Why Not Add A North Downtown Seattle Sounder Train Stop?

Sunday's Seattle Times takes a look at the local roads and transit projects of note in the works for the coming year, and while we tend to focus on the same group of projects, the article reminds me of one we don't discuss as much, and a suggestion I've been meaning to make for a while.

In the Sounder Trains section of the article they write:

Sound Transit is still trying to deliver all the commuter-rail service that voters approved in 1996.

Two more round-trip trains, possibly three, are to begin in September on the south line between Tacoma and Seattle, while one train is to be added to the Everett line. Currently, there are six southend trains and three in the north.

Mukilteo is to receive its first Sounder service, when a boarding platform and parking spaces are slated to be completed in midyear. Work is to begin to expand the stations in Everett and Edmonds.

This is good to hear. Commuter trains are a vastly underused part of the transit solution in this area. The north and south routes need to be expanded to run more trains so that not only the early morning crowd can benefit from them, and to enable those that need to stay at work late occasionally to do so, while still having a train they can catch to get back home.

But something else that is needed is an extra downtown stop.

I used to work in the World Trade Center East building across from Pier 66, and we would hear the freight and commuter trains pass by all the time. But it seemed to me that if I worked at that location and used the Sounder to travel in from the north, I'd find it very frustrating that I'd have to pass by my place of work, ride all the way to King Street Station, and then hop on a bus north to get to work. Perhaps adding 30 minutes to a commute each way.

What is needed is a second stop that caters to the crowd that works nearer the north side of downtown, and one such possibility could be at Vine Street across from the Edgewater Hotel:

There is ample space to construct simple, yet functional platforms on either side of the tracks, and there is even a Vine Street station sign already standing, just begging trains to make a stop here.

Very simply, the Everett to Seattle Sounder trains could make a 2 minute stop on the way in and out of Seattle at Vine Street, which would surely be convenient to a great number of current riders, or potential new riders. For commuters from Tacoma it would probably be more awkward to change the route to extend to Vine Street, but at the very least some part of the Sounder ridership will have an extra Seattle stop they could get on or off from.

Seattle is a big enough destination that adding an second stop seems like a no-brainer. I'm not suggestion a second large station and transit hub like at King Street, but a little smart adjustment of some bus routes could help commuter connections at a Vine Street stop, and a great many jobs would be accessible by foot from there anyway.

It just seems to make sense to me - which is probably why it will never happen, but one can hope that one day we'll get smart and do this.