Hello and thanks for checking out Transiterranean, a Tacoma-centric transit newsletter-blog exploring commuting, food, drink, and destinations across the City of Destiny, Puget Sound, and beyond! I’m Michael Grass, a former journalist and communications professional who has lived car-free for about 25 years, including in Washington, D.C., New York City, Seattle, Bellingham, and now Tacoma. 

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For anyone who rides the Sounder S Line regularly between Tacoma and Seattle, you sometimes see the delicate scheduling dance that can be involved to accommodate passenger trains heading to and from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway’s busy Seattle Subdivision and Tacoma Dome Station, which is located on the Point Defiance Bypass tracks owned by Sound Transit.  

The northbound Seattle-bound Sounder train departing Tacoma Dome Station at 7:50 a.m., for instance, is sometimes delayed a few minutes by a southbound Amtrak train that needs to use the single-track connection linking Tacoma Dome Station to BNSF’s mainline tracks to and from Seattle.

While there are plenty of rail choke points across the state that currently limit the expansion of intercity passenger rail, the track connection at Reservation Junction, near where Interstate 5 crosses the Puyallup River, is among the most important for rail planners and state, regional, and local policymakers to sort through in the coming years.    

The Washington State Department of Transportation is seeking public feedback through the end of the day on key findings shaping the final version of the 2025 State Rail Plan, which is scheduled to be released later this spring. One overarching finding, as noted during a WSDOT webinar in March: Transportation planners anticipate that many important rail corridors in the state carrying freight and passengers will be at or exceed capacity by 2050, including much of the BNSF Seattle Subdivision and the Point Defiance Bypass.

By then, WSDOT envisions approximately 34 daily roundtrip passenger trains serving Tacoma, including 10 new Amtrak Cascades trips and expanded Sounder train service on the S Line, a not-insignificant jump from the 20 roundtrip trains that served the city the city in 2024. 

In a recent op-ed published by The Urbanist, Aviva Morris and Thomas White of the Climate Rail Alliance have urged the public to send feedback underscoring the importance of having the state legislature “fund projects that separate freight trains from passenger trains on the right of way — especially at congested locations.”

Although WSDOT doesn’t own any tracks used by Amtrak Cascades and Sounder trains in Western Washington, it does play an important role for identifying transportation priorities through the State Rail Plan and coordinating planning and resources with local and regional partners. 

For the Tacoma-Seattle rail corridor, that could mean negotiating with BNSF to accommodate additional passenger trains and supporting the construction of additional tracks or rail sidings along the existing corridor. Or, perhaps, the state could embrace a far larger and substantial vision, like collaborating with BNSF and the Union Pacific Railroad, which owns a parallel freight rail corridor through Auburn and Kent, to expand those tracks and reroute the majority of freight traffic heading to and from Seattle on an upgraded, dedicated freight corridor. 

Under such a freight-separation approach put forward in recent years by rail advocates, Sounder trains could continue to serve the downtown cores of Auburn, Kent, Sumner, and Puyallup with Amtrak trains passing through at higher speeds with fewer potential freight train delays between Tacoma and Seattle.

WSDOT has identified the following six goals for the updated State Rail Plan: Safety, economic vitality, preservation, mobility, stewardship, and environment. Addressing and alleviating rail choke points between Tacoma and Seattle addresses many of those goals, especially economic vitality and mobility. 

Given the current intense attention on Sound Transit’s Enterprise Initiative realignment of ST3 projects, WSDOT’s State Rail Plan, which could unlock expanded Sounder service to and from Pierce County and more Amtrak service through Tacoma in the years to come, shouldn’t go unnoticed by those advocating for improved transportation options in our region.

On Monday, the Transportation Choices Coalition and Tacoma on the Go will co-host a Transit Town Hall at the University of Washington Tacoma’s Milgard Hall featuring Pierce County Executive Ryan Mello and Tacoma City Councilmember Kristina Walker discussing Sound Transit’s current Enterprise Initiative deliberations for realigning the significantly over-budget ST3 system expansion program.

Mello and Walker are both members of the Sound Transit Board of Directors whose respective jurisdictions are very aligned on prioritizing the delayed Tacoma Dome Link Extension (TDLE), which would connect Tacoma and Pierce County to the regional light-rail “spine” to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Downtown Seattle, Lynnwood, and, eventually, Everett.

Here are some Pierce County-specific questions with the ST3 program that I’ve been thinking about recently …

Register to attend Monday’s Transit Town Hall.

You don’t necessarily need a car to explore the best of what the City of Destiny and our region has to offer. Here are some recent transit-accessible food and drink highlights from my transit wanderings you may want to consider.

Sliced Sandwiches, which recently opened inside the Museum of Glass, is primed to become my favorite spot to grab a transit-oriented sandwich in Tacoma. Although its location east of Interstate 705 near the Thea Foss Waterway means that it’s somewhat isolated from Downtown Tacoma, the adjacent Bridge of Glass over to Union Station, the Washington State History Museum, and the University of Washington Tacoma campus means it’s an easy stroll away from one of Tacoma’s most transit-accessible areas.

While I’m looking forward to exploring more of the menu, the Captain Jerk Sparrow sandwich, where braised jerk pork, a scotch bonnet jerk sauce, garlic aioli, and a generous helping of cilantro is served on a crusty Grand Central Bakery baguette, is very delicious. While the braised pork can be drippy, it’s drippy in a good way. If you like creamy potato salads, Sliced’s version is tasty. It’s is very dill-forward with small bits of celery that offers some nice textural contrasts.

While there’s plenty of wonderful things to choose from at Corina Bakery in Tacoma, don’t overlook their numerous vegan cakes and baked good options, including this chocolate-orange cupcake I had recently. It’s a great example of a cupcake where flavors are nicely balanced and the frosting isn’t overly sweet.

Although Corina doesn’t enjoy front-door transit service, it’s close enough to bus stops for Pierce Transit’s Route 1 (6th Avenue & S. G Street) and 11 and 16 (St. Helens Avenue & S. 4th Street).

For those who don’t mind a hillclimb and stairclimb up from Commerce Street, it’s about a 5-10 minute walk from the Old City Hall Station on the T Line. Think of this cupcake, and other items at Corina, as a great reward for the trek uphill.

Although the bulk bins at WinCo Foods offer some great deals on dried beans, the variety of what’s available is sometimes limited if you’re looking for more specialty beans. If you’re interested in procuring some cranberry beans, you’ll be out of luck at WinCo. But Alvarez Organic Farms, based in the Yakima Valley, has been offering cranberry beans at their vendor stall at the Proctor Farmers Market on Saturdays. 

These creamy, nutty, and flavorful beans, often referred to as borlotti, can be used in a variety of ways. But among of my favorites preparations are those that are either paired with sauteed greens, lead to a soup like pasta e fagioli, or otherwise present a brothy bowl of goodness that lets the taste of the beans shine through while showcasing complementary herbs, spices, and other flavors.

Intercity Transit is finishing the implementation of its massive bus system redesign for which will realign service starting May 3 with new routes and boosted service hours across Olympia neighboring Thurston County communities.

“This large growth in service represents a substantive fulfillment of Intercity Transit’s Long-Range Plan and the associated Proposition 1 sales tax measure approved by local voters in November 2018,” according to an agency system redesign summary. (Meanwhile, next door in Pierce County, local voters here haven’t authorized any increase in Pierce Transit’s taxing capacity in a quarter century.)

Although I don’t have enough experience using transit in the Olympia area to assess the strength of the redesign compared to the current network, I can say that Intercity Transit’s new system diagram is very well-designed. Route frequency is communicated through the thickness of bus routes on the diagram. The thicker the route, the more frequent bus service it is.  

In some cases, routes with 30-minute frequency converge to offer transit corridors with service every 15 minutes. One dominant feature in Intercity Transit’s redesigned bus network is the frequent east-west Route 9X, with buses every 15 minutes connecting four major transit centers in Thurston County — from east to west, Hawks Prairie Transit Center, Lacey Transit Center, Olympia Transit Center in Downtown Olympia, and Olympia Mall. 

For folks in Tacoma and Seattle, getting to Olympia via transit has long been a sore subject, especially for legislative sessions at the State Capitol. It’s not straightforward and requires multiple transfers. 

Intercity Transit’s network redesign actually makes it somewhat more difficult for reaching Downtown Olympia via Amtrak trains. For those using the Olympia/Lacey Amtrak Station on the outskirts of Washington’s capital city, the new Route 90 serving the train station will terminate at the Lacey Transit Center, requiring a bus transfer to the Olympia Transit Center via the new frequent-service Route 9X. 

Routes 600 and 610, Intercity Transit’s express buses connecting the Olympia Transit Center and Lakewood in Pierce County, will continue to provide direct service to the State Capitol. Although Route 600 skips some local stops served by Route 610 in the Lacey area, they essentially serve the same corridor connecting Pierce and Thurston counties via Interstate 5. Those Intercity Transit routes connect with Sound Transit Express Routes 574 and 594 at Lakewood Station and the S.R. 512 Park & Ride, where there are additional connections to Pierce Transit buses, including Route 3 to and from Downtown Tacoma via South Tacoma Way.    

During the T Line’s recent temporary closure for rail repairs, I overheard an interesting observation made by one of the operators of the replacement shuttle buses. The basic gist: The shuttle buses weren’t able to keep up with the regular train schedule at times because they didn’t have signal priority that the trains benefit from. They were stuck at a lot of red lights.

While T Line trains do end up stopping at some red traffic signals, especially during late afternoons when traffic is heaviest in Downtown Tacoma and near Stadium High School and the MultiCare Tacoma General Hospital campus, they often breeze through intersections because they trigger signal cycles that prompt other traffic to stop. That signal priority is also why T Line service is reliably on time compared to other transit services.

So when someone voices skepticism of the T Line’s transit value — something that’s come up in certain online conversations about Sound Transit’s forthcoming realignment of the ST3 expansion program — and that Tacoma’s existing light-rail line could simply be replaced with buses, the reality is more complex. 

In a region where access to public restrooms can be extremely limited, there’s some good news in Lakewood.

As Pierce Transit wrote in a recent Instagram post, the agency will be soon installing a new Throne smart toilet at the Lakewood Transit Center, “bringing long-awaited public restroom access to one of Pierce Transit’s busiest hubs. Throne restrooms are modern, fully ADA-accessible facilities featuring running water, ventilation, and touchless technology, designed to be clean, safe, and easy to use.”