Sounder Logic?

WHAT COSTS $1.02 billion, has been up and running since September 2000, and has been nearly overlooked by critics of public transportation? The Sounder commuter rail line from Seattle to Tacoma.

While Sound Transit's detractors have occupied themselves with the agency's troubled light-rail project, Sounder, the agency's commuter rail service, has been moving steadily forward for more than a year. Sounder, which runs on 40 miles of track owned by the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, connects the Emerald City and the City of Destiny, with stops in Puyallup, Kent, and Tukwila; Sound Transit hopes to expand the system north to Mukilteo, Edmonds, and Everett and south to Lakewood within the next few years.

For thousands of commuters who live south of Seattle, Sounder is the answer to years of prayers. It whisks suburbanites past miles of clogged arterials and can cut hours off a rush-hour commute between Tacoma and Seattle. Packed so tightly on a recent Friday night that some passengers had to stand for the first few legs of the Seattle-to-Tacoma jaunt, Sounder is a marvel of modern transportation: You can sleep, plug in your laptop, or sit and do crosswords on one of the train's dozens of tables. There's little doubt that few passengers would go back to driving, given the alternative; many, such as Puyallup resident John McKay, used to sit through grueling commutes of up to three hours. "I used to have to leave the house at 5 a.m. to make it to work on time," says McKay. McKay even credits Sounder with helping him lose 70 pounds. "I'd have to drink three mochas on the way in and three doubles on the way back" to stay awake, he says. Now, he just sleeps on the train.

But for all its charms, is Sounder worth the price? Can a commuter rail system that carries just 2,400 one-way passengers daily in posh, climate-controlled comfort justify losses of up to $27,000 a day? And how long should commuters expect to wait for a system that has been consistently over budget and behind schedule for six years running?

As is often the case with expensive, long-term projects like public transit, the answers aren't simple.

FOR EXAMPLE, no one at Sound Transit denies that Sounder has missed nearly every deadline it has set—from its initial projection that service to Tacoma would begin in "late 1999," according to a 1997 press release, to assurances that commuters from Everett would be riding the train by early 2001. By now, nine trains were supposed to be running between Lakewood and Seattle, and six between Seattle and Everett, for 30 one-way runs a day. Instead, Sounder only makes four one-way trips between Seattle and Tacoma: Two trains leave Tacoma at the brutal hours of 6:15 and 6:45 a.m. and depart from Seattle at 5:10 and 5:45 p.m.— inconvenient hours for many commuters.

But, as Sounder's interim director, David Beal, points out, there have been reasons for the delays—chief among them the difficult negotiations over track improvements and right-of-way with Burlington Northern, which owns the 82 miles of track between Lakewood and Everett. Burlington Northern uses these tracks to run freight trains all the way up and down the West Coast and east toward Chicago. Since the rail company owns the tracks and the Tacoma freight yard used by Sounder, it gets to make the rules. "I think it's fair to say they're in the driver's seat," says Beal. "They're not required to let us run more than two round- trips per day." But even if Burlington Northern does need the tracks, asserts Kent transit planner Mike Skehan, they could run more trains if they wanted to. Union Station, where Sounder stops in Seattle, "used to handle 100 passenger trains per day nearly 100 years ago," Skehan says.

Burlington Northern is also part, though not all, of the reason that Sounder has run nearly a quarter-billion dollars over budget since its inception as part of the Sound Move plan approved by voters in 1995. Since Burlington Northern owns the tracks, the railroad decides how much they're worth; not surprisingly, current cost estimates for track construction and improvements are millions over original projections. Lowball cost estimates for everything from administration to station construction also added dramatically to Sounder's red ink. For example, the original budget allocation for station construction turned out to be nearly $78 million short of current projections; the cost of the Kent station went up by nearly $28 million "primarily," according to the Sounder budget, "to cover the additional costs of parking" at two stations. At Sounder's temporary station in Tacoma, commuters sprint toward a six-story garage the moment the doors slide open; meanwhile, Pierce Transit buses sit looking empty and a little forlorn outside. "Little, if any, money has been spent on improving bus shelters to entice patrons to leave their cars at home," Skehan says. And the trains are still strictly for suburban commuters; to get this reporter back to Seattle from Tacoma on a Friday night, Sound Transit had to send a car.

The overruns have added up. Currently, the system costs about $32,000 a day. Passenger fares add up to only around $5,000, or about 16 percent of Sounder's operating costs; Metro bus fares, in comparison, pay for about 25 percent. Sound Transit, critics charge, is spending too much money for too little service. "We could probably subsidize free, door-to-door taxi service [for Sounder riders] for the same cost" as the train, Jim MacIsaacson, a local transportation planner, says.