Sound Transit rolls forward with ST3 projects while Legislature dithers on state budget

Ear­ly this after­noon, Sound Tran­sit’s elect­ed lead­er­ship held a press con­fer­ence to announce a series of strate­gic ini­tia­tives aimed at stream­lin­ing and accel­er­at­ing the imple­men­ta­tion of our vot­er-approved ST3 sys­tem expan­sion plan.

Fol­low­ing that press con­fer­ence, the agen­cy’s board of direc­tors held a busi­ness meet­ing in Union Sta­tion’s Ruth Fish­er Board­room and approved motions autho­riz­ing the acqui­si­tion of prop­er­ty (real estate) and equip­ment (new light rail vehi­cles) for new light rail exten­sions run­ning north, south, and east.

“Today we’re push­ing the ‘go’ but­ton on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture expan­sions to serve the peo­ple of our region,” said Sound Tran­sit Board Chair and Sno­homish Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dave Somers. “These projects will help keep com­muters, freight, and our econ­o­my mov­ing as our pop­u­la­tion grows and our con­ges­tion wors­ens. It’s imper­a­tive we deliv­er the projects vot­ers have approved with an eye towards sav­ing mon­ey and being as effi­cient as possible.”

Somers was joined for the press con­fer­ence by Sound Tran­sit CEO Peter Rogoff and Board Vice Chairs Mar­i­lyn Strick­land of Taco­ma and John Mar­chione of Red­mond. Strick­land not­ed they’d been to a Puget Sound Region­al Coun­cil meet­ing that morn­ing where it was high­light­ed that Sound Tran­sit is the fastest grow­ing tran­sit agency in the Unit­ed States, thanks to the Uni­ver­si­ty Link-sparked rid­er­ship boom.

The three kept their remarks focused on the need for the projects Sound Tran­sit is work­ing on, and did not com­ment on any state leg­isla­tive matters.

But they did­n’t need to. Actions speak loud­er than words, and Sound Tran­sit’s lead­er­ship demon­strat­ed today that they’re all about action.

While the Leg­is­la­ture dithers and pro­cras­ti­nates on get­ting a bud­get togeth­er, Sound Tran­sit is rolling for­ward, work­ing hard to fig­ure out how to get more light rail, com­muter rail, and bus ser­vice (includ­ing bus rapid tran­sit) to the peo­ple. The agency is deter­mined to speed up project deliv­ery, and is realign­ing its peo­ple and process­es in order to get more ser­vice to more neigh­bor­hoods more quickly.

Sound Tran­sit explains:

To meet the expe­dit­ed time­lines in the final Sound Tran­sit 3 pack­age, the agency will start projects soon­er and col­lab­o­rate with cities, stake­hold­ers and pri­vate cit­i­zens ear­li­er and more intensively.

The great­est poten­tial for improve­ments falls in the plan­ning, envi­ron­men­tal and per­mit­ting phas­es of projects. The agency will focus on iden­ti­fy­ing pre­ferred routes and sta­tion loca­tions ear­li­er, stream­lin­ing the num­ber of alter­na­tives stud­ied, acquir­ing real estate soon­er, and devel­op­ing ear­ly per­mit­ting plans with part­ner agencies.

The plan will also guide sig­nif­i­cant inter­nal process improve­ments. Project teams will include all dis­ci­plines, with a focus on inte­grat­ing work func­tions across depart­ments, elim­i­nat­ing depart­men­tal hand-offs between project phas­es. Co-loca­tion of staff for each project in the same work space will increase efficiency.

The excerpt above con­tains some famil­iar buzz­words, to be sure, but essen­tial­ly what Sound Tran­sit is say­ing is, we’re not sat­is­fied with the sta­tus quo. We think we can do bet­ter, so we’re reor­ga­niz­ing inter­nal­ly to become more effec­tive at deliv­er­ing projects, and we want to become a mod­el part­ner to our cities too.

Sound Tran­sit’s com­mit­ment to reform­ing itself to bet­ter serve tax­pay­ers and rid­ers is admirable. Con­trast that with how the Leg­is­la­ture has been con­duct­ing its busi­ness late­ly (which is sup­posed to be the peo­ple’s business).

When you com­pare the two insti­tu­tions, the dif­fer­ences are stark.

Sound Tran­sit oper­ates in a busi­nesslike, inven­tive fash­ion; the Leg­is­la­ture, mean­while, has become known for polit­i­cal the­ater and grid­lock, espe­cial­ly dur­ing the last four years, thanks to Repub­li­cans’ grip on the state Senate.

The elect­ed lead­ers and pub­lic ser­vants at Sound Tran­sit see grid­lock as some­thing that needs to be fought, not embraced for self-serv­ing ends. Lib­er­at­ing com­muters from traf­fic con­ges­tion is a mis­sion they are pas­sion­ate about.

“Through the six­ties, sev­en­ties, eight­ies, and nineties, our region did not invest in enough in pub­lic tran­sit options,” lament­ed Sound Tran­sit CEO Peter Rogoff in his remarks. “And dur­ing that peri­od, lead­ing all the way up to the cur­rent day, con­ges­tion on our roads has con­tin­ued to deteriorate.”

“In fact, it’s more than dou­bled in just the last five years. What that means is not just auto­mo­bile dri­vers, but even our bus rid­ers are see­ing dete­ri­o­rat­ing per­for­mance… in their on-time arrivals, in the amount of time they have to lay aside just to get from home to work, to their stops on a giv­en day. And that, more than any oth­er rea­son, is why vot­ers in this region adopt­ed a $54 bil­lion bal­lot mea­sure — to real­ly give them­selves a con­ges­tion-free option [for get­ting around].”

It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly nice to see Sound Tran­sit act­ing deci­sive­ly to lock in low prices for new light rail vehi­cles. ST’s board has autho­rized staff to pro­cure an addi­tion­al thir­ty LRVs from Siemens to ensure smooth ser­vice to Fed­er­al Way and down­town Red­mond, NPI’s home­town. ST pre­vi­ous­ly placed an order with Siemens for new LRVs last fall, opt­ing to go with a new man­u­fac­tur­er for its sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of LRVs. (The first gen­er­a­tion was man­u­fac­tured by Kink­isharyo of Japan.)

What ben­e­fits will the new LRVs offer over the cur­rent fleet? Sound Tran­sit says:

Man­u­fac­tured in Sacra­men­to, Cal­i­for­nia, the new light rail vehi­cles will fea­ture sev­er­al improve­ments in on-board sys­tems and pas­sen­ger expe­ri­ence over the cur­rent fleet of 62 cars.

Each of the new LRVs will pro­vide 74 seats, with larg­er win­dows, extra stand­ing room in the cen­ter aisle, more space under seats to stow lug­gage, and four bicy­cle hooks — twice as many as pro­vid­ed cur­rent­ly. Each car will come equipped with dynam­ic pas­sen­ger infor­ma­tion dis­plays and LED des­ti­na­tion signs will also be included.

“Order­ing more Link cars ear­li­er than planned is just one exam­ple of how we’re mov­ing aggres­sive­ly for­ward to build a light rail net­work that will serve up to 188 mil­lion rid­ers a year by 2040,” said Rogoff.

“By the time pre-rev­enue test­ing begins in 2024 on the first two Link exten­sions approved by vot­ers last Novem­ber, we’ll be ready.”

The ST3 plan explic­it­ly includ­ed fund­ing for the pur­chase of new LRVs.

Sound Tran­sit does­n’t want to waste time putting our dol­lars to work, espe­cial­ly if it means secur­ing sav­ings for tax­pay­ers. That’s real­ly great to see.

NPI con­grat­u­lates Sound Tran­sit on mov­ing one step clos­er to imple­men­ta­tion of the ST3 pack­age. We will con­tin­ue to vig­or­ous­ly defend the plan that vot­ers approved so that we’re not at the mer­cy of ever-wors­en­ing traf­fic congestion.