SEATTLE – All aboard!
Seven years and $385 million later, Sound Transit today delivered on its promise to deliver Sounder commuter rail to Everett, Edmonds and eventually Mukilteo.
Sounder service will start Sunday with a special train that will take football fans to watch the Seattle Seahawks host the Arizona Cardinals. Regular daily service will start Monday with one train going south in the morning and one coming back with the commute in the evening.
The Sound Transit Board approved eight agreements at an special meeting today that will allow Sounder service to start from Everett to Seattle and from Tacoma to Lakewood.
The agreement comes seven years after voters approved Sound Move in 1996.
Sound Transit officials said the negotiations with Burlington Northern Santa Fe were tough but fair. Far and away the most expensive part of the deal, paying the railroad for perpetual access to its tracks from Everett to Seattle cost $258 million, while buying the tracks from Tacoma to Lakewood cost $32 million.
Service to Snohomish County will start with one roundtrip train per weekday. It eventually will be ramped up to four trains per day, with all four likely to be running by 2007 and a second train starting as soon as December 2004. All the trains will go south with the commute in the morning and return to Everett in the late afternoon.
The trip from Everett to Seattle will take 59 minutes and cost $3 for adults, $2.25 for youths and $1 for seniors.
Outgoing County Executive Bob Drewel said he’s spent 20 percent of his life working on this project.
“I think it’s a demonstration that honest, principles, hard work still counts, “he said. “The sense of excitement, the sense of anticipation is hard to measure.”
When the measure passed unanimously, he let out, “At long last. “
This fullfilled his yearlong promise to be ridden out of office on a Sounder train.
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