Hurray for Amtrak! Third daily Cascades train between Seattle and Bellingham is coming

A big kudos to WSDOT, Burling­ton North­ern San­ta Fe, and Sound Tran­sit for fig­ur­ing out how to pull this new ser­vice togeth­er on short notice:

To assist trav­el­ers affect­ed by yesterday’s I‑5 high­way bridge col­lapse in Skag­it Coun­ty, Amtrak Cas­cades will add one round trip route between Seat­tle and Belling­ham, Wash., in the com­ing weeks.

Amtrak, the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion, BNSF Rail­way and Sound Tran­sit are work­ing togeth­er to add this ser­vice, a morn­ing depar­ture from Seat­tle to Belling­ham with an ear­ly evening return, to help those who nor­mal­ly dri­ve this route. More details will be released as they become available.

Amtrak Cas­cades pro­vides four trips each day over the Skag­it Riv­er Rail Bridge, which is ful­ly func­tion­al. Amtrak Cas­cades Thruway bus­es add ten more trips through the area. For sched­ules, reser­va­tions and tick­ets, vis­it AmtrakCascades.com or call 800-USA-RAIL.

WSDOT’s rail office had pre­vi­ous­ly been work­ing on plans for a third dai­ly round trip between Seat­tle and Canada’s Van­cou­ver, but yes­ter­day’s events have neces­si­tat­ed an accel­er­a­tion of the timetable. We look for­ward to hear­ing more details.

The third round-trip train will only go as far as Belling­ham accord­ing to the announce­ment; British Colum­bia-bound trav­el­ers should con­tin­ue to take the No. 510 (morn­ing) or No. 516 (evening) trains out of King Street Station.

Pre­sum­ably, the new train will make all reg­u­lar stops between Belling­ham and Seat­tle, which are Mount Ver­non, Stan­wood, Everett, and Edmonds.

The announce­ment does­n’t say if this new train will stop in Muk­il­teo. Sounder North stops in Muk­il­teo on its way to and from Everett, but Cas­cades cur­rent­ly does not.

It’d be nice if this third Cas­cades train stopped in Muk­il­teo too.

Sound Tran­sit’s tax­ing dis­trict does not extend beyond urban Sno­homish Coun­ty, which is why ST does­n’t pro­vide any com­muter rail ser­vice to points north of Everett, like Mount Ver­non or Belling­ham. ST sen­si­bly does have a part­ner­ship with Amtrak Cas­cades, how­ev­er. That part­ner­ship is def­i­nite­ly going to make a dif­fer­ence for North Sound com­muters in the weeks and months ahead. ’

More rail ser­vice is exact­ly what Wash­ing­ton State needs. We applaud this announce­ment and encour­age any read­ers who are able to take advan­tage of this new ser­vice to do so once it begins. In the mean­time, have a chuck­le on us by watch­ing this fan­tas­tic Amtrak com­mer­cial, titled “Kids Repeat”.