TWO AND A HALF WEEKS AGO, we briefly mentioned the launch of Sound Transit’s commuter-rail service from Tacoma to Seattle. What I didn’t include was a direct review of the service itself.
We’ll do that now.
As I wrote then, to take Sounder from Seattle during the train’s initial shakedown-cruise period means you go to Tacoma in the evening, then either stay the night there or take a bus back. Because the Tacoma-Seattle express bus runs on I-5, such a round trip provides an immediate comparison between the two travel modes.
It turns out the Sounder track parallels the freeway on the last couple of miles heading into Tacoma. But it’s a completely different scene. The train tracks are below I-5’s elevated little bluff. You can’t see the freeway from the train, nor the train tracks from the freeway. On the train, you go past what’s left of the Puyallup Valley farm belt (this time of year, you pass the now-harvested daffodil fields at that golden pre-sunset “magic hour”) and head right into the beautifully rusty Port of Tacoma district near sea level, offering great views of the water and the cool old warehouses. On the freeway, you’re up among other vehicles, seeing mostly billboards and car lots and chain-motel signs.
Indeed, the whole Sounder run (and intercity passenger train travel in general) offers a glimpse of an alternate America. An America that used to be; or rather a different way modern-day America might have evolved.
From the train, you’re less likely to view the everywhere-nowhere world of malls, strip malls, gas stations, parking lots, used-car lots, subdivisions, and cloverleaf interchanges. You’re more likely to see farms, factories, block-grid residential districts, and main streets.
The Sounder begins in King Street Station–or rather, on King Street’s stretch of track. You can’t go through the station’s lobby to get to Sounder; you’ve gotta use one of two separate entrances, each of which involves many stairs down. I prefer the southern entrance, descending from the little skybridge connecting Fourth Avenue to the future new Seahawk stadium.
(The skybridge is labeled “South Weller Street;” but longtime MISCmedia readers know I’m lobbying to have it renamed “South Long Street,” so the football team will have an official address at Fourth and Long.)
It takes you through the real-town parts of Kent, Sumner, Auburn, and Puyallup, to the true urban beauty that is Tacoma’s old industrial district. A brisk shuttle bus takes you from there, past the new UW-Tacoma campus, down Pacific Avenue’s long strip of great old warehouse buildings (some being revamped into restaurants and futon stores) into the long-dormant downtown, still bereft of major retail chains (other than coffee shops) but now in the process of being artified with galleries, studios, live theaters, bistros, and antique shops.
Toward the northern end of this little strip lies the gorgeous Club Silverstone, a perfectly-preserved old time eatery and bar with an elegant little dance hall to one side. It’s now run mainly as a gay bar (helping closeted Ft. Lewis personnel relieve their loneliness); but the utter perfection of the room makes it a must for any City-O-Destiny trip. (The only other elegant hashhouse I’ve seen this well maintained is the Spar in Olympia).
A historical note: Tacoma was born when the Northern Pacific Railroad wanted its own company town to be the rail line’s western terminus. (Eventually, after years’ worth of prodding, the railroad acceded to extend its tracks to Seattle.)
Central Tacoma’s decline came from the freeway, which bypassed downtown in 1965 and sent shoppers straight to the newly-built Tacoma Mall.
Thirty-five years later, a train revival could help spur the town’s fledgling comeback.
TOMORROW: Could any band other than the Grateful Dead make a living without intellectual-property enforcement?
ELSEWHERE:
