maintain cars frees up a significant portion of the $1.35 billion (in 2023 dollars) allocated to the Sound Sounder capital program over the next two decades. Crucially, freed money can be used to fund targeted corridor improvements (e.g., tracks and signals) and purchase of more trip slots from BNSF — which owns the bulk of tracks used on the corridor — throughout the day and later into the evening, and possibly regular weekend service.

As a result, Saxe recommended that Sound Transit postponing platform extensions and 10-car trains until 2046 and speeding up the timeline on additional trips, increasing service beyond 13 regular weekday roundtrips and special event service. 

“We believe additional trips would be supported by the public and would address ridership demand in 2036,” Saxe said. “If we were to engage with BNSF on the possibility of adding new trips, we would continue to track ridership trends as well.”

Saxe added that Sounder capital projects uniquely qualify for Federal Railroad Administration grants and financing, unlike Sound Transit’s other modes. “That may fund the track and signal investments that we require for additional new trips,” she said.

In concluding her remarks, Saxe sought the System Expansion Committee’s informal direction on whether to engage with BNSF about new trips and adjust the South Sounder capital program priorities. In response, several Sound Transit boardmembers expressed excitement and support for a change in capital investment priorities.

“I think it’s a wise investment of time,” said Mayor Jim Kastama of Puyallup. “I think that priority would be towards the weekend trips, as opposed to [weekday] midday, although I have no opposition to the midday.” Kastama added that he’d like to see weekend service prioritized, with morning trips in the direction of Seattle and evening trips coming back south on both Saturday and Sunday.

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss was also enthusiastic about more service, recounting how he had to go to Tacoma midday recently, but couldn’t make Sounder work. “This is a great opportunity for us to […] maybe reset or reinvestigate our relationship with BNSF with a goal of being more trips, more often, more days of the week,” he said. “It’s a service that I think a lot of people would like to use more of.”

“I couldn’t support this more,” said Mayor Nancy Backus of Auburn. “I’ve been a fan and a proponent of additional headways, or as I’ve called it, for a long time, turning it into a lifestyle train.” Backus added that she believes that train service is important for work and entertainment travel purposes.

Front-loading South Sounder corridor capital investments to buy more trips can only achieve so much. Resources remain limited because suburban boardmembers like Backus have refused to cancel costly parking projects at stations on the South Sounder corridor, which could free up another $300 million or more in funding for additional service and infrastructure enhancements. The fact that there are far more parking spaces at Sounder facilities than there are train riders now has apparently not changed suburban boardmember priorities for ever more parking.

Nevertheless, support from the boardmembers for evaluating more trips is a positive development. This will allow Sound Transit to coordinate and negotiate with BNSF on what it would take to add more trips in the coming years, and possibly spread out existing service by reallocating peak-hour trips. 

The timing also seems ripe given that BNSF has publicly staked out its principles for additive passenger rail service as part of the Amtrak Cascades Service Development Plan process and has been coordinating with the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) on specific corridor improvements. Some corridor improvements that WSDOT is weighing for Cascades service could directly overlap and benefit Sounder, so there are real opportunities for synergy ahead. Timelines, budget demands, and whether either agency can secure enough BNSF easements to make their dreams come true remain unclear.

But, if Sound Transit is successful in getting reasonably affordable agreements in place for incremental additive S Line service, that could help Sounder begin to evolve beyond commuter rail into a much more useful type of service: regional rail. Time will tell.   

The post Sounder’s South Line Could Get Frequency Boost Sooner in Program Reset first appeared on The Urbanist.

Farebox recovery rates — the ratio of how much a fare covers operations and maintenance costs for a trip — have fallen precipitously across all service types since the pandemic hit in 2020. This is in large part due to lower ridership levels, but also stems from higher rates of fare evasion and increased operations and maintenance costs. Operational costs are likely to balloon even more as Sound Transit expands its light rail network to 116 miles over the next two decades, continuing to put pressure on operations and farebox recovery goals.

Ridership has been rebounding every year since the height of the pandemic, but Sound Transit’s total ridership has not yet recovered to the highs of 2018, when the agency registered 48.2 million rides. Last year, riders posted about 37.4 million rides, leaving the agency 10.8 million rides short of their historic highs. That means Sound Transit is still down about 25.2% in systemwide ridership, even with the opening of a major three-station Link expansion via the Northgate Link Extension in 2021. 

Meanwhile, Sound Transit estimated that about 45% of Link riders did not pay with valid fare media as of October 2023. That fare evasion rate is much higher than the agency’s 2.4% estimate prior to the pandemic in 2019. 

Sound Transit projects that its Link fare evasion rate will drop to 25% by 2029, but the agency anticipates spending considerable sums of money on a new fare compliance program that will require about twice the staffing to implement. Despite calls from a few agency boardmembers, a push to implement fare gates to combat fare evasion seems to have stalled out.

Sound Transit’s long-range financial plan is built upon fares paying for a meaningful proportion of operations and maintenance costs. Between 2017 and 2046, the agency forecasts around $5.5 billion in fare revenue. The financial plan is predicated on attaining a systemwide farebox recovery rate of at least 15% with a target of 20%. As a result, Sound Transit sought to update its formal fare policy to reflect those rates, which are much lower than pre-pandemic levels, and make procedural changes in how fares are adjusted.

Alex Krieg, a Sound Transit planner, briefed the agency board last month on the then-proposed changes. “The updated policy modifies the existing targets to include a minimum threshold, as well as a target the proposed minimum thresholds aligned with fair revenue projections in our finance plan,” he said. “The updated policy includes a systemwide farebox recovery minimum and target to give us a broader understanding of overall fare revenue performance.”

Sound Transit’s revised policy sets minimum thresholds and target farebox recovery rates for Sounder commuter rail, ST Express bus, and Link light rail services in addition to a systemwide standard. This shakes out as follows:

• For Sounder, a minimum of 13% with a target of 18%,
• For ST Express, a minimum of 7% with a target of 12%,
• For Link, a minimum of 17% with a target of 22%, and
• Systemwide, a minimum of 15% with a target of 20%.

Immediately before the pandemic, Sound Transit was reaching farebox recovery rates of 32% on Link, 31% on Sounder, and 25% on ST Express. Link hit a record high 40% farebox recovery in 2017, but farebox recovery began to dip in the intervening years, until plummeting to just 8% at the height of the pandemic.

“While this is a significant decrease, I want to note that the 40% target has existed since the original Sound Transit master plan from 1994 — before we ever operated a light rail system and when the original Sound Move vision from 1996 was a single line operating between Northgate and SeaTac,” Krieg told boardmembers. “When fully built out, our light rail system will span from Everett to Tacoma and from Issaquah and Redmond to West Seattle and Ballard, which is obviously much larger than originally envisioned and will cost more to operate.”

In other words, high farebox recovery ratios are not often compatible with high-frequency light rail systems that run deep into sprawling suburbs, which is the goal of Sound Transit’s light rail spine.

Krieg added that the ST Express and Sounder farebox recovery rate reductions were comparably modest to Link, but were being adjusted downward nevertheless because of reduced ridership in the post-pandemic environment — particularly on Mondays and Fridays for Sounder. The highest productivity ST Express routes being replaced by Link expansions has hurt farebox recovery for the bus program.

As part of the revised farebox recovery rates, the new policy establishes an automatic, periodic review process for evaluating fare changes. “At least once every four years, the board must consider fare changes and review operational expenses by mode that impact the farebox recovery ratio and long-range financial plan,” the policy states. 

The trigger for a fare change proposal that the agency board must consider is whenever the farebox recovery rate falls below an established minimum rate for more than two consecutive calendar years. “The rationale for two consecutive years is that this will accommodate outlier circumstances like major maintenance activities that may result in one year underperformance,” Krieg told boardmembers.

However, Puyallup Mayor Jim Kastama, a relatively new boardmember, questioned the policy changes. “These seem like really drastic changes, actually,” he said. “Let me ask you, what prevents a minimum from becoming the maximum?” 

Krieg responded by saying that the farebox recovery targets would still be the goal, but that the minimums would act as a baseline for meeting fare revenue projections in the long-range financial plan. If the minimums aren’t being met, Krieg said, “that really is the indicator that we’re off track.”

Kastama countered in response, “You just said, if you don’t meet the minimum, not if you don’t meet your target, which means, again, the minimum kind of becomes a maximum.” He further pushed Krieg to confirm that the minimums are what the agency is doing now, not an aspirational goal.

Based upon the revised policy, Kastama’s assessment is a strong possibility, since inflation will increase the cost of operations and maintenance and existing fares will lose effective value the longer they remain unchanged. The main path to reach farebox recovery targets is booming ridership beyond growth estimates and lower fare evasion rates, but neither is assured.

The loss of fare value to inflation is a real challenge for the agency, especially because of the risk that the minimum farebox recovery targets simply become the status quo. Rising operational costs could push Sound Transit to raise fares every four years. The custom within the regional transit fare program (ORCA) dictates that large fare changes should happen in increments of 25 cents. That could mean potentially raising Link fares by 50 cents to $3.50, for instance, in the next go-around just to match inflation and not other potential operational cost increases. 

Other transit agencies in regions like New York City, London, and Vancouver, British Columbia typically raise fares in much smaller increments but more frequently, retaining the effective value of fares. Sound Transit could have done similar in the updated policy by automatically increasing fares based upon yearly or multi-year smoothed inflation rates with a periodic evaluation that the new policy calls for, offering a smoother path to achieve farebox recovery goals.

The new fare policy comes with some other important features. 

First among those is the addition of fare capping to the policy, which, if implemented, would allow riders to reach a maximum fare before each additional trip is free. When and how this will be implemented remains unclear, but Sound Transit is working with regional partners to bring fare-capping to ORCA, which could potentially apply daily, weekly, and monthly. 

Second, the new policy also requires that the agency board adopt minimum and target farebox recovery rates for all new modes three years after commencing service or fare collection. This is meant to capture services like the expanded T Line streetcar (formerly Tacoma Link) that converted to a fare-paid service last year and the Stride bus rapid transit network set to launch later this decade, but to temporarily delay establishment of formal rates in these cases so that Sound Transit has time to properly evaluate and let ridership and operating expenses settle.

Third, the policy formally adds flat fare and route-based categories as additional possible fare structure types, joining distance- and zoned-based fares. This enables the agency to consider using a standard fare regardless of distance traveled — a strategy increasingly being applied to Sound Transit services — and applying special fares to a particular route based on its service characteristics or market served.

Lastly, the new fare policy further maintains that future fare change proposals must consider potential fare structure changes, not just fare rate changes. That would allow Sound Transit staff to consider an equitable zone-based fare structure for the sprawling Link system in four years’ time, undoing the Link fare flattening from last fall that — once it goes into effect in late August — will heavily subsidize suburban riders traveling long distances and penalize urban riders traveling short distances.

The post Sound Transit Lowers Farebox Recovery Goals, Opens Door to Fare Capping first appeared on The Urbanist.

In response to changed travel patterns precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic, Sound Transit is reexamining the Sounder South Strategic Plan that was developed just before onset of the pandemic. The agency carried out an extensive community engagement process last fall to gauge public opinion on current plans for longer trains and higher peak-hour frequencies versus building out the schedule with more trips. Over 5,600 people participated in an agency survey expressing strong support for change to the agency’s planned service approach.

Sound Transit has four key takeaways from the feedback received:

1. Nine out of ten people want new trips. Among riders who use Sounder once per week, that preference was still held by 79%;
2. Adding weekend service was highly popular with about 82% of those surveyed;
3. Adding more weekday service was supported by 57% of respondents; and
4. Reducing frequencies during weekday peak times to add trips during other times was supported by 75% of survey takers. 

Riders want the flexibility expanded service provides

The agency’s report captures some clear comment themes from survey takers.

“Pierce County and South King County respondents preferred to have more options to attend late afternoon activities in Seattle (midday northbound / evening southbound trips), while Seattle respondents wanted to have options to go south during the day and return northbound in the evening,” the report said of weekday preferences.

Later weekday service registered as a key priority to support healthcare workers who often have a staffing change around 7pm, support student life and night class commutes, and provide for after-work activities and dinner in Seattle. As for midday weekday trips, there were clear themes of people feeling “stuck” in Seattle unable to get home for emergencies, meet schedule needs, and get to appointments. Parents also felt that morning service ends too early to get kids to school and catch their trains.

In terms of weekend service, the report found strong interest in morning and evening service in both directions due to the poles of riders.

“There were some differences across ridership categories, though all showed the highest interest in evening southbound followed by morning northbound service,” the report states. “Non-riders showed more interest in morning southbound and evening northbound trains than other ridership groups, likely in part due to the correlation with more non-rider respondents who live in Seattle.” Comment themes clearly show that people want to use trains to visit friends and family as well as attend events. Survey takers also expressed concern that existing special weekend event service can be too crowded, necessitating more trips.

Those results probably aren’t too surprising, but it is a big departure from Sound Transit’s current strategy. The agency does plan to use the feedback to inform its work in developing recommendations on whether or not to modify the strategic plan. And along with this, staff will also conduct further analysis on travel patterns and ridership estimates.

Focus on parking is delaying new service

Sound Transit’s work could be more impactful though if the agency were intensely focused on delivering more service instead of building new parking lots and garages.

In March, the Pierce County Council issued a letter in response to newly announced Tacoma Dome Link Extension delays. In it, the county council told the Sound Transit Board of Directors that they should prioritize more Sounder service and expand it. The county council explicitly called for new trips, adjusting the service schedule by redistributing trips, extending Sounder to DuPont — which will add two stops and is scheduled for a 2045 opening — as soon as possible, and providing new on-demand microtransit service to connect riders to stations. The county council did not request more parking. 

Nevertheless, the priority of the agency’s governing board has been to approve and build astronomically expensive parking garages — facilities that are slated to mostly sit empty — rather than deliver new transit service quickly. Boardmembers’ favorite type of ribbon-cutting increasingly seems to be seas of parking stalls over service improvements and system expansion.

During the pandemic, the agency was forced to undergo a major realignment of the capital programs. Parking projects were mostly pushed to the end of the Sound Transit 3 capital program, but parking projects for Sounder were kept as near-term construction projects to show Sound Transit could still deliver physical assets — even if those assets provide little ridership and far fewer climate benefits.

Just last year, the agency’s governing board approved three Sounder parking-oriented projects to the tune of $360 million. Despite sinking so much money into fossil fuel infrastructure, the Kent, Auburn, and Sumner projects are only slated to deliver about 1,500 parking stalls in structured garages. Assuming costs don’t continue to escalate — a big if — Sound Transit will pay about $240,000 per parking stall. The best case scenario is that, amortized over 30 years, this will cost about $8,000 per year per driver — and that’s not even accounting for their transit and driving subsidies to and from stations. The effective parking subsidy, however, is likely to be much higher since parking utilization systemwide is not running anywhere close to capacity in the post-pandemic environment and is unlikely ever to do so in the future. 

Roger Millar, the state transportation secretary, has tried — mostly unsuccessfully — to change the hearts and minds of suburban boardmembers when it comes to parking. 

“When you look at our station access budget, we are investing more in parking than we are investing in all of the other modes combined,” Millar said three years ago during a discussion around parking and access priorities. “And all of the other modes combined bring 80% of our ridership to our system.”

Millar believes that there needs to be a paradigm shift in how parking is treated when it comes to land use and transit decisions. 

“The other thing I’ve heard people discuss with this is the reality of the situation today is people need to drive to the station because that’s how we designed our communities and we’re hoping for a future where we have these walkable urban communities,” Millar said. “If we want to get to that future, we should be investing in that future, not investing in the existing paradigm. Because if you continue to invest in the existing paradigm, what you’re gonna get is that paradigm.”

While Sound Transit’s process of rethinking priorities for the southern Sounder corridor is critical to connecting communities with high-quality transit and beginning to realize regional rail, the governing board’s outmoded thinking is holding back Sounder’s potential, as Millar pointed out. Approving the parking projects cost riders and the region a significant opportunity last year to commission at least five new daily Sounder roundtrips — almost a 50% service increase. The reality is that Sound Transit faces a binary choice: either the region gets parking or it gets transit. It can’t be both. 

An engaged governing board would take the results of this survey to heart. Those results suggest halting parking garage contracts on the Sounder corridor and reallocating funding to Sounder service expansion efforts instead. After all, it’s not new parking garages that drives support for transit measures; people vote for transit packages because they want transit, and they keep saying that in surveys like this.

The post Riders Want More Sounder Service, But Will They Get It? first appeared on The Urbanist.

Fare policy has a been a hotly contested issue at Sound Transit for the past few years, due in large part to concerns with punitive penalties and racially disproportionate impacts of the old fare enforcement paradigm. That led Sound Transit to radically adjust its fare enforcement system by being more forgiving toward violations, focusing on compliance education, and providing a friendlier face to the system with fare ambassadors, but it hasn’t been supported by all agency boardmembers.

Repeated calls for tougher consequences and use of fare gates due to high fare evasion rates have come from various corners. To that end, Sound Transit has quietly been evaluating use of fare gates at some or all of its rail stations.

Last December, a third-party report prepared for the agency offered a look into the pros and cons of implementing fare gates. The report strongly suggests that fare gates could provide a high rate of return on investment. That’s because fare gates would dramatically push down fare evasion on Link and help Sound Transit raise more revenue that it’s otherwise unlikely to realize.

Implementing fare gates, however, may be easier said than done. Gating stations after they have opened can require considerable custom design to fit and trigger expensive retrofits to meet safety codes. Fare gates also demand some forethought for how they will be managed, integrate with existing fare payment systems, and maintain station flow.

Fare gates could offer a good return on investment

The fare gate report details a dozen cost-benefit scenarios for fare gate deployment. Scenarios are modeled based upon several assumptions, including baseline Link fare payment rates (tested at 55% and 85%) prior to fare gates, high and low ridership projections, and gating all or some Link and Sounder stations. Underpinning these scenarios are several other key assumptions, including the projected fare payment rate with gating, a reasonable annual discount rate on the future value of money, a generous construction cost contingency rate, and some fare gate replacement after 10 years of operation. Fare gate payment rates are assumed to be 95%, which is in line with peer systems’ real-world experience.

Revenue projections from the model should come with a bit of caution as agency staff flagged issues with ridership calculations earlier this year. But directionally, the scenarios paint a fairly clear picture on potential return on investment (ROI) from fare gates.

The report has baselined scenarios on a current fare payment environment, modeled at the agency’s 55% fare compliance estimate. The study found gating the five busiest Link stations would deliver the best ROI on a percentage basis. The high ridership scenarios suggest that near-term net revenue could range from $149.2 million to $275.4 million, depending on how many stations are gated, and the longer-term net revenue could reach as much as $754.6 million. The low ridership scenarios could still provide significant net revenue anywhere from $116.1 million to $208.4 million in the short-term and $328.7 million to $610.7 million in the long-term. Across scenarios, the break even point could be as short as two years, with the longest pay-back period being seven years, according to the study.

Scenarios were also tested at an 85% fare payment rate environment, prior to gating. The results of that are far less impressive with only scenarios gating the five busiest Link stations providing a marginal value for the investment.

Though fares make up a relatively small share of Sound Transit’s annual revenue, they are an important source of funding that would be difficult to replace in the agency’s long-range finance plan, which funds both operations and capital expansion. Fares are currently estimated to fund around $5.5 billion of the $148.2 billion plan through 2046. Estimates made prior to the pandemic for the plan had projected $9.3 billion to $9.5 billion in fare revenue, but that was in a time with a much higher fare compliance rate and more robust ridership for the size of the transit system then.

Since the pandemic, fare evasion rates on Link have climbed; agency estimates peg it at about 45%, translating to a 55% fare payment rate. Rosier numbers calculated via the new fare ambassador program found that fare evasion rates hovered around 13% earlier this year, but that program doesn’t seem to be capturing an accurate fare evasion rate, as the agency has continued to cite the 45% estimate.

In short, if the real fare compliance rate is only around 55%, then fare gates could be a good investment for the agency. If the figure is closer to the rate observed by fare ambassadors, it would make a poor investment. Accurate fare compliance data will be essential to the agency ensuring their decision is fiscally prudent.

Beyond higher rates of fare payment and more revenue, the report notes what it considers potential secondary benefits of fare gates. Those include regulating passenger flows onto platforms, collecting better ridership data, improving security, and reducing loitering at stations.

Implementing a fare gate system would require careful consideration

Sound Transit has three general types of stations: at-grade stations, underground stations, and elevated stations. The fare gate report suggests that installation of fare gates at elevated stations is generally easier since they typically have more space under and around them to place fencing and line up gates. Underground stations, particularly the older ones, could be more challenging given the tighter space constraints of them and existing structural elements. And at-grade stations present a bigger challenge to retrofitting for fare gates since they often allow access at both sides of a narrow platform in difficult-to-control environments.

If Sound Transit elects to install fare gates, one option that the agency could pursue is starting small and focusing on just the highest ridership Link stations, the report said, following the strategy of systems like LA Metro and San Francisco’s Muni Metro. Targeting stations like Westlake, Capitol Hill, and Northgate would provide a very high ROI, as evidenced in the aforementioned tables. The agency could, in time, strategically expand fare gates to other locations if deemed economically beneficial or as part of multi-phase rollout.

Fare gates aren’t without their flaws though. “Interviewees noted that these physical barriers are not impenetrable,” the report said. “Riders who seek to evade fare payment do so by jumping gates, tailgating (following someone inside), pushing gates open, and entering through emergency exit zones.”

Many American transit agencies are in the process of hardening their fare gates in response to increased fare evasion rates, a cycle that the report warned could become recurring to respond to new ways riders evade paying fare. San Francisco’s BART, Washington DC’s Metrorail, and the New York City Subway are examples of this with ongoing efforts to install new equipment that makes it more challenging to evade their systems.

The fare gate report also warned that by installing fare gates at just a few stations, there is a risk for spillover fare evasion to nearby stations without fare gates. Consequently, expansion of gating may quickly become a priority to stamp out elevated fare evasion rates at those other stations, its own form of cyclical fare gate investment.

Transit agencies using fare gate systems must have robust operational strategies, the fare gate report said. Maintenance response times, for instance, need to be quick. Inoperable equipment can become a fixed barrier to passenger flows and a safety risk in the event fare gates are needed for emergency egress. Inoperable equipment can also be an opportunity to defeat fare payment if gates are stuck open. Customer service is another operational imperative. Invariably, there will be times that riders need help in passing though gates, so having something like a call button response or fixed station agent staffing strategy is critical to maintain a positive rider experience culture.

If Sound Transit does implement a fare gate system, it will also want to avoid the rider experience blunders other transit agencies have made in the past. Vancouver and New York City both offer cautionary tales.

In 2016, Vancouver’s TransLink launched its fare gate system with an equipment configuration poorly designed for accessibility, requiring station agents to help tap fare cards for disabled riders to pass through. The agency has partially rectified this through its universal access program, but the situation was bruising to TransLink’s reputation.

And in the 1980s and 1990s, the New York City Subway was focused on hardening fare gates, giving stations outfitted with them a very imposing and threatening appearance. That sent a very negative and unwelcoming signal to the public about the state of the transit system in an era when the city was already poorly portrayed because of high crime rates.

Upfront fare gates costs can run high

As the agency weighs fare gates, costs are certain to be an important consideration.

Upfront costs for fare gates can be quite substantial, as the aforementioned tables bear out, but the fare gate report tried to put a finer point on quantifying unit costs. “Fare gate units ranged in cost from $10,000 on the low end for older model turnstile gates without integrated fare media/fare validation to $50,000 on the higher end for modern paddle gates with integrated fare validation systems,” the report said. “Vendors emphasized that installation costs might be lower with a single product type chosen for all stations so as to streamline the install process through efficiency.”

Costs aren’t just tied up in the fare gates themselves, however. Fencing, wiring, retrofitting, security cameras, and more ticket vending machines all add to the effective cost. Because of that, the report estimates on the low end that installation of fare gates at the five busiest Link stations would cost $34.2 million for 58 gates, an effective cost of $590,000 per gate. Gating all rail stations could cost about $305 million for 500 fare gates, translating to a slightly higher effective cost of $610,000 per gate.

Ongoing operational costs though are projected to be fairly modest with yearly expenditures of $3.3 million to $5 million, depending upon the number of gates.

Whether or not fare gates will come to pass as a feature of Sound Transit’s rail system remains to be seen. David Jackson, an agency spokesperson, said that a briefing on the topic will come to the agency board early next year. Debate around pursuing station gating will surely be contentious among boardmembers and riders alike when that happens. But for now, the Sound Transit CEO isn’t expressing an opinion on the policy issue, declining comment to The Urbanist. So it’s unclear what position the agency will carry to the board beyond report findings.

The post Is Sound Transit Closing In on Fare Gates for Link and Sounder? first appeared on The Urbanist.

Sound Transit does not yet run regular Sounder service on weekends, but the agency should certainly change that given demand shown by strong weekend ridership on Link.

By passing the Sound Transit 3 (ST3) ballot measure, Puget Sound area voters demanded an increase in public transit from their elected officials. Substantial progress on this democratic mandate had been achieved before the pandemic despite Covid-19’s catastrophic disruption, and Link ridership is consistently exceeding pre-pandemic highs.

Unfortunately, this progress doesn’t hold consistently across modes, especially Link’s heavy rail counterpart: Sounder. Digging into the data explains why this discrepancy persists, and it all comes down to scheduling and work patterns.

Remote work and transit culture

Link is surpassing its pre-pandemic ridership due to weekend trips, specifically 2019 weekend ridership was 5.1 million, while June 2022 to June 2023 it rose to 7.4 million, a 45% increase. Conversely, Link’s weekday ridership has not yet recovered to pre-pandemic highs. Why?

A 2022 survey of CTR affiliated workers and employers in the greater Seattle area, conducted by Commute Seattle, shows remote work rocketed due to the pandemic, while public transit fell from first to third place, tumbling behind driving alone.

A preference for cars rather than transit does not explain this shift: the share of drivers decreased along with transit commuters. Further data from the 2017 US census revealed Seattle’s transit was more popular among those earning more than $75,000 a year than those earning less, meaning workers possessing the financial means to drive alone still chose transit. When cross-referenced with current commute modes by income — where high earners are roughly twice as likely to work remotely as low earners — remote work appears to have accounted for the greatest share of transit’s declined use.

In combination with Link’s increased weekend ridership, these data illustrate why fast reliable transit outside peak commute hours is essential: many users are now working from home, and they still need transportation services. A culture of transit use beyond commuting has formed, and Sound Transit should be proud — it is one thing to build rails, it is another to build culture.

Expanding opportunity with Sounder

Beyond meeting the needs of wealthy former commuters, increasing weekend service has the potential to extend opportunity far beyond Seattle’s urban core. Existing services such as Sounder can and should pull more weight toward a more sustainable and equitable future.

Currently, Sounder caters exclusively to those working typical office hours, excluding workers whose schedules operate outside this narrow window as well as people making non-work trips. Were Sounder to offer reliably consistent weekend service, it would provide low-income peripheral residents a cheaper, more eco-friendly means of accessing a wider variety of education and job opportunities in Seattle’s urban core.

While Sound Transit also operates “ST Express” bus service, the drop-off in ST Express ridership since the pandemic — when contrasted with Link’s stellar performance — demonstrates the region’s people prefer rail to bus transit options. Having personally switched from a rail to bus commute, I can testify to why: rail journeys are smoother and more comfortable. They enable riders to relax and increase their productivity, whether starting the day with a calmer mind or working on the journey itself. The cramped start-stop jerking of buses stuck in traffic robs passengers and employers of these comforts and productivity increases, not to mention that buses are less fuel-efficient per-passenger mile than trains.

Commute Seattle’s survey data shows that weekend Sounder service would unlock opportunities for low-income residents. With gas prices in Washington at an all-time high, it’s not difficult to see why the expense of driving is the number one factor Seattle residents are choosing not to drive.

Factor in that households earning under $60,000 are the most likely to use transit and least likely to work from home, and the ridership gains weekend service would provide are plain to see.

Equity, climate, and transit

In Washington, inequality has exploded since the pandemic, and the climate crisis is coming home through increasingly frequent, dangerous, and costly wildfires. More equitable and efficient transportation represents a small but important step in  addressing those issues. If the state is ready to spend $14.8 billion on highways from now to 2029, it has the money to upgrade the services which have the potential to uplift and integrate communities across race, class, and space while lowering their carbon footprints.

Sound Transit has an online survey on Sounder S Line priorities through October 29. You can share your views about more Sounder service.

The post Puget Sound Needs Weekend Sounder Train Service first appeared on The Urbanist.

In a meeting this month, the agency’s System Expansion Committee approved a contract modification with David Evans and Associates, a local civil engineering and planning firm, that will top $22.3 million. That’s an increase of $9.8 million from a previously authorized contract amount of $12.5 million, but the benefits from additional planning and design work could greatly outweigh their cost.

Sounder South ridership is growing but circumstances have changed

For years, the S Line saw booming ridership levels as riders south of Seattle saw it as a superior transit option to jobs in Downtown Seattle. That all changed with the pandemic and a shift to higher rates of remote work. Riders who remained onboard were mostly commuters in positions that had to be done at a specific worksite. With employers calling more workers back into the office a certain number of days now, ridership has been increasing somewhat but is very midweek-oriented and still only 31% of pre-pandemic levels.

Last year, agency officials acknowledged that there has been growing interest in more service and adjustment of schedules. That has come, in part, due to slow ridership growth in the post-pandemic era but also a realization that Sounder can and should be much more of a regional transit tool than it is today.

Sound Transit is now reconsidering the direction of investments on the corridor in light of the fact that the agency adopted a strategic plan developed in the pre-pandemic era just as the pandemic was hitting the region. The agency also intends to develop plans that would bring double tracks to three additional segments of the S Line as well as improved signal systems. That related effort is being partially funded by the Federal Railroad Administration under a $10 million Consolidated Rail Infrastructure and Safety Improvements (CRISI) Program grant.

Double-tracking and signal improvements planned for agency-owned corridor segments

“The Sounder South Capacity Expansion program will be providing matching funds for the Federal Railroad Administration grant to evaluate double-tracking in the Tacoma area and fund an update to the Sounder Strategic Plan,” said Chelsea Levy, an agency capital program director, in a meeting earlier this month. “And secondarily, the DuPont Extension project will provide matching funds for the CRISI grant to evaluate double-tracking in the DuPont segment.”

Melissa Saxe, a Sound Transit project development manager, said that the agency qualified for the federal grant because of a 50% funding match approved in the 2023 annual budget. “The grant enables Sound Transit to advance planning, conceptual design, and environmental review for the double track and signal improvements,” Saxe added.

The three double track and signal improvement segments include: TR Junction to Portland Avenue in Tacoma, S Pine Street to S 66th Street, and Lakewood Station to DuPont Station. While the funding will be helpful to the planning effort, it won’t fund construction. However, completing planning could put the projects in a shovel-ready state and make the agency eligible for construction grants, Saxe said. The planning phase of the project is expected to last through 2027.

Sounder South strategic plan is set to get an overhaul, but DuPont Extension gets little attention

Pivoting to the larger $1.3 billion Sounder South capacity investments, Saxe hinted at a potentially significant overhaul to the strategic plan which currently places investments in platform extensions and longer trains over more trips. As part of that process, the agency will assess evolving commute patterns and update ridership projections.

“It is notable that in recent outreach we have heard a growing public interest in more Sounder schedule options, particularly with the recently announced delay of the Tacoma Dome Link Extension,” Saxe said. “Peer agencies like Northstar commuter rail in Minnesota are also evaluating service alternatives for their passengers.”

King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci seemed encouraged by this and offered her support of extending service hours.

“I do wonder if the ridership on this line would be more robust… and useful to riders if it didn’t have a great big gap in the middle of the day, if it was possible to make the service more all-day and maybe extend hours, at least in the PM,” Balducci said. “Even using this as a commute, I imagine as somebody who has typically worked a 9-to-5 schedule, that last train looks a little early for me as a rider to be confident in relying on it every day.”

The last southbound train from Seattle is at 6:30pm and the last northbound train from Tacoma is at 5:15pm.

In a blog post following the meeting, Sound Transit was fairly optimistic about what a rethink process might entail. “This gives us an opportunity to take a look at reimagining Sounder South,” the post read. “Can it serve more travel needs and types of trips? Whether that be the UW-Tacoma student who lives in Kent, the Sumner warehouse employee commuting from Lakewood, the Seattle resident figuring out if they can date someone who lives in Tacoma, or the Puyallup family wanting to go to Pacific Science Center on the weekend.”

The agency eluded to “research, peer comparisons, public outreach, and discussions with our partners at BNSF and WSDOT” that would ensue to potentially clear a path for this broadening of service. However, the obstacle that BNSF ownership of track represents was mentioned as well: “We’ll also evaluate whether any new trips could run mid-day, in the evenings, or on weekends, bearing in mind that any new trips or changes to the existing schedule require approval and negotiation with BNSF Railway, which owns most of the tracks Sounder operates on.”

Something that did get a passing mention during this month’s agency meeting, but didn’t get as much attention as it should have was the DuPont Extension. The presentation quietly dropped an astonishing cost estimate of $446 million for the two-station, eight-mile extension — an astronomical sum for what seems to be a small project.

However, the original Sound Transit 3 plans loaded it up with many bells and whistles, including a new train storage facility for five trains, an operator comfort and security facility, car parking, and a second mainline track. Plans also promised that there would only be four peak-hour trains each direction on weekdays and that the stations at Tilicum and DuPont each would only have one at-grade platform.

Looking ahead

As Sound Transit re-evaluates and revises its Sounder South plans, it should reconsider the sequence and scope of investments, including for its DuPont extension.

For the DuPont extension the agency would do well to scrap or delay parking facilities, rethink its storage facility strategy, and be strategic in phasing elements of the second mainline tracks. With creative scheduling, targeted passing and siding tracks, and additional signals, the agency might be able to deliver the project much sooner than 2045 and for substantially lower costs. The agency and riders might also be better served if planned service levels are reconsidered. Extending all or nearly all S Line trains to serve all stations south of Tacoma Dome Station, or running a partial shuttle service, could simplify operations and drive more ridership to the line.

Serving simple stations on a lightly used single-track corridor shouldn’t come at extraordinary cost. There are, for instance, entire passenger rail systems in Switzerland that operate on a single track, with strategic passing tracks, that still maintain 20-minute frequencies. So this is something that Sound Transit and its consultant engineers would be wise to look into closely as they develop recommendations and plans.

As for the larger Sounder South capital program, service should be a top priority; not larger trains or longer platforms. More trips in each direction at more times of the day would make better use of existing resources and Sounder more attractive to a wider array of transit riders. It also could offer those riders substantial travel time savings (about 20 minutes) over the future Link 1 Line extension to Tacoma, which will be very slow-going from Seattle (74 minutes under current estimates).

The days of Sounder as just a commuter rail system could be numbered. Rethinking the southern line could set the agency on a glide path for what Sounder is destined to become: regional rail. Expanding the scope of this strategic effort just a little bit more could illuminate how to realize a wider Sounder network in Pierce County and even future-proof expansion to Olympia.

The post Sounder South Could Get Service Boost and More Tracks Near Tacoma first appeared on The Urbanist.