After a year of debate, Sound Transit moves closer to sanctioning ST3 project delays

More than four­teen months after the onset of the pan­dem­ic here in the Puget Sound region, Sound Tran­sit is close to decid­ing on a course of action to address its pan­dem­ic-relat­ed finan­cial challenges.

To recap: as the pan­dem­ic reces­sion dragged on while hous­ing costs sky­rock­et­ed, the agency had to adjust its plan­ning to account for bil­lions in lost rev­enue and decreased abil­i­ty to use debt to fund its tran­sit expan­sion projects.

This rev­enue deficit made it impos­si­ble to deliv­er the vot­er-approved Sound Tran­sit 3 pack­age on-time and on-bud­get with­out new money.

In response to this mas­sive “afford­abil­i­ty gap” — cur­rent­ly esti­mat­ed to be around $8 bil­lion over ST3’s lifes­pan — Sound Tran­sit began a process known as “realign­ment”. Essen­tial­ly, with­out new mon­ey or cost revi­sions, realign­ment is how some projects are pri­or­i­tized and oth­ers delayed.

The last time I report­ed on the realign­ment process here on The Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate was after a Feb­ru­ary 2021 board meeting. 

Then, the afford­abil­i­ty gap was quot­ed to be much high­er, at around $11.5 billion.

That has for­tu­nate­ly been revised down to $8 bil­lion due to the quick­er-than-expect­ed eco­nom­ic recov­ery. But that’s still a very large gap.

Elect­ed offi­cials from across Sno­homish, Pierce, and King coun­ties, along with WSDOT’s Roger Mil­lar, sit on Sound Tran­sit’s board and are tasked with mak­ing realign­ment deci­sions. Board Chair Kent Keel wish­es to make a final deci­sion on realign­ment by this sum­mer, but with near­ly twen­ty pub­lic offi­cials not in agree­ment about how to pro­ceed, the process has been far from easy.

Dis­cus­sions over what to do about realign­ment reached fever pitch dur­ing a spe­cial board meet­ing on June 3rd. Mem­o­rably, Seat­tle May­or Jen­ny Durkan quipped that “we are bar­rel­ing towards mak­ing a deci­sion that’s among the worst deci­sions we could make as a board for the region.”

She was not wrong.

The ear­ly June realign­ment pro­pos­als call for hefty delays across the board. Equi­ty-advanc­ing Link sta­tions at NE 130th Street and S Gra­ham Street, and a key light rail exten­sion to West Seat­tle, are among the Seat­tle projects fac­ing delays of ten years or more. More egre­gious­ly, there sig­nif­i­cant uncer­tain­ty about the size of the afford­abil­i­ty gap. $8 bil­lion is just an esti­mate; as the eco­nom­ic out­look improves, and if more fed­er­al dol­lars are secured, it will con­tin­ue to shrink.

Why com­mit our region to decades-long aus­ter­i­ty-inspired anti-cli­mate delays to core infra­struc­ture when it might not even be fis­cal­ly necessary?

Yet there is anoth­er group of board mem­bers who do want to make a deci­sion soon — prefer­ably by the July 22nd board meeting.

These are pri­mar­i­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Sno­homish and Pierce coun­ties, includ­ing Board Chair Kent Keel (Uni­ver­si­ty Place), Lyn­nwood May­or Nico­la Smith, and Everett Coun­cilmem­ber Paul Roberts.

Res­i­dents of these com­mu­ni­ties feel that they have been pay­ing for Sound Tran­sit ser­vice, but that the biggest and flashiest projects (like Cen­tral Link and its exten­sions) have been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly con­cen­trat­ed in King County.

After decades of delay root­ed in ST2-era defer­rals to key projects, their elect­ed offi­cials are sen­si­tive to any­thing that could threat­en their projects.

The Everett Her­ald’s Jer­ry Corn­field point­ed this out last month. These mem­bers would rather have large delays that pro­tect expan­sion, because delayed deci­sions might result in can­cel­la­tions down the road if any­thing changes.

Fol­low­ing the July 22nd time­line, Chair Keel unveiled his revised plan for realign­ment dur­ing the June 24th board meeting.

It’s still not a good pro­pos­al, but it could be worse. 

Tier 1 projects are con­sid­ered to have no finan­cial delay, with the only delays hav­ing result­ed from paus­ing progress dur­ing realignment.

There are many impor­tant projects here, which is good. Taco­ma will be con­nect­ed all the way to Everett by Link (although it will only reach South Everett), form­ing the fun­da­men­tal back­bone of the net­work. West Seat­tle will receive ser­vice. The East­side will see Bus Rapid Tran­sit to relieve con­ges­tion along I‑405.

Crit­i­cal­ly, it pri­or­i­tizes extend­ing the net­work as fast as pos­si­ble over spend­ing mon­ey on park­ing struc­tures. This forces agen­cies to use tran­sit to move peo­ple to and from sub­ur­ban light rail sta­tions, which is a lot more climate-friendly.

Tiers 2, 3, and 4 con­sist of projects where fund­ing to con­tin­ue does not cur­rent­ly exist, hence the need to wait longer. Dis­ap­point­ing­ly, the impor­tant infill sta­tion at Gra­ham St along MLK is slat­ed to be delayed sig­nif­i­cant­ly. May­or Durkan warned about this delay last month, and it is still not resolved. From KUOW:

“I think we are bar­rel­ing towards mak­ing a deci­sion that’s among the worst deci­sions we could make as a board for the region.”

As an exam­ple, she men­tioned the Gra­ham Street Sta­tion, where mul­ti­ple stake­hold­ers have invest­ed in hous­ing to help meet address Seat­tle’s afford­able hous­ing shortage.

What would a six year delay in con­struc­tion of that sta­tion mean for access to jobs by peo­ple mov­ing into that housing?

Put off by these seri­ous delays, King Coun­ty-area board mem­bers and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers want to delay the deci­sion-mak­ing until there are clear­er rev­enue pro­jec­tions. Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine and Coun­cilmem­ber Joe McDer­mott (who rep­re­sents the 8th Dis­trict) have raised tim­ing con­cerns in the past.

And pub­lic com­ments deliv­ered by a pletho­ra of King Coun­ty-area orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the League of Women Vot­ers, asked the Board to delay its actions until they know more about its fis­cal future.

No one has been more vocal than Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci in call­ing for the board to hold off. Why rush to delay, she asks. 

Since May, Bal­duc­ci has been work­ing with ST staff on an alter­na­tive realign­ment sched­ule that pri­or­i­tizes stick­ing to the orig­i­nal vot­er-approved timetables.

Speak­ing in reac­tion to Keel’s pro­pos­al this week, she said “it is impor­tant for us to look at an alter­na­tive that would lean into sched­ule more. There is no mag­ic — we have to find ways to decrease cost or increase funding.”

Bal­duc­ci made clear that she will need a few more weeks before she can share a com­plete, cost­ed alter­na­tive realign­ment pro­pos­al with the rest of the board.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, oth­er board­mem­bers don’t want to wait for that work to be fin­ished. The rest of the board mem­bers who chose to speak at the June 24 meet­ing were most­ly from Sno­homish and Pierce coun­ties and they resound­ing­ly thanked Keel for his com­pro­mise solution.

Keel asked board mem­bers to sub­mit any final sug­gest­ed changes to the realign­ment pro­pos­al by July 8th, two weeks after the meeting.

A vote to approve the Keel’s realign­ment ini­tia­tive, in what­ev­er final form it takes, could come as soon as July 22nd, less than four weeks from now.

Much of the pol­i­tick­ing and maneu­ver­ing that influ­ences deci­sions like these hap­pens out­side of Sound Tran­sit board meet­ings. You can reach out to your rep­re­sen­ta­tives on the board to let them know what you think about the pro­posed ST3 project delays. Act now, because impor­tant deci­sions are on the verge of being made that could affect our region for decades to come.