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Amtrak, Sounder cancel service north of Seattle
You know, it gets tiresome to have to keep reading these articles. Why isn’t BNSF performing better maintenance and putting more into slide PREVENTION rather than slide cleanup? Why are they not installing better monitoring equipment so that passenger service can resume quicker? Since Washington is a progressive state, why isn’t the government pushing harder on them? Funny how only the railroad seems to have an overwhelming slide problem, but the highways seem to be OK? And how no one seems to anticipate the fact that it might rain in this area…in the middle of a rain forest?
What would you have the railroad do? As has been said recently, in a posting on a Trains forum, the highway sits on top of the till, so the till does not slide down upon the highway; the railroad is right on the shore of Puget Sound, with the till rising above it–so when the till becomes unstable because of rain, it will slide downhill–onto the railroad.
Does the railroad right of way extend to the top of the till? Does the railroad have the authority to construct a berm that extends to the top of the till? Such a structure might prevent slides in wet weather.
What’s a till?
If my memory is correct…an iffy thing at best…those hillsides are private property, and there have been discussions for years about what to do about the mudslides, with no conclusion. Many of the top of the berms have been built on, which has contributed to the erosion problem due to water runoff.
And “till” is glacial sediment. I’m not sure if those hillsides are till or not.
It was interesting to note on a recent Vancouver - Seattle trip on the Cascade that when the train terminated at Everett account slides and we were transfered to a bus, the train ran empty into Seattle. Same happens with Trains 7 - 8 in these circumstances I was told by train staff. It has been previously reported that the Builder is turned at Everett; however, it also runs empty to Seattle because of need to service there.
In answer to Mr. Jeffries, yes it is tiresome, especially for those of us who live in the area. All the entities concerned, BNSF, Amtrak, Sound Transit, and the state are working on this tough issue. There are many “culprits” not least of which are homeowners on top of the bluff who continue to chop down trees and other soil-holding vegetation for their sacrosanct views west to Puget Sound, the islands and the Olympic Mountains beyond. Also, winters have gotten warmer and wetter with pounding rain storms more frequent. Less falls as snow, and there is less freezing in place. So vast amounts of rainwater saturate the denuded top of the slopes all at once, and the mud sloughs off. Thick walls adjacent to the tracks would be a good barrier so that even when slides occur, the debris wouldn’t end up on the tracks. It will be a long process to get to a final solution.
A good solution might be to erect tunnel structures along mudslide prone places along the route so that all the resulting debris can just cover the tunnel structure and the line will in effect have new tunnels.
A recent article in the Seattle Times (Fri, Sat or Sun)