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Re: History of the new Bypass line in Tacoma?
Author: Steve Carter
Date: 12-22-2017 - 20:53
As Arlen said, the motivation was not a 10 minute savings (it was originally only 6 minutes), it was about getting two more Cascade trains on the schedule (4 round trips).
Even our wonderfully informed Governor, in a radio interview fell, to that bait and tried to defend the 10 minute time savings and apparently never said a word about additional trains.
It was really quite simple, WSDOT and ODOT wanted more trains, BNSF said no because of congestion through the single track Nelson Bennett tunnel. The agreed upon solution was to create the Lakewood sub, a 20 years in the making plan, move the passenger trains out of our tunnel and we will allow two more trains.
10 minutes was not the issue!
You can debate if two more trains was worth the $181 million and that's a good debate in my opinion, but forget about the 10 minutes.
Even our wonderfully informed Governor, in a radio interview fell, to that bait and tried to defend the 10 minute time savings and apparently never said a word about additional trains.
It was really quite simple, WSDOT and ODOT wanted more trains, BNSF said no because of congestion through the single track Nelson Bennett tunnel. The agreed upon solution was to create the Lakewood sub, a 20 years in the making plan, move the passenger trains out of our tunnel and we will allow two more trains.
10 minutes was not the issue!
You can debate if two more trains was worth the $181 million and that's a good debate in my opinion, but forget about the 10 minutes.
