North Snohomish County commuters soon to be squeezed by the state’s just-started Everett I-5 widening project could be taking a train to Everett as soon as 2007.
A coalition of north Puget Sound-area leaders on Thursday decided to formally begin negotiations with Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway for temporary access to its tracks from Everett to Bellingham.
“We think that, with community support, we can do this,” said Bruce Agnew, director of the Cascadia Center for Transportation and a former Snohomish County Councilman.
The Cascadia Center has helped the “Farmhouse Gang” – an informal group of politicians and transportation planners from Island, San Juan, Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom counties – pursue passenger rail service in the north Puget Sound region since 1997.
“Our big challenge is going to be Burlington Northern,” said state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, D-Camano Island, a charter member of the gang.
Haugen pointed to the difficulties Sound Transit had in getting access to Burlington Northern tracks for its Everett-to-Seattle Sounder service. She said access to the north might not be as difficult to obtain because most rail freight turns east at Everett to cross the mountains.
“I think it’s possible,” Haugen said.
Burlington Northern would like to help ease congestion on I-5 while the freeway is being widened in Everett, said Gus Melonas, a railway spokesman.
“We have not received an official proposal at this point,” he said. “We are willing to discuss and would evaluate realistic requests that meet BNSF’s future operating plans.”
It would cost $17 million to make track improvements to allow for the commuter trains and still allow Burlington Northern to move freight, according to a feasibility study paid for by the Farmhouse Gang.
If the railway agrees, the aim is to run two round-trip trains a day from Bellingham to Everett, Agnew said. Estimates are that 1,200 to 1,800 passengers would ride the two trains.
The temporary trains would run from 2007 to 2010, covering 2007 to 2008, when much of the work will be done on the state’s $220 million I-5 widening project in Everett.
The trains would stop in Stanwood, Marysville and possibly Lakewood before arriving at Everett Station to meet up with Sounder trains. The connection would let people ride the rails all the way to Seattle and back every weekday.
The state already has $5 million to build a temporary station in Stanwood next year. Marysville and the Tulalip Tribes are in negotiations to build a train station on tribal property at 116th Street NE and State Avenue.
If the temporary service is successful, the hope is that commuter rail service would be made permanent by 2010, making it available for the 2012 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C.
The Farmhouse Gang’s north corridor feasibility study, released earlier this year, shows it would cost from $50 million to $57 million to start a “bare-bones, utilitarian” commuter rail service from Everett to Bellingham.
The money would be spent on track improvements, to buy three trains, to build track, to park the trains at both ends of the line and to develop train stations along the route.
About $15 million of that money has already been allocated, Agnew said, pointing to a series of track improvements the state’s rail division has agreed pay for to support Amtrak’s current service on that route.
Agnew said the Farmhouse Gang has received $54,000 from the new federal transportation bill to work out with Burlington Northern what improvements would be needed and what it should cost to lease access to the tracks.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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