As a regular reader who lives in Downtown Tacoma, I’m always excited to see articles that address the challenges and opportunities in our city. The recent article proposing a Central Tacoma Link Extension (CTLE) to improve transit service into Downtown Tacoma was no different. However, I’d like to present a different solution for how to effectively bring mass transit into Central Tacoma: improve the Sounder by offering regular service throughout the day.
While the CTLE proposal makes sense if you think of Central Link as the main means of transit between Tacoma and Seattle, utilizing the Sounder makes for a more sensible connection. The Central Link primarily serves car-dependent suburbs that developed around SR-99, while the route Sounder runs along serves historically transit-oriented downtowns, such as Puyallup, Sumner, and Auburn. More importantly, improving intercity heavy rail with complementary streetcar systems at each end is simply a more effective arrangement given heavy rail’s speed advantage over light rail.
The Sounder very well may continue to be the main means of transportation by rail between Tacoma and Seattle even after Central Link is built out, meaning that extending the Central Link to Tacoma’s Commercial Core wouldn’t actually eliminate the transfer even for people making use of the extension. It already takes 40 minutes on Link light rail to get from King Street Station to the current light rail final stop at Angle Lake, so it should take around 80 minutes to get to Tacoma Dome Station from King Street Station. Meanwhile, the Sounder takes slightly less than an hour, which means that even once light rail is completed, it will be faster to take the Sounder, transfer to the T Line, and then take the T Line into Downtown Tacoma than it would be to ride light rail from Seattle to the Tacoma Dome station — assuming the trip fits Sounder’s more limited schedule. After factoring in potential wait times, running Sounder at a half hour headway would still be about as fast as Link light rail.
