The Suburban Times

A community bulletin board for Western Pierce County.

Council hears update about the Pt. Defiance Bypass Project

By

Train Tracks by Nancy Covert

By Nancy Covert

Shortly after the turn of the 2oth century, Steilacoom residents became accustomed to the sounds of passenger and freight trains passing through the community along the waterfront route.

If Washington State Department of Transportation’s plans for its “Pt. Defiance Bypass,” shifting the passenger rail service line inland through the Lakewood I-5 Corridor, proceed as planned, the rail line’s relocation would not only remove the present Amtrak service from one of its most scenic segments, but it also would reduce an estimated 10 minutes of travel time from its trip.

The down side of the proposed relocation plans is that it could also cause traffic congestion in the areas surrounding its new route, from South Tacoma through Lakewood, Tillicum and DuPont.

Numerous citizens’ meetings have been held and will continue to be held, as the plan is fine-tuned. Increased education about railroad safety, through the Operation Lifesaver program, also is planned.

According to a WSDOT presentation held at Steilacoom’s Town Council meeting on March 1, the project proposes to “reroute passenger trains to an existing (and upgraded) rail line along the west side of I-5. The new route travels along South Tacoma, and through Lakewood, Tillicum and DuPont in order to increase Amtrak Cascades service, make service more reliable and reduce rail congestion on the main line” (although freight lines pick up again around Olympia and continue south).

This proposed route of this project also is the same route that Sound Transit will use to extend Sounder commuter rail service to Lakewood. The changes, however, will not be operational until 2016-17.

Freight traffic patterns, however, will not change, with most freight trains continuing to use the existing mainline near Pt. Defiance and along southern Puget Sound.

Updates about the project can be viewed at www.wsdot.wa.gov/projects/rail/pnwre_ptdefiance/

This project is funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Kevin Jeffers, P. E., is the project manager, who can be contacted at (360) 705-7982.

Note: Steilacoom’s history book “Town on the Sound” contains a story about the train coming through town in 1914 when the first passengers gathered at the Commercial Street depot to board for the celebratory trip to Centralia

That inaugural trip was re-enacted in 2004 as a Steilacoom Sesquicentennial Event when 50 residents boarded the train at the depot for the occasion.

The article: From Indian Paddles to Amtrak’s Whistles focuses on several railroad-related events in town, including the visit of actor Ronald Reagan to the area for a movie premiere.

Comments

  1. So is this a “DONE DEAL?”
    Is ten minutes saved time for the railroad worth the accidents, congestion, noise and danger of several high speed trains a day through our many communities instead of just the one (Steilacoom)?
    Think about that when the first of many accidents occur…..and they will!

  2. “High speed” trains, freight and passenger, go through the heart of Puyallup and Sumner every day. How many accidents occur there? How much interruption to traffic is caused? How much noise? Do you prefer the sound of jake brakes on big rigs, or the “pleasant” booming of cars with their sound systems at max, compared to the quiet woosh of a train?
    Frankly I’m tired of the nonsense surrounding trains…they are more efficient, less polluting, and quieter than a fleet of trucks and busses. And, by the way, the overwhelming number of fatal “accidents” involving trains are by suicidal or suicidally stupid people.

  3. Steve,

    I imagine you won’t be reading this because it’s about trains and you’re tired of hearing about it. But for the many others in Lakewood that do care about the facts, they are on our website at www.communitymattersweb.com which is currently undergoing a radical upgrade but in the interim, here’s just a few of the many hundreds of statistics that will be found there:

    Money: “Every time a passenger rides Amtrak, the railroad loses $32 on average, say researchers at Pew’s Subsidyscope project. Taxpayers cover that $32 per rider loss through federal government subsidies. Last year, taxpayers gave Amtrak $1.3 billion in direct payments. So it’s not just death and taxes that you can count on. You can also count on paying taxes to prevent the death of Amtrak.”

    Safety: “Trains moving faster and quieter than ever have killed dozens of.
    pedestrians over the last decade on ribbons of track that twist through South
    King and Pierce counties. Someone in America is hit by a train about every 115
    minutes, say federal rail safety officials. In schools, Dahlin (Dean Dahlin is a train
    engineer who also works with Operation Lifesaver and coordinates safety presentations
    for other Union Pacific volunteers) said, “As many as 60 percent of the children say
    they’ve trespassed on railroad tracks. At least 70 percent to 80 percent say they’ve been in a car that has driven around the gates at a railroad crossing.” These are the “suicidally stupid people” to which Steve evidently refers.

    Trucks not trains. Chris Vance, public affairs consultant who lives in Auburn wrote in Crosscut, a Seattle news and political online edition back in October of 2007, “Our economy largely depends on big trucks being able to move stuff in and out of the ports of Seattle and Tacoma quickly, easily, and predictably. Trucks don’t fit on Sounder trains. Our ports are in competition with ports up and down the West Coast. If we do nothing and allow freeway congestion to get worse and worse, we will be irresponsibly forfeiting jobs as our trucks sit in traffic backups.”

  4. Bring on the trains! I would give anything to have access to a Sounder train for my daily commute from DuPont to downtown Tacoma each day. Sitting on I-5 every afternoon with gas costing over $3.50 a gallon is just a lose, lose, situation.