You’re right again :-) I listen to Dory M on the radio now and then if I’m out during lunch time (he’s on FM 97.3). He was absolutely livid on quite a few locations last year about the money that was spent on Sound Transit and the amount of time the trains were down due to mud slides.
We used Sound Transit once to go to a Sounders game. We had to drive all the way to Sea-Tac airport and pay to park out there as there is no where to park in a location that was closer to my sister and BILs. I will say that train was packed but I’ve heard/read that the ones used for work commute are not.
When the line opens to Northgate in 2021, they will be carrying massive numbers of people, and my world will change. No more long trips to downtown from Lynden to see a chamber music concert at Benaroya Hall. I'll park at Northgate and take the subway. Six stops later and I'll be right at Benaroya.
The mudslide issue pertains to Sound Transit's Sounder commuter rail, which uses the tracks of the BNSF freight railroad. BNSF's predecessor, the Great Northern, built the line along Puget Sound over a century ago because the steam locomotives of the era couldn't take the grades that a non-water level route would have entailed. But building along the water meant that they had to deal with the unstable land on the bluffs by the water. Every winter, the bluffs along the water in Edmonds and points north collapse into the water and cover the tracks. It's BNSF's responsibility to keep the tracks clear, not Sound Transit.