Wasteful Sounder hurts bus service

I was glad to see the article questioning the costs of Sound Transit trains to Snohomish County. Classic transit numbers about how many passenger trips they provide are mentioned. The real question is, how much does this cost as a commuting alternative? The article says that average weekday ridership is 515 people each way. Sound Transit’s cost number is $32 per ride without capital costs. That is $64 round-trip, or $320 per week per person. That’s $16,640 per year per person! All of us pay tax dollars to support a subsidy of over $16,000 per train commuter, per year according to Sound Transit’s own numbers.

The other analyst’s numbers mentioned are $57 per ride, which would be almost $30,000 per person, per year.

The article says Sound Transit paid $258 million to BNSF Railway for the permanent right to use this rail line, but still cannot run more than four trains per day each way. At the current level of 515 average daily riders, this capital expense is roughly $500,000 per person commuting on Sounder. The article does not mention capital costs such as purchasing trains.

Those of us living in Snohomish County have paid Sound Transit taxes for many years. The comments above show the incredible amount of money being spent to get 500 people off the road. ST runs a few bus routes to Snohomish County, but far fewer than Community Transit, even though CT has reduced service at least 35 percent in the past two years. We keep hearing that eventually there will be light rail to Snohomish County but that always stays “about 10 years away.”

The money being wasted on Sounder trains should instead be spent to restore bus service that Community Transit has cut and increase both CT and ST service. Light rail is an interesting concept, but a similar analysis to that above should be done to seriously question how much money per year, per rider, the light rail line would cost. And they cannot ignore the upfront capital costs, either.

Dave Pitts

Mukilteo