It occurs to me that, if the Lakewood and Nisqually lines are rebuilt and opened for commuter rail by 2012, Amtrak may just go ahead and move its Cascades service over to this routing, as it has wanted to do for years (the Point Defiance bypass project to get around the single-track bottleneck at the Ruston and Nelson Bennett tunnels).

If this is their thinking, any wishes or requests to have an Amtrak stop, temporary or not, at Chambers Bay or at Steilacoom for the 2015 U.S. Open may be moot.

A lot would depend on whether the Nisqually line south of the Lakewood Transit Center gets rebuilt at or close to the same time as the north end of the route, between Lakewood and Freighthouse Square. I mentioned in a previous post that, if this were to occur, Sound Transit could also extend Sounder service down to the Transit Center at Dupont.