Sound Transit’s lone Everett-to-Seattle Sounder train arrives in Seattle only six minutes before the 8 a.m. workday starts, making it difficult for most downtown workers to use it.
Add to that the fact that Sound Transit offers Snohomish County commuters only one round-trip train per day, and agency officials aren’t surprised that few people have ridden Sounder trains since service started in January.
But now the agency believes it has a way to get more than 150 people a day off Interstate 5 and onto the train.
Starting in June, the southbound Sounder train will arrive in Seattle at 7:39 a.m., early enough to allow most workers to get to their jobs on time, said Lee Somerstein, Sound Transit spokesman.
“Every day I see people get off the train and make a mad dash to get to work on time,” said Jill Ryan of Everett, a Sounder regular who herself isn’t rushed because she has a flexible schedule. “This is going to be perfect for them.”
But it’s the people who aren’t riding the train that Sound Transit hopes to scoop up, Somerstein said.
“People told us from the start that if you crank up those trains a little earlier, you’ll get more riders,” he said.
So far, only about 150 people ride each Sounder train, a far cry from the 560 people that could fit on the train’s four roomy, double-decker cars. The train is so lacking in passengers that there aren’t enough bodies to counteract the air conditioning, according to Ryan, who has asked the agency to turn up the heat on the train.
The current 7:54 a.m. Seattle arrival time was set by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which would not move back the time until improvements to its tracks had been made. Those improvements are now done.
Starting June 7, the southbound train will leave Everett at 6:40 a.m., 15 minutes earlier than the current 6:55 a.m. departure time. It will stop in Edmonds at 7:06 a.m., then arrive in Seattle at 7:39 a.m.
Evening train stops are also changing, but only by two minutes.
Sounder will leave Seattle at 5:13 p.m., stop in Edmonds at 5:40 p.m. and arrive in Everett at 6:12 p.m. Tweaking the schedule will help passengers getting off at Edmonds make the ferry to Kingston.
“That schedule still wouldn’t work for me,” said Evan Thompson, a Marysville resident who wants to ride the train but can’t. “I need something earlier in the incoming and later on the outgoing. I’d jump on it in a minute if they can get those times corrected.”
Sound Transit hopes to address Thompson’s problem by adding a second round-trip train by the end of 2005, then by adding two more round-trip trains by the end of 2007.
The trains would be staggered, but all four trains would head south in the morning and return to Everett in the evening. Times for those trains have not been set.
Lukas Velush is a reporter with The Herald in Everett.
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