Sounder Has a Problem (And It's Not Parking)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Since the COVID 19 pandemic, ridership on Sounder trains has been less than half of 2019 levels. Sound Transit is working to address this by adding more parking, but the issues are more fundamental than not being able to find a place to park.
P.S. If this train ran more often, I would have been able to get more B-Roll.
Sources:
Sound Transit Ridership
www.soundtrans...
Star-studded success: Record ridership days on Sound Transit Link propels region’s public transportation during All-Star Game, Taylor Swift concert weekend
kingcounty.gov....
Sounder Timetables
www.soundtrans...
Seattle Commute Survey
www.commutesea...
Remote work in Seattle remains above U.S. average
www.axios.com/...
Seattle’s downtown needs office workers. Do workers need offices?
www.seattletim...
Lagging behind national trend, Seattle workers not in hurry to return to the office
www.seattletim...
Riders slow to return to the Sounder
• Riders slow to return ...
As people work from home, Sound Transit bets $350M on 3 new parking garages
www.seattletim...
Parking Project Plans
sumnergarage.p...
www.soundtrans...
www.soundtrans...
Sounder trains’ future in limbo as riders are slow to return
www.seattletim...
Map of the Week: Seattle’s New Long-Range Rail Plan Goes Big
www.theurbanis...
Amtrak Host Railroad Report Card
www.amtrak.com...
Sounder South trains: so popular, Sound Transit’s trying to add more
www.seattletim...
Sounder FAQ
www.soundtrans...
Alan Fisher | US Railroads Should Be Nationalized
• US Railroads should be...
Its always wild to me that cities will chase after tourists but wont have transit run on the weekend so people can visit when they have time to spend money at shopping centers.
Consumerism, tourism, and "shopping centers" are not the point of conversations around improving rail infrastructure, and if those were the incentives, projects would fail miserably to serve their core purpose. Increased commercial activity localized around transit is a product of the system, not its motivation.
Haha come to Orlando Florida where we have exactly that...not that the train stops at the biggest tourist areas like Disney World and Universal to begin with. We needed the private Brightline train just to get a stop near Universal (currently being built)
@@GirtonOramsay You didn't actually need Brightline to get this done, but Florida Republicans (Rick Scott specifically) refused to allow the original concept, "all aboard Florida," to do almost the exact same thing Brightline is doing, for almost the exact same cost.
@@jamalgibson8139 I was more talking crap about the local commuter rail in Orlando, Sunrail. But yeah it's disappointing that republican leaders always cancel possible HSR projects.
@@GirtonOramsay Sunrail? What's that?
Kidding, of course, but yeah, I see what you mean. It's pretty stunning that a commuter rail system doesn't stop at arguably two of the most important destinations in the city, yet an inter-city rail does. It's amazing how strongly we'll hamstring ourselves for literally no gain.
The Go Train (Toronto's "commuter"/regional train service) along the West route, the train station by my house had commuter level service, ie 4 trains in mornjng and 4 trains in evening opposite direction. Average weekly ridership for the station was 225... Per week.
Now they offer all-day hourly service and a couple extra trains in the morning and evening. Despite being hourly (30 minute is coming) ridership exploded to thousands per week.
Turns out giving regular if infrequent trains provides people consistent, trusted transit service and so people take the train rather than sit in traffic.
This despite the train moving quite slow and taking 5%-25% longer than driving.
I think we ought to figure this out in the Seattle region. Because sound transit doesn’t own the tracks there needs to be investments by them and the state to make it viable but service throughout the day would make it so much more useful
Amtrak cascades which connects Tacoma to Seattle with nearly no stops in-between (juxtaposed to Sounder with stops in between Tacoma and Seattle) is planned to run hourly in the future so it would be really weird if our intercity trains ran more consistently/frequently than our commuter trains!
@jarjarbinks6018 what I would suggest is doing something similar to what GO has done. It built a somewhat regular service that ran hourly, and once it built up ridership, it either purchased or built rails in the ROW incrementally. The stations that saw owned tracks were able to get higher frequencies and continued negotiations allowed higher frequencies beyond their owned tracks too. Once they moved to 30 minute service in many areas, ridership grew by like 150%, and the government not only had no choice but to continue investment, but there became a huge community of people who wanted better service. My mother and my aunt took the Go train into Toronto for over a decade. My aunt had "train friends" she still talks to over a decade after retiring.
Now we're seeing expansion behind anyone's wildest dreams where we'll see 15 minute or better service across much of the network. Some areas will see 7 minute or better. It's kind of nuts for North America.
Hello, could you share the name of the station? I'd like to look into it.
Great video. There needs to be a shift from "commuter rail" to all day, bi-directional regional rail that serves a variety of trips all day and on weekends, rather than just the 9-5 office commuter. We have a similar issue in Metro Vancouver, where the West Coast Express commuter rail serves only 5 trains per day, only in the peak direction, weekdays only, on tracks owned by private freight railway companies. It leaves many of the outer suburbs with only local bus service, as the metro system does not reach quite so far (and would realistically take too long for trips to downtown anyways).
A better model may be Australian cities (especially Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane), which have extensive bi-directional rail systems that run throughout the day, seven days per week.
So practically what GO Transit is trying to accomplish with their GO RER initiative
But the key is not to focus on the name. Philadelphia likes to brag about having "regional rail," but their service is no better than the "commuter rail" services of New Jersey Transit, Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North, CTrail, or MBTA. Of course, all of these are in a class above pretty much anything you get outside of the Northeast and California.
We used to have interurban lines that did just this and some of them reached out really far from cities.
At this point, due to the difficulty in expanding #WCE services within Metro #Vancouver especially in terms of business negotiations with private railway companies, IMO, in addition to expanding #SkyTrain throughout Metro #Vancouver, might as well add express #SkyTrain track segments on new and existing lines where necessary and feasible (i.e. introduce both time-overtake and #NYC-style quad track express services) so #SkyTrain can operate express services and replace at least one #WCE segment for long distance commuter services, at least west of #Coquitlam Central currently until the #PortCoquitlam #SkyTrain extension is built so #WCE can be rerouted to serve South #Coquitlam, Colony Farm, #NewWestminster, #Vancouver South, BC-7, etc. Then #WCE can be shifted for other areas especially to provide more services outside the Metro #Vancouver region to more areas in #BC.
I rarely use the sounder because they never run when I really need them. I know the south sound/ Tacoma will get the light rail connection to Seattle but that’s 10 years from now. Taking advantage of the sounder by adjusting to better times, adding more rides, and adding weekends rides will be so helpful for people who just want to take rail. I feel like they are missing out on potential riders.
What benefit does connecting Seattle to Tacoma with light rail offer over improving service on Sounder?
@@tonywalters7298 I don't know much about the details, but I can think of two big benefits:
1) Not having to deal with freight traffic in an area that has very high levels of freight rail terminal fragmentation (none of the carriers serving Seattle ever got serious about modernizing freight yards). High amounts of freight traffic is one of the biggest constrains to improve Sounder service.
2) The new dedicated alignment allows stations to be placed closer to important population centers. Sounder does a great job serving some communities along its corridor, but a large part of the route is along industrial areas, meaning it doesn't serve as many people.
In my opinion turning Sounder into a proper regional rail service while encouraging transit oriented development would be the ideal solution, but I don't see that happening without a massive reorganization of the rail network around Seattle. This would require either the cooperation of Class 1 railroads (very difficult) or straight up transferring the ownership of the infrastructure to the state (politically impossible in the US at this point in my opinion).
So yeah, the second best option was expanding the existing light rail network, even if it's not appropriate for such long distances.
@@tonywalters7298 we get to spend a lot of money...? the political reason is a tacoma connection to the airport but its basically pointless lol
@@tonywalters7298the light rail going down to Tacoma is primarily to give Tacoma access to the airport. The airport serves both Seattle and Tacoma, hence the name SeaTac! Using the light rail from Tacoma to Seattle is going to take way too long and isn’t really designed for that, the sounder/express bus are much faster than the light rail will be.
Nationalize you say? Alan Fisher has entered the chat...
I expect we’re gonna have to wait a few decades at least for Red Scare memories to be less prominent in the political landscape before nationalization becomes an option
Made me sad to see the former Vine Street Waterfront Trolley station at 8:19 :(. It always saddens me to think about those little green trolley's
We seriously need to bring back the waterfront trolley like we have this supposed “new waterfront” but it’s just a big as uncovered road like let’s make it actually interesting
So indeed, as a european i was utterly perplexed as the somewhat underwhelming penetration of train and light rail in the US transportation ecology. We have more connections in the Netherlanss than in the entire continental US. The day gas goes to 500$ a barrel is the day the US turns into 1990s Rwanda.
such a perfect comment
Especially because nearly all the trains we do have are diesel-powered.
Well technically you can create Gasoline through just chemistry and CO2 gas for cheaper than that, so the US would probably just tolerate 7$ a gallon gasoline.
I don't disagree with your critique of American transit infrastructure, but you fundamentally misunderstand America's position in the global oil market. American's will always have gas and it will always be priced to a socially/politically tolerable level.
@@maddiekits we could just all be like california last year, gas averaged $6.50 in la county on two occasions with over $7 common in most areas
I used the Sounder as my daily commute for 2 months and now use it twice a week. It is honestly an amazing service and I think one of the most underutilized services in the Puget Sound region. The trains are comfy, have AMAZING on-time performance, and are significantly faster than driving at getting you to the last mile.
My biggest issue with the service is the lack of frequency for my direction. I take the reverse of the standard commute (Seattle -> suburbs in the morning), and only having 3 times in one direction (2 before 7 am!) was very stressful. I always added a 10 minute buffer to my commute to account for getting to the station well in advance, because its not fun to potential miss the last train to get home at 5:40pm.
I agree with your suggestion of spreading out the timings to hourly in both directions. This is imo the bare minimum for a usable service and I think would be sufficient to get riders to try out the service. This level of frequency is used on Metra in Chicago Suburbs with great success.
Overall, I really hope Sounder moves in the right direction by increasing frequency ( they just did a survey about this, so fingers crossed!). I think it will really help the Seattle Metro.
I haven't tried riding the MARC in Balt-Wash during the week, but on the weekends it's also about once an hour on the line I took into DC. More frequent is better, but if they are limited on trains or engineers, the least they can do is make it more trips per day by spreading them out like that.
A 7 hour gap in service on a line that takes just over an hour to ride end to end? So there are just trains chilling in railyards for hours, in the middle of the day? I have no words.
Yeah. Seattle has a large Amtrak yard, but unfortunately the class 1 railroads aren’t letting sound transit on to the tracks during the mid day
This is a pretty common type of "commuter rail" service in the US. A few morning trains into the big city, a few out at 4-6 pm, only runs on weekdays...I don't even consider them "public" transit.
@@metrofilmer8894 BNSF runs Sounder. Don't perpetuate the bullshit myth that "fReIgHt hAs pRiOrItY." It fucking doesn't, for the 8 millionth goddamn time, and it never has.
The freight trains need to run too, and commuter rail trains halt essentially all mainline freight trains for the time slots they've been given. It's just not possible to run hourly passenger trains on BNSF or UP track.
@@satiric_ Yes, and they generally own the tracks and people often underestimate just how much stuff in the US gets shipped around the country on trains. People can complain about how the tracks are being allocated, but allocating that back to passengers would probably greatly increase all the problems we're having as that stuff would then just go in semis.
Having been on passenger rail in countries like the Netherlands and Germany, it's so shocking how North America really is taking every step it can to ruin passenger rail in every possible manner. In the case of Sounder, only a few trains per day per direction at best. How is that even commuter rail, how can people reliably depend and trust such kind of service? In Vancouver BC, our West Coast Express ridership has not grown since 1998 precisely because it is still using 1998 timetables that call for 5 trains per day per direction on weekdays rush hour only, thanks to freight rail strangling passenger rail. I think a reasonable measure to fix this is to have regional transit agencies like Sound Transit pursue some form of eminent domain to confiscate some freight rail tracks to make it more available for more frequent passenger rail, and electrification can make it even more frequent. North America really needs to abolish its terrible and outdated railway regulations immediately and start emulating countries like the Netherlands that really knows how to run passenger rail properly.
The split method is based on the principle of the 9-5 work day. Everyone goes to the city in the am and leaves in the pm. In some ways, it actually works quite well. But it's tailor-made for the commuter and nobody else. Post Covid, those flows changed and the service hasn't kept up. Now, it's not as simple as just adding trains since there is only so much equipment and the fact that Sounder is run with BNSF personnel and those jobs are set up specifically with the "one in, layover, one out" assignment.
Beside recent improvements such as #CompassCard and additional trains, wonder what else #TransLink could do to improve #WCE at the moment. Especially where it would not necessarily require #CPKC's permission to implement such improvments. I'm thinking fare gates should replace validators and PSDs for passenger safety and ensuring fare paid zone integrity with defined physical barriers since track intrusion sensors aren't feasible on #WCE anyways.
Metrolink in SoCal just made their Antelope Valley line to run all day both direction - this serves Six Flags so I guess I can get my season pass now!
Further down, they run like 10+ trains a day in each direction on the Coaster in San Diego county with 1 hr frequency. On top of the Amtrak Surfliners. It is very convenient when I want to travel to north county. It evens links up with Metrolink in Oceanside.
@@GirtonOramsay yes very much I agree
Where I live in Chicago, our commuter rail system, Metra, owns like 70% of the tracks they run on, meaning they get priority, over freight trains. Aside from four lines, Metra owns the remaining seven lines. As a result of this, Metra can run more frequently, and even on the weekends without bending to the will of freight railways. Like Seattle, more people in Chicago are working from home, however, people can take Metra to the city just to visit without having to take their car. Because of this, Metra’s ridership was able to recover to 70% of its pre-pandemic ridership numbers. Metra has its problems with other things, but gaining most of their ridership back is not one of them
Washington state should do what virginia has done and set up a passenger rail authority. Virginia's passenger rail authority has bought tracks and is already expanding rail to Washington DC, and will soon be expanding to North Carolina and West across the state. It took a bit of money, about 4 billion, but it's a small investment in a hugely beneficial system.
What do you think that Sound Transit is? Also, precisely where do you propose putting those tracks? That's the issue, the area is very much built up as it is and the rails that we do have are already spoken for. Even just having what we have using the tracks can be an issue at times. The light rail that they just finished a few weeks ago had to be tunneled through significant portions in part due to the cost of tunneling being lower than building above ground.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade Isn't sound transit just the local transit agency?
Also, that's exactly the problem, they built this as a light rail system when it should have been heavy rail. They'd also get better connections between the major cities, thus incentivizing more local transit.
I grew up in Puyallup and the only times I've used the Sounderswas to go watch Sounders matches.
"No one is using our park and ride commuter train. Guess we better build more parking!"
What an astonishingly stupid decision 🤦
8:01 Thankfully, semi-recent releases from ST have come out and data STRONGLY shows that when voted upon, people would like to convert 20 min peak, 30 min off peak, peak only, few off-peak trips into 30 min all day every day both directions.
I am very glad Sound Transit suggested reducing it to 30 minutes instead of hourly, this is a very good sign.
In a highway sense, it’s kind of like if Amazon gained the rights to the highway system and mandated that cars on the left hand speed lane must move out of the way of an Amazon truck/van within 100 yards of one, and also that all vehicles must slow down and clear a 50 yard radius around the truck/van when it gets off an exit, so that they can maintain a constant speed and save fuel to make logistics cheaper and faster.
That’s basically how the American rail system works.
I live in Kent and love sounder, I have it run like link every 30 minutes headway all day would be great
Nice that they even have one.
I shouldn't have to live in a town of 35k+ people to even hope to get one
I stopped taking the sounder trains because they kept getting cancelled and delayed. It's the same reason I don't take Amtrak. I need public transit to be relatively reliable in timing most of the time.
6:55 Very important correction - voters in 2008 ABSOLUTELY DID NOT SPECIFICALLY approve the new parking garages; what they did approve was additional "access funding" for the Sounder, of which additional parking was one of a wide variety of options for said funding. ST put out preliminary plans for new bike lane networks in Sumner as a teaser for the possibilities with this funding, and has almost exclusively utilized the same funding at South Tacoma Station to improve bike connections and pedestrian crossings. The idea they have to build these garages because "It's what the voters approved" is a lie someone cooked up 14 years after the fact hoping no one would notice the complete departure from the original text of the ballot measure.
Being a frequent visitor to the Washington state (Seattle and Spokane, I always felt underwhelmed by the crapshoot of intercity and city public transit there. I didn't even consider the Sounder "public transit" when it's built exclusively for 9-5 downtown workers. One light rail line for a city that size is despicable. Also, Spokane spent over a decade to open a 6 mile BRT-lite line that only connects downtown to the 3 universities east of downtown and no one really uses it anymore than any other bus route. Portland and Oregon were far better with their tram network and actual daily intercity bus network designed for tourists to visit the coastal towns and cities in the Willamette valley.
I've lived in all three cities (in Seattle now), so I enjoyed coming across this comment.
Seattle are late adopters. It is a valid criticism to say that they didn't start building rail sooner, but I don't think it is fair to say that only having one line is 'despicable' when voters have approved network expansion through 2045 to build light rail that serves much of the core city.
Portland's Max network is better than the Link in terms of regional coverage, but headways are terrible, and within the core city its not super relevant as a daily commute option. For serving the city and its most immediate suburbs, I'm a fan of how Seattle is executing the Link, but the Sounder is definitely a sorry excuse for connectivity with Tacoma and Olympia, and solving the Puget Sound regional rail issue is bigger than any challenge Portland has to grapple with.
As for Spokane, I'm not sure what anyone would expect. The city's land use is horrifying, political will for urbanism is absent, and a cultural reckoning isn't instantaneous. I'm proud of the city for adding their BRT line. I think they've dug themselves too deep a hole to meaningfully urbanize in our lifetimes, but the BRT is the first step to improving the (Spokane) U-district, Sprague Ave., and other high potential areas for some semblance of urbanism
@@grandverbalizerFor reference, I lived in northern Idaho without a car, so I had high hopes for Washington whenever I first travelled there. I considered Spokane the "big city" for many years. But yeah I probably come across as spiteful when Spokane/Seattle actually have functional transit services. Seattle has a solid ferry system too. But for current Seattle rent prices, it wouldn't be worth it for me.
I understand that Seattle is trying to catch up now but progress feels too slow. This video only shows how hard that battle will be for Seattle and King County. I hope for a 2024 opening of the 2 line. They also have done good work to open the waterfront with the destroyed viaduct. But very true Spokane is certainly not that great. They did build that new Kendall Yards neighborhood with a quaint main street and denser townhomes though.
Portland gives you options to live in the suburbs and have access to most key destinations across the city. I prefer the narrower streets and decent neighborhood bikeways. It seems like most cities outside of megapolises like Chicago, NYC, DC have that standard 15-minute headways, which I'm suffice with. The US just offers crap "rapid" transit options.
@@GirtonOramsay Do some research, the city and county have done a tremendously good job considering the challenges that are unique to the region. Few parts of the country have the sort of topographical challenges on top of the kind of population growth and all those suburbs aren't exactly helping in terms of building a cohesive transportation network.
We've got major water on both sides of the city as well as a bite of sorts out of the middle. I'm not really sure what you'd do differently to improve the transit situation when most of it is out of the hands of the city. And the suburban planners can only do so much due to being just a small chunk of the total problem.
I finally hear someone else repeating the same thought I had forever: Why can't we just have an Interstate Rail System just like we have Interstaye Highways? It's been past time FRA/USDOT either bought out/long-term leased/eminent domained rail in at least the most congested cooridors. Or simply mandated all trunk Interstates must have a rail component within their rights of way by 2060 at the latest. HSR at that.
Imagine if for every two digit and some longer three digit interstates, there was a two-track mainline rail line with modern signaling, and the ability to serve every small town and big city along the way due to digital GPS backed signaling and bypass tracks that would allow for freight and express thru runs to overtake slower local trains.
...Just how it's done in most other rail centric parts of the world.
Because of the automobile lobby
If the ralroads were nationalized, then Sounder could run as good as Caltrain, and maybe electrify and/or upgrade the tracks
I'm heading out to Seattle this weekend and was disappointed I wouldn't get a chance with Sounder for the time I'm there. I guess living in Salt Lake with Frontrunner has led me to assume most heavy rail lines run more often. Amtrak really carries for this region in terms of heavy rail
can we hang out??? 😂 You should come to an Eastside Urbanism meetup sometime!
I rent a commercial shop space in Kent and would LOVE for more Sounder trips because there is not a single one that is relevant to me or people visiting me at my shop. What an underutilized asset that could be doing so much more. It connects nicely to Interurban and Green River trails here too.
I've considered it, but it's not easy to go to Bellevue on 6pm on Thursday. I'll have to make a video on one of those trails eventually.
@@YetAnotherUrbanist it's true 💀 Seattleites join us sometimes but I know it's a hassle. I think it's best by bike if you're up for an adventure, but likely to be a wet one now. We're going to the Bellevue Transportation Commission meeting this week though which is at least slightly more accessible because we'll be right by the Bellevue Transit Center.
@@YetAnotherUrbanist It's not easy to go to Bellevue from Kirkland on a week day at 6pm, let alone from Seattle lol
@@YetAnotherUrbanistikr.. can’t wait for 2 Line reee
I’ve been visiting the 2 Line stations lately, been trying to catch some of the trains in testing.
Local and regional governments have little leverage over railroads. And even when they do, they are usually afraid of using it. Oakland CA used the renewal of BNSF's 100-year franchise to extract concessions regarding parks and trails. When I presented this option to local government leaders in Tacoma when the BNSF franchise came up for renewal in the late 1980's, the city refused to even consider asking for something from the railroad. I was working for the chamber of commerce at the time, and it was more interested in negotiating for local waterfront improvements than the city was. Until, that is, that BNSF paid like 5 years of lapsed membership dues to the chamber and the whole matter was quietly dropped. The city governments total disinterest was a major disappointment.
i think adopting a frontrunner-style of service could be helpful, where sound transit could buy or build 1 track along the whole right of way, so that they have their own dedicated track on the ROW owned by bnsf. Sure it would be expensive, but in the long term it would probably be cheaper than paying bnsf hundreds of millions to run trains, and would permit much better servicce.
I agree that owning infrastructure is crucial. Unfortunately, the political will for a move like that doesn't exist right now. A change of that size would go to the ballot and Seattleites are already fed up with Sound Transit for project delays and inflated costs, due to the public's unrealistic expectations for comprehensive regional transit development and incompetence on behalf of Sound Transit leadership and the companies they contract with.
Frontrunner took over an existing disused right-of-way they got from the Union Pacific Railroad. The only thing even close to this is the old Seattle Lake Shore and Eastern Railroad right-of-way, which was turned into the Burke Gilman trail. Surely you're not suggesting we convert the Burke Gilman back into a railroad?
@@satiric_ as far as i can tell, the entire frontrunner runs parallel to active freight tracks. I was just suggesting that sounder could try to build their own dedicated track that is parallel to the bnsf tracks, so that they don't have to worry about getting delayed by freight trains; it would follow the same route that sounder uses today.
@@silver_bowling On what land would they build that track? Look at the BNSF mainline: How do you get under downtown? How do you cross Salmon Bay? How do you get through BNSF's Interbay Yard, which has facilities on both sides of the main, so any traffic on the main disrupts work in the yard? There's simply no room: everything has been built up to the limits of where the track is, so if you're building a new track you'll mostly need to tear dozens of buildings down.
What you are suggesting is no easier than the creation of a brand new right of way going straight through the middle of Seattle.
the lakewood-dupont extension will be st built tracks, hopefully it'll give them incentive to lay their own down between lakewood and everet and maybe up to marysville
Very late to this video, but Washington could buy out the railroads. It doesn't have to be done by the feds. Several states have done this recently (such as Virginia)
I blame the auto/highway lobby. The republican party thinks the abortion lobby meddles in our elections, while the democrat party thinks the gun lobby owns our politicians. The truth is the auto/highway lobby actually does both.
yep only used the sounder twice for football games when used to live in Everett, IF was more frequent would of used it more
Oh but parking is one of its many problems, the fact that there is WAY too much of it. Also nothing will piss me off more than the usa using light rail and pretending its heavy rail when its one of the richest countries on the planet. Another fantastic video as always.
There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this kind of light rail. It’s got bigger and longer trains than traditional light rail. It goes just as fast as other metro trains in the states.
@@realquadmoo yeah but theres capacity issues with the trains and street running
@@LouisChang-le7xo no there’s not.
Great video! I've used the sounder one time for a Sounders MLS game. If only it ran on the weekends. Sigh
As much as I love the Sounder train and its coastlline view that is literally perfect for passenger rail, like you say in the video, we will probably see sounder trains being phazed out as soon as the link rail extensions get completed, sucks that the money was already forked over to BNSF but at least they won't get more money if Sounder riders go to Link Rail instead, its a real loss of a beautiful track on the perimeter of Seattle, but alas BNSF is too greedy to see that
Thing is, the Sounder shares the rails that BNSF uses, at a loss due to human cargo being far worth less by weight than anything cargo trains carry. If you were talking about them being on their own rails (such as the light rail here which is being expanded more than many other parts of the country), you'd have a valid point. While I like the Sounder, and have lived within striking distance of it for over 9 years now, it is quite literally taking up space on otherwise dedicated supply lines just for transportation. And that doesn't even begin to get into the stops which, like Auburn Station, are MAJOR transit hubs that have buses to almost anywhere in the area, that use every surface road they need and are pretty well organized.
Yes, often times I feel like urbanists kind of ignore the constraints that aren't fun to deal with. With the population distribution that the US has, it's very hard to put the genie back in the bottle on this. We have been fortunate enough not to have a war on US soil in really centuries, Pearl Harbor being the only notable exception. The result is that the sorts of radical changes that get proposed aren't always something that's doable without massive restructuring. And the restructuring is incredibly hard to do when the infrastructure isn't there to support it and what does exists is vital to having frivolous things like food and clothing.
As a European from Switzerland I never felt the need of a drivers license to move around the country as every mode of public transport is scheduled in a single timetable with short time connections and half hourly trains on a national basis.
A delay of 3 minutes is considered LATE…
7:16 I’m not opposed to giant parkings -underground ! Let the overground space for development for human activity in mixed use like shopping/offices/ housing ,all together in the same place/ buildings.
11:27 The big 4 are an obstacle to the development of the country and should be nationalized by all 50 states !
It’s a disgrace you are a 3.world country in rail traffic !
As an American it's really fucking annoying hearing smug european assholes with no clue lecture us on how our system should work. Wouldn't it be nice if America all fit on a cute little mountain where we could take tiny little trains to our jobs at the, I don't know, watch factory, or whatever it is you people do there.
To be fair, Switzerland is about 1/4 the size of Washington State. The Sounder rail lines alone would barely fit inside Switzerland.
And it's not like we have no transit options. I've lived in this area my whole life without owning a car, I just generally use buses more than rail.
@@oliviastratton2169
It’s about political will and not a matter of size ( as often) !
I've lived in Seattle my whole life and I've never taken a Sounder train. I really like the idea of building infill stations on the North Line in Downtown, Magnolia/Queen Anne, and Ballard. There's talk of putting a another light rail line through that area, but it seems like it'd be much easier negotiate something with BNSF and build infill stations. It'd just mean building a couple stations instead of going through the lengthy process of acquiring land, laying track, and building stations for light rail.
Dude, it’s so true!! As a railfan, I recently went up to Washington to visit my Grandpa and we decided one day to take the train up to Everett. Not knowing that they Ran two south in the morning, and two North in the evening, I thought it would be North, South, North, South. But, I then discovered after getting off at a point of no return, that a Southbound train was not coming. To make things worse, Amtrak doesn’t stop at Kent where we were parked. Sound Transit NEEDS to fix their commuter rail service. We had to pay 111.29 for an Uber.
With the change to using Zoom, traveling to city centers has become mostly option. For many, going into the City is because we want to, not because we have to. Many of these pro rail channels act oblivious to this change. With the biggest obstacle to rail being land acquisition and land use approvals, it is just a shame that all major highways don’t have rail above or below them.
I love using sounder when I can, but it’s very rare that I can round trip with the service. and forget about weekend service!
WSDOT needs to buy that line and then we can electrify the sounder corridor.
I took the Sounder a few times for my reverse commute and boy is it heavenly. Waking up early sucks and navigating transit from the suburban Sounder station to my work is torture. But being able to relax without a fixed focus for 2 hours a day, and getting to stand up and walk on a train on my commute or look out the window beats nothing else.
And yes, stagger the trains, put in weekend service, run smaller trains. Why should we keep using four car trains that are almost empty?
Its easier to bus up to Northgate and ride the Link into Seattle than to thank the Sounder from Everett
12:00 This unfortunately isn’t quite true. The general public sees a lot of perceived benefits to having a functioning freeway system. Since most people don’t use trains, they wouldn’t “perceive” the benefit of having a functioning rail system, should the track be nationalized, and their funding would unfortunately be the first thing cut when times are bad. This would then move a lot of freight currently transported by rail onto the highways. If you think cars are inefficient at moving people compared to passenger trains, wait until you see how inefficient trucks are at moving freight compared to freight trains.
A lot of people admire the trains in Europe, but most European countries divert the vast majority of their freight off of the rails, with their tight restrictions on train length, height and weight, and onto their highways instead.
Wait,Let me guess, is it Low frequency?
its transit non development, transit made for cars not people
Yes. But you should watch the video
@@realquadmoo I did. After I made that comment
@@darthmaul216 nice
Kent Station is already at a disadvantage since they closed off the 5th floor of the parking garage
I don't have a problem with publicly funded rail lines. But nationalizing private freight train companies (who have creates some of the best rail lines in the world) to put them into the hands of governments that have already shown an unwillingness to invest in rail infrastructure, is extremely short-sighted.
Freight trains are something the private sectors is handling well. Leave them to it and focus on developing public passenger rail separately.
Seeing CalTrain electrification proves again how Puget Sound is always one step and 30 years behind the Bay Area. ST doesn’t even have electrification of Sounder on its radar.
Threw me for a loop seeing "Kent Station" emblazoned across the top of Mill Creek Middle School. 😁
The thing with N Line is that once ST3 is built and Link goes to Everett, it's only going to be 15 minutes slower than Sounder, and it serves more places, and more dense places. The recent revision to the Everett Link Extension Project shows great promise! (Unlike Federal Way and Tacoma Dome Link Extensions... I'm still salty about Federal Way)
In my opinion, when Everett Link Extension is open, N Line should probably stop operations. We already provide decent bus service to N Line stations that connect to the I-5 corridor. The money saved by no longer paying BNSF for use of Scenic Subdivision (Seattle to Everett) can be used to improve S Line even more.
Additionally, N Line is not faster that driving. S Line is by a long shot.
it needs to be car replacement and provide services for transit riders not just endless parking, I want to buy a coffee at while waiting for my train
Yess!! I’m somewhat disappointed with the light rail extensions because they are following the freeways only to go into a town briefly just to be surrounded by parking lots
The Sounder not running on weekends is kind of insane to me. My girlfriend and I are in Tacoma and we would LOVE the take the Sounder to Seattle for a weekend day trip. The Express bus services are still pretty good though (the 594 comes every 30 minutes and you can get it at multiple points all over town)
Sounds like the US should consider separating the rail owning companies from the cargo hauling companies
Better still, nationalise the rails and set priorities for the companies using them. Passengers come first, freight second. Boxes and tanks of stuff don't get impatient when they have to wait, passengers do. The kind of freight that gets sent by rail is the kind where it's expected to take a week to get where it's going. A few extra hours here or there won't be making a difference. The kind of freight where hours matter gets sent by air.
@@Roxor128 that could be expensive, and the next conservative government will just sell them off again, not even recouping what you bought them for. I'm not against nationalizing, but if we do that we have to be intelligent about it. Perhaps we can tale a page out of the Labour party (UK) plan for nationalizing water companies. Crank up the regulations on rail until the private companies just wanna be rid of it. Stuff like: automatic fining whenever a passenger train is made to wait or slow down for a cargo line. After all, legally the passenger line already has priority.
@Roxor128 I'd welcome nationalization but it'll never happen. Because capitalism, because 'Murica.
wait the fc team
So nice to see my hometown of Seattle again, and not because of a crime spree.
😊👍
TBH, Sounder rail is a political tool as much as anything else.. it provides service to the commuters in Pierce and Snohomish counties as a way to secure their votes for the ST ballot measures. It is also a way of satisfying the sub area equity requirements that Sound Transit must follow because of the law that formed it.
It’d also be worth comparing the service quality of Sounder to the equivalent ST buses. The thing with Sounder is it has A LOT of shadow bus service and those buses have train quality seats, although they don’t have bathrooms like the trains.
For entertainment and relaxation, I have ridden Sounder to Everett, walked over a shitty route to a restaurant, then hopped the ST Bus back to Seattle. It was a reasonable experience, mostly sullied by the cruddy roads to walk along in Everett.
It’s not a political tool. It’s an attempt at regional rail. They’re limited with options and being held at the throat by BNSF, but they’re going to be re-negotiating in 2026.
@@realquadmoo I wasn’t discounting the fact that it is an attempt at regional rail. But Sounder North would be dead long ago on its ridership numbers alone if it didn’t fulfill a role in meeting subarea equity.
The Mukleteo and Edmonds walksheds are worse than Northgate’s, half of it is the sea, at least there is a pedestrian bridge over I5 from the Northgate station. The drivesheds are similarly bad due to the location.
It’s a beautiful train ride, it does serve a purpose for a limited number of riders, but it’s not a good service.
@@NickCBax the tracks for N Line are not nearly as good as S Line’s. It’s about the same time it takes to drive, so while less people ride it, it’s still acceptable as a commuter rail. In my opinion, one day they should build a new set of tracks for N Line.
@@realquadmoothe other thing is sounder north is competing against the 510 and 512 and a lot of CT 400 & 800 series routes.
@@NickCBax I think in the current state of Sounder it’s good to have near duplicate bus routes, that way, people can ride the route when Sounder isn’t on
The Sounder Train bicycle strap is NOT GOOD !!! ... It is small, short, hard to strapped in and its velcro CANNOT BE STRAPPED PROPERLY !!! 🤬🤬🤬... My bike fell just inches in front of old lady when it was strap on bicycle space when the train hit a bump rail so hard. And it just miss her leg. Otherwise she will have cuts.
YOU GUYS BETTER PUT A BIGGER NEW STRAPPED !!!
Angry Passenger. 🤬🤬🤬
Ready folks? With me now...
GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP!
GOVERNMENT OWNERSHIP!
GOVERNMENT OWNERSHI--
This sounds juuuust like SunRail in Orlando, Fl. They only run weekends and all the stations eight he exception of three has anywhere to walk to. It’s purely a midday weekday commuting train. Most of the stations are put in the middle of nowhere and some are so far out of the way, even the drive to them may take longer to drive to them vs just driving yourself downtown because of the rural traffic around the stations. They built them around nothing. There’s only parking lot. Nothing else. And the ticket price is based on the county. So if you are closer to one station but it’s just across in a different county, you will need to either pay the extra county fee or drive inward to the next closest station.
SunRail often has such low ridership they spend more in the ticketing systems that sell tickets than what they make on riders.
It truly only benefits the hospital workers that work Downtown during the day and the few people that work downtown anymore. Most of the buildings downtown are going empty because rent is jumping up and businesses are bailing. And the employee numbers are also dropping because of cheaper remote work. Most of the offices downtown are empty.
That BMW parking garage...is just for BMW cars to be fixed as well as loaners. It doesn't have much to do with the train station that isn't nearby.
One inherent disadvantage of the northern segment of Sounder is that it has a limited catchment area. Since it hugs the coast, all the ridership comes from the east.
Cars can take me where I want to go when I want to go and stay as long as I want, from my front door. Trains.....not so much.
I wanted to tourist all night, but had to go back to where I was sleeping early every night. Im an adult. I dont want a curfew. I almost got stranded 30 miles from my bed. Seattle is a lame boring city, anyway, but the "things to do" happen after transit closes.
The Sounder N Line doesn’t even work for commuting! It takes an hour to travel from Everett Station to King Street Station. Then I'd have to take another 40 minute bus ride from King Street Station to my actual office. Or I can just take the 510 (which takes 45 minutes) and transfer to my second bus (which is now only 30 minutes since the 510 drops me off closer to work).
Taking the bus is not only 20 minutes faster than the train, but the bus runs every 15 minutes instead of twice, an hour apart. So if I run a little late one morning, it's not a big deal.
As for commuting back home? Impossible! I get off at 5:00, it takes me almost an hour to get to King Street Station thanks to traffic, and the last train leaves at 5:35 pm. I used to work in Seattle Center, which is closer to the station, and I still couldn't make it in time to catch the train.
At least there is decent commuter bus service for the times the trains aren’t running in some cases. But I really hate peak hour only rail service. So dumb.
I think that privately owned companies offer the best service, but I also don't think the US will be capable of doing that for a while so yeah nationalization is the way to go (except for brightline)
I grew up in the Sumner area, and in highschool I went to school downtown. I haven't ridden the sounder since probably about mid 2021, but I remember pre-covid that often the trains would be standing room only going into town past kent, and the same in reverse. I also remember that parking at sumner was a mess, not enough spaces and Sumner required a zoned resident permit to park within a couple miles of the station in all directions. That itself is fine, but it made it hard for commutes from outside the station catchment zone to consider it as a serious option. The garage, while positive could also mean the end of the 596 bus service which runs with the trains, shuttling commuters to a large and otherwise diused parking lot a few miles from the station, and within walking distance of where I grew up coincidentally. That park and ride service meant that drivers could stay out of cramped downtown sumner, not have to drive as far in most cases and still have the convenience of making the train since the bus was timed both ways to shuttle from each peak direction train service. Even if they build a garage I think it is important that the 596 service sticks around.
@yetanotherurbanist could you talk about the Seattle waterfront streetcar line should it be rebuilt or not also could you talk about east side rail that spirit of washington dinner train run on ?
They should have replaced the dinner train with a full blown commuter train. Such a missed opportunity
The early 2000s eastside commuter rail study estimated 3 trains an hour with higher ridership than Sounder south
Go far north enough and you could connect to Snohomish and to Everett providing convenient east west downtown to downtown service between Snohomish and Everett so people can avoid the congested US 2 highway trestle.
Once you reach downtown everett you could go through the tunnel and terminate at mukilteo with an infill station in downtown everett next to providence hospital, a major job center
Politicians should buy a Lionel train set and save all that tax money.
6:19 did you mean two days per year or two days per week?
Actually i think Sounder would be better as a weekend only service
Nationalize the tracks!
4:45 total Seattle lane change
N A T I O N A L I Z E
Nationalize it
People from Auburn who work in Tacoma are absolutely not allowed to work overtime... And is it true that Tacoma Station's track one is called Tacoma, while track two's name is Tacoma Dome? Or does the station just change it's name depending to the train which approaches it?
The station name is Tacoma Dome. May I know where you’ve heard it be called Tacoma?
@@realquadmoo I noticed it - Google maps is wrong: According Google maps there are two different station symbols at the same station: Amtrak serves "Tacoma" and the Sounder stops at "Tacoma Dome" - Don't know why they don't manage to fit all the train services into the same symbol.
@@mariosphere ohhh I see. Typically Amtrak and Sounder use opposite platforms (though sometimes it changes)
0:35 Building on the East side of 4th Ave should not have been built, would have avoided displacement concerns over ST3.
Doesn't Brightline show that if the right incentives are there, a private company will build intercity rail as well as transit oriented development? Wasn't this how much of the intercity rail network began with businesses building along rights of way and making back their money through housing? I will admit though, having the interstate road system owned by the government obviously affords this mode a huge advantage both in creating loss-leading feeder roads and economies of scale just to name 2 benefits.
Right but Brightline charges like $70-$80 for a one way trip so
@@realquadmooSo what? Most of the travelers will be business and can afford it and if they take enough business from airlines, the airlines will reduce their prices and so on. It's called economics; maybe look it.
@@SirKenchalot alright, please let me know when you make a habit of using Brightline multiple times a week.
@@SirKenchalotSeattle doesn't require the interdiction of fully private interest to get transit built like Miami did- it has 2 major transit entities, one fully state run (King County Metro) and one senmiprivate (Sound Transit). There's none of the public hostility to the existence of transit that a place like Miami suffers from.
If anything, such an intrusion would only complicate everything unnecessarily, for no other real reason than to sate the caprice of the politically challenged who think private interest is somehow incorruptible.
@@realquadmooBecause one person anecdotally recording their travel plans on a single rail line proves... what exactly?
👍
why do they never make transit development? all of them have no food options or even a place to get a coffee?
They’ve done some great developments on 1 Line in the past. I do hope they make more. They haven’t been doing much developments on Sounder lines other than parking.
Kent Station had food and shops when I used to take the train there. But you're not allowed to take food or drink on transit so there's not much point in picking something up.
Auburn has a lot of TOD, many apartments being built in their downtown next to the train station.
the sounder only runs for commuters
Cool
4:45 That Chrysler cutting the Corolla is putting me on edge...
7:16 If it takes the agency 10 years to start to put a voter-approved project into practice, no matter the nature of said project...
These are mostly unnecessary parking garages, we are lucky they waited this long to make them.
4:45 and THAT is why I hate driving in Seattle.
Sound transit should use eminent domain to acquire the tracks and take over dispatching. The North and South line should also be converted to a single through running line.
The tricky thing is that BNSF makes so much money off these lines from Container freight that theyd charge Hundreds of Millions for the track
@@IndustrialParrot2816considering it cost $3.9 billion to build link light rail, I wonder consider that a steal. Washington state/sound transit should really look into and consider buying out BNSF line in the Kent valley. The state could also fund to expand the current UP line the runs along side so that all freight runs on the UP line, while passenger trains run on the BNSF line.
@@greasher926 problem is the UP line is in a Much worse Location
I cant believe they demolished a day care for sumner station
Gotta do whatchya gotta do. We shouldn’t be NIMBYs about it
@@realquadmoo I meant to say the parking garage whoops
@@F4URGranted oh. Yep. That is definitely more tragic..
why not buy land and actually build a dedicated system of commuter railways
interestingly, how it is completely logical for the common transit-enthusiasts that the best solution to the problem of needing more tracks is to steal it from someone else... a very Bolshevik way of thinking...
maybe, one of the reasons people prefer roads over rail is that roads do not give control over who uses it to any one organization... first-come, first-serve. very few highways ban trucks in favor of cars (which would be the equivalent to this proposal).
also, when you can count trains on single digits, that's not a viable transit service...
But it is also parking 😂. Northgate fills up literally every weekday and then it is cheaper to drive and park downtown than pay the mall parking fees 😂 also faster as the light rail stops too much and it is too slow. And if there is maintenance, forget it. Half a hour trains 😂
Suburbs are the main contributors to commuter traffic and park and ride far increase transit utilization because people in these highly desirable suburbs won't just give up their house to rent a mini apartment next to the train. That's lunacy. And give bus service to the stations is terrible, any drawbacks of parking are offset by the benefits of keeping cars of cities. And isn't that what urbanists actually want? They don't want to live 25 minutes away in a station attached apartment. They rather be in a car free city. We'll, them build them station parking lots and everyone can live where they want. 🎉 I certainly only go to a city for work and would not in a million years visit one for any other reason.
If transit projects are made for the few that can walk to a station, the let those few pay for it. And given this was paid for with tags from all over the region, often tax payers miles from a station, I see no reason why they shouldn't be provided parking and why the sububanites need to be given priority to maintain their car free lifestyle. I'm all for a car free transit tax then if I'm getting excluded from a station I was taxed for just because they built it too far from me. Your call.😂 I'm honestly fine seeing sound transit fail and the whole thing thorn down if that's how it is going to be.
am i the only who thinks "sounder" is a dumb name for a train
Also, it would be ideal if #FRA permits #Link trains (likely future rolling stocks with gap fillers, existing rolling stocks retrofitted with gap fillers, or both) to run on #Sounder tracks (at least on #SoundTransit-owned tracks) so #Link lines serving #Sounder stations can utilize #Sounder platforms, tracks, and corridors directly instead of needing separate #Link platforms, tracks, and corridors for #Sounder connections.
#Link trains are not built to #FRA mainline #train standards, unlike #Sounder, so this would not work. Also Link trains are so much slower than #Sounder ones so it wouldn't make sense.
Man you sound like Road Guy Rob
over 200 million to run 6 trains per day. The sounder needs to be scrapped. It is a waste of tax payers money. If we want public transportation to work, then it needs to pay for itself. That is less of a drastic change than nationalizing railways, which let's face it, has zero chance of ever happening.
Meth residue?
Man, a channel on transport that wasn't just anti business would be cool. "four companies" being a monopoly and let the gov run thing being the solution, dude has no world view.
The dude has a worldview that you don’t like.
And tbh it’s anti-business because of what the business does, not because it is a business.
Japan’s intercity and intracity rail is for profit, although I’d be happy to have something that is a quarter of that quality in Seattle, and I’m sure most urbanists would as well.
they're a monopoly for their locations, most tracks are only owned by one company, they don't really compete for the same right of way, i'd be like if in Florida you can only buy iPhones and in Minnesota only Samsungs.
Monopoly’s are anti business bud
And how did Japan do it? By crushing their economy with debt. Do you think we should take on more debt?@@NickCBax
Right? The first half of the video is complaining about the decisions made by the government transit authorities, and then he says those same transit authorities should take over ALL rail? As if giving them more power will magically make them better decision-makers.
The one thing I just don't understand is why is it called pungent sound? Is Seattle really that stinky?
your spelling it wrong
@@technomad9071 no you >:(
Puget not pungent
Puget Sound probably comes from a tribe name or word?
Puget sound.
First
I would use my local sounder train if it came more than twice a day 🤬