Mukilteo station is a

train station A train station, railway station, railroad station or depot is a railway facility where trains stop to load or unload passengers, freight or both. It generally consists of at least one platform, one track and a station building providing suc ...

serving the city of

Mukilteo Mukilteo ( ) is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. It is located on the Puget Sound between Edmonds, Washington, Edmonds and Everett, Washington, Everett, approximately north of Seattle. The city had a population of 20,254 ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

. It is owned by

Sound Transit Sound Transit (ST), officially the Central Puget Sound Regional Transit Authority, is a public transit agency serving the Seattle metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Washington. It operates the Link light rail system in Seattle and Tacoma, r ...

, who runs the N Line of the Sounder

commuter rail Commuter rail, or suburban rail, is a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates within a metropolitan area, connecting commuters to a central city from adjacent suburbs or commuter towns. Generally commuter rail systems are con ...

service through the station from Everett to

King Street Station King Street Station is a train station in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is served by Amtrak's '' Cascades'', ''Coast Starlight'', and ''Empire Builder'', as well as Sounder commuter trains run by Sound Transit. The station also anchor ...

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

. The station includes a parking lot with 63 spaces, as well as connections to nearby

Washington State Ferries Washington State Ferries (WSF) is a government agency that operates automobile and passenger ferry service in the U.S. state of Washington as part of the Washington State Department of Transportation. It runs ten routes serving 20 terminals loca ...

Community Transit Community Transit (CT) is the public transit authority of Snohomish County, Washington, United States, excluding the city of Everett, in the Seattle metropolitan area. It operates local bus, paratransit and vanpool service within Snohomish Cou ...

, and

Everett Transit Everett Transit is the public transit authority of Everett, Washington, the only city in Snohomish County not to belong to Community Transit. As of 2017, Everett Transit operates 42 buses within Everett on ten routes. Its annual ridership in 2016 ...

service on State Route 525. Mukilteo station opened in 2008 with a single

side platform A side platform (also known as a marginal platform or a single-face platform) is a platform positioned to the side of one or more railway tracks or guideways at a railway station, tram stop, or transitway. A station having dual side platforms ...

, later supplemented with a second platform and

pedestrian overpass A footbridge (also a pedestrian bridge, pedestrian overpass, or pedestrian overcrossing) is a bridge designed solely for pedestrians.''Oxford English Dictionary'' While the primary meaning for a bridge is a structure which links "two points at a ...

in 2016.

Description

Mukilteo station consists of a two

s, connected by a covered

, sited along the

BNSF Railway BNSF Railway is one of the largest freight railroads in North America. One of seven North American Class I railroads, BNSF has 35,000 employees, of track in 28 states, and nearly 8,000 locomotives. It has three transcontinental routes that ...

Scenic Subdivision The Scenic Subdivision or Scenic Sub is a railroad line running about 155 miles (249 km) from Seattle, Washington to Wenatchee, Washington. It is operated by BNSF Railway as part of their Northern Transcon. This route includes the Cascade Tu ...

between

and Everett. The station, located one block east of the Mukilteo

ferry terminal A passenger terminal is a structure in a port which services passengers boarding and leaving water vessels such as ferries, cruise ships and ocean liners. Depending on the types of vessels serviced by the terminal, it may be named (for example) ...

on State Route 525, contains a 63-space

park and ride A park and ride, also known as incentive parking or a commuter lot, is a parking lot with public transport connections that allows commuting, commuters and other people heading to city centres to leave their vehicles and transfer to a bus, Rail t ...

lot with a drop-off area that is accessible through an entrance/exit from Front Street; the platform also houses a

ticket vending machine A ticket machine, also known as a ticket vending machine (TVM), is a vending machine that produces paper or electronic tickets, or recharges a stored-value card or smart card or the user's mobile wallet, typically on a smartphone. For instanc ...

and

ORCA card The ORCA card (standing for One Regional Card for All) is a contactless, stored-value smart card system for public transit in the Puget Sound region of Washington, United States. The card is valid on most transit systems in the Seattle metropo ...

readers. Mukilteo is served by the eight daily Sounder trains on weekdays, running on the N Line along the

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

between

Everett Station Everett Station is an Amtrak train station serving the city of Everett, Washington. The station has provided service to the '' Cascades'' and ''Empire Builder'' routes since its opening in 2002, replacing an earlier station near the Port of E ...

and

. The runs are split between four morning and four afternoon runs, with a single round-trip gameday service provided for weekend events at

CenturyLink Field Lumen Field is a multi-purpose stadium in Seattle, Washington, United States. Located in the city's SoDo neighborhood, it is the home field for the Seattle Seahawks The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in S ...

and

Safeco Field T-Mobile Park is a retractable roof stadium in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the home ballpark of Major League Baseball's Seattle Mariners and has a seating capacity of 47,929. It is in Seattle's SoDo neighborhood, near the western t ...

. Train service on the corridor, which includes BNSF freight traffic and

Amtrak The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Trade name, doing business as Amtrak () , is the national Passenger train, passenger railroad company of the United States. It operates inter-city rail service in 46 of the 48 contiguous United Stat ...

passenger service, is frequently disrupted and canceled during the autumn and winter seasons because of

landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, deep-seated grade (slope), slope failures, mudflows, and debris flows. Landslides occur in a variety of ...

s from unstable slopes above the tracks. During the 2012–2013 winter season, a record-high of 206 passenger trains between Everett and Seattle were canceled, prompting the

Washington State Department of Transportation The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT or WashDOT, both ) is a governmental agency that constructs, maintains, and regulates the use of transportation infrastructure in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. Establi ...

to begin a three-year landslide mitigation project in 2013 that will stabilize slopes above the railroad between Seattle and Everett. The station is located near Mukilteo's

terminal, serving the Whidbey Island Ferry, which also functions as a transfer point for buses operated by

and

: two all-day local buses connect Mukilteo to

Lynnwood Lynnwood is a city in Snohomish County, Washington, United States. The city is part of the Seattle metropolitan area and is located north of Seattle and south of Everett, near the junction of Interstate 5 and Interstate 405. It is the four ...

and Everett Station, while three peak-only commuter routes run to

Downtown Seattle Downtown is the central business district of Seattle, Washington. It is fairly compact compared with other city centers on the U.S. West Coast due to its geographical situation, being hemmed in on the north and east by hills, on the west by ...

, the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

, and the

Boeing Everett Factory The Boeing Everett Factory is an airplane assembly facility built by Boeing in Everett, Washington, United States. It sits at the northeast corner of Paine Field and includes the largest building in the world by volume at 13,385,378 m3 (472,37 ...

History

The Great Northern Railway had served Mukilteo between 1891 and 1970, including a major depot opened on November 1, 1903. A

station in Mukilteo had been part of the original Sound Transit proposal rejected in 1995 and adopted the following year, as part of a Seattle–Everett line on the existing BNSF corridor. The agency selected the station site in 1999, choosing a platform east of State Route 525 and the Washington State Ferries terminal over one at

Mukilteo Lighthouse Park Mukilteo Lighthouse Park encompasses the lighthouse at the west end of the city of Mukilteo, Washington, and south of it. The property is west and south of the Washington State Ferries terminal with ferry service to Clinton, Whidbey Island, and ...

because of concerns arising from existing parking and traffic issues in the area. Work on the station was put on hold until the completion of a second track through the area, though Sound Transit did consider building a temporary platform to boost ridership on the North Line. A groundbreaking ceremony was held in August 2007 for the initial phase of the project, the northern side platform, as part of a multimodal transit hub built in conjunction with a new Mukilteo ferry terminal. The $19.2 million project, including preparations for a second phase to open in 2009, was funded by Sound Transit with a grant from the

Federal Transit Administration The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) is an agency within the United States Department of Transportation (DOT) that provides financial and technical assistance to local public transportation systems. The FTA is one of ten modal administration ...

. Sounder service from Mukilteo Station began on May 31, 2008, with a special weekend round-trip run to a

Seattle Mariners The Seattle Mariners are an American professional baseball team based in Seattle. They compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League West, West division. The team joined the American League ...

game. The project was praised by local politicians for its multi-agency cooperation, especially between Sound Transit and Washington State Ferries. Construction on the second platform, an

island platform An island platform (also center platform, centre platform) is a station layout arrangement where a single platform is positioned between two tracks within a railway station, tram stop or transitway interchange. Island platforms are popular on ...

connected via a

, began in January 2014 with the closure of Mukilteo Lane near the station. Part of the existing North Platform was closed for use as a

staging area A staging area (otherwise staging point, staging base, or staging post) is a location in which organisms, people, vehicles, equipment, or material are assembled before use. It may refer to: * In construction, a designated area in which vehicles, ...

in March 2014, expanding and contracting before and after

rush hour A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour (Australian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice every weekday: on ...

, respectively. The $11 million project, designed by

AECOM AECOM (, ; formerly AECOM Technology Corporation) is an American multinational infrastructure consulting firm. AECOM has approximately 51,000 employees, and is number 157 on the 2019 Fortune 500 list. The company's official name from 1990 t ...

and

HNTB HNTB Corporation is an American infrastructure design firm. Founded in 1914 in Kansas City, Missouri, HNTB began with the partnership made by Ernest Emmanuel Howard with the firm Waddell & Harrington, founded in 1907. Considered as one of the m ...

in 2012, was originally scheduled to be completed in 2015. Delays in construction, including state approval of the new elevators, pushed back the completion date to April 2016. As part of the STart program, a percentage of construction funds went towards installing art made by

Whidbey Island Whidbey Island (historical spellings Whidby, Whitbey, or Whitby) is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington State. (The other large island is Camano Island, ...

resident Linda Beaumont at the station. As part of the Mukilteo Multimodal Project, Sound Transit and the

planned to build a new ferry terminal in Mukilteo with upgraded transit connections. The new terminal opened in December 2020 and is located closer to the Sounder platforms and includes a new bus station.

References

External links

Sound Transit Rider Guide
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mukilteo (Sounder Station) Sounder commuter rail stations Transportation buildings and structures in Snohomish County, Washington Railway stations in the United States opened in 2008 2008 establishments in Washington (state)