Edi­tor’s Note: Ear­li­er tonight, the Red­mond City Coun­cil vot­ed 5–2 to take a posi­tion sup­port­ing a yes vote on Region­al Propo­si­tion 1, also known as Sound Tran­sit 3, which NPI strong­ly sup­ports. The fol­low­ing let­ter of appre­ci­a­tion was penned by NPI founder Andrew Vil­leneuve to the five coun­cilmem­bers who vot­ed in favor of the res­o­lu­tion to take a yes position. 

Dear Coun­cilmem­bers Allen, Bir­ney, Marge­son, Schutz, and Stilin:

On behalf of the team at the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, I want to thank you for your enthu­si­as­tic yes vote tonight for Coun­cil Res­o­lu­tion No. 1457, which express­es the City of Red­mond’s sup­port of Region­al Propo­si­tion 1, more com­mon­ly known as Sound Tran­sit 3 (ST3). Togeth­er with the many oth­er orga­ni­za­tions that belong to the Mass Tran­sit Now coali­tion, NPI is work­ing hard to pass ST3 and we are very grate­ful to have a major­i­ty on our home­town City Coun­cil voice sup­port for our efforts to bring high capac­i­ty tran­sit to neigh­bor­hoods like down­town Redmond.

As you may know from hear­ing me tes­ti­fy at past Coun­cil meet­ings, I am a life­long res­i­dent of Red­mond who got start­ed in pol­i­tics many years ago as a high school fresh­man work­ing to defend Sound Transit’s pro­posed Link light rail sys­tem from I‑776, a destruc­tive Tim Eyman ini­tia­tive intend­ed to pre­vent the project from ever get­ting off the ground. Before Tim Eyman pro­posed I‑776, I was a spec­ta­tor, watch­ing the news and observ­ing the goings-on.

The threat posed by I‑776 to Link light rail prompt­ed me to become an activist, advo­cat­ing for the high capac­i­ty tran­sit our region needs at every lev­el, and sub­se­quent­ly there­after to found the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, a strat­e­gy cen­ter ded­i­cat­ed to rais­ing our coun­try and region’s qual­i­ty of life through insight­ful research and imag­i­na­tive advocacy.

At the time I became an activist, Sound Tran­sit didn’t have many friends. It was under attack from all direc­tions, and many pun­dits believed it was only a mat­ter of time before the agency was dis­solved by the Legislature.

But I felt that such an out­come would be dis­as­trous for our region’s future. Along with oth­er pro-tran­sit activists, I cam­paigned and lob­bied for Sound Tran­sit to get the sup­port it need­ed to begin con­struct­ing Cen­tral Link.

Thank­ful­ly, that sup­port was obtained, and today we can say Cen­tral Link is a real­i­ty… along with Air­port Link, Uni­ver­si­ty Link, and Angle Lake Link, which opens to the pub­lic this Sat­ur­day morn­ing. Soon, East Link will be a real­i­ty too, and light rail will reach Redmond’s Over­lake neigh­bor­hood. Con­struc­tion has already begun, and is slat­ed to be fin­ished in a few years. I was very pleased to join with sev­er­al of you for the ground­break­ing cer­e­monies just a few months ago.

Sound Tran­sit may have had a rocky begin­ning, but since Joni Earl became CEO and trans­formed the agency, it has proved it can suc­cess­ful­ly deliv­er big projects suc­cess­ful­ly, often on time and under bud­get… or even ahead of sched­ule. The cul­ture of excel­lence Joni instilled con­tin­ues today under new CEO Peter Rogoff.

Angle Lake Link is a case in point. The Angle Lake exten­sion and its accom­pa­ny­ing sta­tion was orig­i­nal­ly slat­ed to be com­plet­ed four years from now, but it is open­ing ear­ly thanks to smart plan­ning and the avail­abil­i­ty of fed­er­al funds.

Thanks to ST2, Sound Tran­sit has the fund­ing to build East Link out to Over­lake. If we approve ST3, Sound Tran­sit will be able to move for­ward with con­struc­tion of East Link’s final planned seg­ment, bring­ing light rail to down­town Red­mond, where the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute is headquartered.

With Sound Tran­sit 3, we have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to extend Link in all direc­tions and ensure that our region has a rail spine link­ing togeth­er Everett, Taco­ma, Belle­vue and Red­mond with down­town Seat­tle and neigh­bor­hoods in between, as well as expand ST Express bus ser­vice, Sounder com­muter rail, and pro­vide new or high­er capac­i­ty park and rides. As the res­o­lu­tion you approved not­ed, ST3 would also bring bus rapid tran­sit to the busy I‑405 corridor.

There are a lot of wins in ST3. It is a bold invest­ment, to be sure. But as Coun­cilmem­ber Marge­son not­ed in his elo­quent remarks, we are with­out ques­tion ben­e­fit­ing today from the bold invest­ments made by the tax­pay­ers who came before us, includ­ing the Eisen­how­er Inter­state Sys­tem. It’s our turn to pay it for­ward and invest in the essen­tial infra­struc­ture our region needs.

What’s par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ing about ST3 is that it will help lib­er­ate us from auto depen­dence. In the after­math of World War II, we unwise­ly aban­doned proven, effec­tive town plan­ning prac­tices, choos­ing to exper­i­ment with auto-cen­tric devel­op­ment instead. That cost­ly exper­i­ment pro­duced a built envi­ron­ment (con­sist­ing of far-flung sub­di­vi­sions, office parks, shop­ping malls, civic insti­tu­tions, all linked by road­ways) that requires a car to nav­i­gate. In oth­er words, sprawl.

We are still liv­ing with the auto-cen­tric land use, trans­porta­tion, and pub­lic plan­ning deci­sions made decades ago. For exam­ple, we had an oppor­tu­ni­ty in the 1960s to invest in a prop­er mass tran­sit sys­tem for our region (with For­ward Thrust), and we did­n’t take it. We chose then and we have repeat­ed­ly cho­sen since to sub­si­dize auto trav­el and auto own­er­ship to an enor­mous extent, while neglect­ing to invest in alter­na­tive means of get­ting around. As a con­se­quence, we have a trans­porta­tion sys­tem in which the auto­mo­bile is the dom­i­nant mode.

Our traf­fic mess is of our own making.

Many of us dri­ve to get where we need to go not because we want to or because we enjoy dri­ving, but because we cur­rent­ly have no oth­er choice. Those of us who own cars can’t ditch them for tran­sit that does­n’t exist.

Because we’ve con­struct­ed this built envi­ron­ment designed around the auto­mo­bile instead of the needs of human beings, we’ve become hostages to grid­lock and ever-wors­en­ing traf­fic con­ges­tion. Through non­stop com­mer­cial adver­tis­ing and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry offi­cial pol­i­cy, we’re all encour­aged to own cars and to dri­ve them every­where. Those who can­not or choose not to own a car (includ­ing the very young, seniors, and peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties) are treat­ed as sec­ond-class citizens.

It does­n’t have to be this way. Many of us who own cars would love not to be forced to dri­ve to get to where we want to go.

Research has shown that tran­sit must be reli­able, fre­quent, and con­ve­nient to appeal to auto own­ers and com­pete for trips. By build­ing a rail spine through our high­ly con­gest­ed cor­ri­dors, inte­grat­ed with express bus, com­muter rail, and bus rapid tran­sit, we’ll be able to pro­vide high capac­i­ty tran­sit ser­vice that meets this cri­te­ria. We will be able to bet­ter serve everybody.

The ben­e­fits of this invest­ment will not all be real­ized overnight. There are short term wins in Sound Tran­sit 3, but this is fore­most an invest­ment in the long term.

Crit­ics, who seem obsessed with instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, say it’s not worth it because it will take too long and cost too much. But if we turn down ST3, we’ll just end up pay­ing more and wait­ing even longer to get the rail spine that we need.

The end­less­ly-cyn­i­cal crit­ics may not be impressed by Sound Tran­sit’s recent track record of deliv­er­ing projects, but the rest of us should be. Most of the Sound Move projects have now been com­plet­ed, and con­struc­tion is already under­way or done on a num­ber of the ST2 projects approved and fund­ed eight years ago.

Sound Tran­sit staff have demon­strat­ed an eager­ness to look out for the peo­ple of this region. After ST2 passed, they did­n’t sit on their lau­rels. They worked hard to begin imple­ment­ing what the peo­ple vot­ed for, even ahead of sched­ule. That’s why Angle Lake Link is open­ing this Sat­ur­day instead of four years from now.

If ST3 is approved, we can count on the team at Sound Tran­sit to look for ways to speed up deliv­ery of the ST3 projects too, advis­ing Sound Tran­sit’s board of oppor­tu­ni­ties to work with cities and our con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion to speed up design and con­struc­tion of those projects. Sound Tran­sit has a proven track record of secur­ing fed­er­al dol­lars for projects. If we give ST3 the green light, that gives Sound Tran­sit the free­dom to approach Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray with fund­ing requests — requests Mur­ray and Wash­ing­ton’s oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives will be hap­py to act on.

By enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly vot­ing to sup­port Sound Tran­sit 3 this evening, you’ve shown the region that the City of Red­mond — the Bicy­cle Cap­i­tal of the North­west! — is ready to do its part to make pos­si­ble a future where peo­ple can live sus­tain­ably and have the free­dom to get where they need to go with­out being forced to drive.

I thank you not only on behalf of myself and the team at NPI, but on behalf of fel­low young peo­ple I know who are anx­ious for Link light rail to reach our com­mu­ni­ty and oth­ers like it. We and the youth com­ing after us are ready to ride, and we’re grate­ful for your will­ing­ness to take a stand for this bold, need­ed invest­ment in region­al mobil­i­ty. Let’s get Sound Tran­sit 3 passed!

Sin­cere­ly,

Andrew Vil­leneuve
Founder and Exec­u­tive Director
North­west Pro­gres­sive Institute