The North Sounder line has long been panned by technocratic transit advocates as a white elephant gift to Snohomish County communities. At a cost of more than $250 million for right-of-way slots, the line has four daily roundtrips on weekdays between Everett and Seattle. It suffers from a variety of challenges such as geography, shared track capacity, and occasional landslides. And while ridership on the corridor has been growing for many years, it’s not the kind of booming growth that the South Sounder line has experienced leading to more service demand. In fact, in the third quarter of 2017, ridership fell slightly from 1,754 to 1,750 daily riders year-over-year. This may be why Sound Transit put very little emphasis in its capital investment program under Sound Transit 3.
Over the next 20 years, minor improvements will be made to the line keeping it alive. Billed as station access, Sound Transit is poised to spend $40 million on additional parking facilities at stations in Edmonds and Mukilteo by 2024. However, Sound Transit could look at small capital investments to significantly increase ridership while making due with existing service levels. There are four infill station locations in Seattle (i.e., neighborhoods of Ballard, Interbay, and Belltown) that Sound Transit could look toward for only a few million dollars a piece.
