Near­ly five years ago, vot­ers across Puget Sound said yes to an ambi­tious but very nec­es­sary plan to expand high capac­i­ty tran­sit in the Seat­tle-Taco­ma-Everett met­ro­pol­i­tan area. Known as ST3, short for Sound Tran­sit Phase III, the plan autho­rized extend­ing Link light rail in pret­ty much every direc­tion — north, south, east, and west — along with expan­sions to express bus ser­vice, com­muter rail ser­vice, and the cre­ation of a new bus rapid tran­sit system.

Now, as Sound Tran­sit grap­ples with a fund­ing short­fall caused in part by the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic plus ris­ing costs for land and mate­ri­als, NPI finds that vot­ers in Seat­tle would wel­come the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide addi­tion­al finan­cial sup­port to ST3 so that projects could be sped up instead of being delayed.

71% of respon­dents to our July 2021 sur­vey of the Seat­tle elec­torate — all like­ly 2021 Seat­tle vot­ers — told us that they would sup­port a new tran­sit fund­ing mea­sure, while 24% said they would be opposed. 5% said they were not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of NPI’s poll find­ing on accel­er­at­ing Sound Tran­sit 3 projects (Graph­ic by NPI, click to enlarge)

This find­ing is great news for every­one who cares about mak­ing tran­sit acces­si­ble to all. It also comes at a crit­i­cal time for the ST3 sys­tem expan­sion plan.

That’s because this Thurs­day, Sound Tran­sit’s Board of Direc­tors is sched­uled to meet and vote on a pro­pos­al that would for­mal­ly acknowl­edge the agen­cy’s finan­cial prob­lems and project man­age­ment chal­lenges and respond to them by sanc­tion­ing delays to the ST3 projects, includ­ing new light rail lines to Bal­lard and West Seat­tle and new infill sta­tions on exist­ing lines.

This “rebal­anc­ing” pro­pos­al and the process under­pin­ning it are col­lec­tive­ly referred to by the agency as realign­ment.

Peo­ple and orga­ni­za­tions that cam­paigned for ST3, includ­ing NPI, Seat­tle Sub­way, the Sier­ra Club’s Cas­cade Chap­ter, The Urban­ist, Tran­sit Rid­ers Union, TCC, Dis­abil­i­ty Rights Wash­ing­ton, and oth­er mem­bers of the MASS Coali­tion have asked Sound Tran­sit to avoid sanc­tion­ing delays to ST3 projects and instead find ways to get them built on time or even ahead of sched­ule.

Cli­mate dam­age has already become cat­a­stroph­ic, as our recent heat­wave showed — hun­dreds of res­i­dents of Cas­ca­dia are believed to have died from that event, accord­ing to pre­lim­i­nary num­bers from Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, and the province of British Colum­bia. With the cli­mate cri­sis set to get worse, it’s imper­a­tive that Wash­ing­ton invest in clean mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture as fast as it can, includ­ing all elec­tric bus­es and light rail, which are capa­ble of mov­ing large num­bers of peo­ple with zero emissions.

Since a lack of avail­able funds is the main obsta­cle Sound Tran­sit faces in deliv­er­ing our vot­er-approved ST3 projects, we and our friends at Seat­tle Sub­way decid­ed to team up ahead of our sur­vey last month to pose a ques­tion to vot­ers in Seat­tle about their will­ing­ness to sup­port a city-lev­el bal­lot mea­sure to accel­er­ate deliv­ery of the new sta­tions and track­age inside of the city limits.

These projects — like the Sec­ond Down­town Tran­sit Tun­nel — are among the most expen­sive ele­ments in the ST3 plan, part­ly because they would serve dense, already devel­oped neigh­bor­hoods and require tun­nel­ing or aer­i­al alignments.

As men­tioned, we found that vot­ers are extreme­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the prospect of a bal­lot mea­sure to speed up deliv­ery of the projects that they vot­ed for.

Here’s the exact ques­tion that we asked and the answers that we received.

Note that the map you see below was shown to respon­dents with­out the NPI and Seat­tle Sub­way logos, or the map cred­its. As this ver­sion of the map is intend­ed for shar­ing and pub­lic dis­sem­i­na­tion, it has our logos and a map design cred­it. Thank you to the incred­i­ble Oran Viriy­in­cy for putting this map togeth­er for us!

QUESTION: The Sound Tran­sit 3 light rail expan­sion projects inside Seat­tle shown on the map below may be delayed from open­ing to the pub­lic for sev­er­al years past their orig­i­nal project com­ple­tion dates pri­mar­i­ly due to finan­cial short­falls. Would you sup­port or oppose a new tran­sit fund­ing mea­sure to speed up con­struc­tion of cur­rent ST3 light rail expan­sion projects in Seattle?

Our map show­ing the pro­posed delays to ST3 light expan­sion projects in Seat­tle (Click to enlarge)

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port a new tran­sit fund­ing mea­sure: 71%
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 45%
  • Some­what sup­port: 26%
• Oppose a new tran­sit fund­ing mea­sure: 24%
  • Some­what oppose: 8%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 16%
• Not sure: 5%

Our poll of 617 like­ly August 2021 Seat­tle vot­ers was in the field through Mon­day, July 12th, through Thurs­day, July 15th. All respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed online. The poll was con­duct­ed by Change Research for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, and has a mod­eled mar­gin of error of 4.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

The project delay dates you see in the map above are all from Sound Tran­sit Board Chair Kent Keel’s June realign­ment pro­pos­al, which you can read about in detail over at The Urban­ist. (NPI lead­er­ship met with Chair Keel in late June to express our orga­ni­za­tion’s con­cerns about sanc­tion­ing delays to ST3 projects.)

Keel is now back­ing a mod­i­fied “realign­ment” pro­pos­al that com­bines ele­ments of an alter­na­tive plan cham­pi­oned by King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Clau­dia Bal­duc­ci.

In total, more than two out of three Seat­tle vot­ers said they either strong­ly or some­what sup­port­ed a new tran­sit fund­ing mea­sure to speed up con­struc­tion of cur­rent ST3 light rail expan­sion projects. Those in strong sup­port out­num­ber the total num­ber of those in oppo­si­tion by a sub­stan­tial margin.

The inten­si­ty of sup­port did­n’t sur­prise us, giv­en that Seat­tle has a long his­to­ry of sup­port­ing tran­sit at the bal­lot. But it was still great to see. (The peo­ple of Seat­tle have wise­ly and con­sis­tent­ly vot­ed in favor of Sound Tran­sit’s sys­tem expan­sion plans and against Tim Eyman ini­tia­tives to sab­o­tage them.)

The les­son from this poll find­ing is that vot­ers in the Emer­ald City are very, very will­ing to invest more to get a faster return on the tran­sit expan­sion that they vot­ed for five years ago in the 2016 pres­i­den­tial election.

This is a time for coura­geous, imag­i­na­tive lead­er­ship… a time for cli­mate action and for for resource­ful­ness. We know aus­ter­i­ty is dis­as­trous and cost­ly. The real­i­ty is that the ST3 projects will nev­er get cheap­er to build. The soon­er we can build them, the more cost-effec­tive Sound Tran­sit 3 will be.

The Sound Tran­sit Board, the Seat­tle City Coun­cil, and the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture should give Seat­tle vot­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speed up the biggest and most com­plex ST3 projects by autho­riz­ing new forms of pro­gres­sive rev­enue the city can levy to bol­ster the tran­sit expan­sion Seat­tle sore­ly needs.

While the Sound Tran­sit Board­’s realign­ment exer­cise is slat­ed to come to a con­clu­sion this Thurs­day, the more impor­tant oppor­tu­ni­ty for action will be in the weeks ahead, at the state lev­el as opposed to the met­ro­pol­i­tan level.

That’s because Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee is con­sid­er­ing bring­ing the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture back into ses­sion to work on forg­ing a new trans­porta­tion package.

A spe­cial ses­sion for that pur­pose is a great idea, but it’s imper­a­tive that the Leg­is­la­ture make cli­mate and mul­ti­modal tran­sit infra­struc­ture the focus of any leg­is­la­tion it adopts. We can’t afford anoth­er high­way-cen­tric package.

We do need to rebuild some of our high­way sys­tem’s crum­bling bridges, like I‑5 across the Colum­bia Riv­er, but we should not be adding new lanes to the sys­tem. The focus needs to be on the oth­er modes that typ­i­cal­ly just get crumbs: fer­ries, bus­es, trains, bike paths, and side­walks + trails for pedes­tri­ans and equestrians.

Most of Wash­ing­ton’s tran­sit sys­tems are fund­ed with dol­lars secured local­ly or fed­er­al­ly. Leg­is­la­tors need to devote more state-lev­el dol­lars to tran­sit, and also give Seat­tle the flex­i­bil­i­ty to enter into a part­ner­ship with Sound Tran­sit to get those big in-city ST3 projects more finan­cial support.

There is prece­dent for this.

A few years ago, Seat­tle vot­ers were giv­en the chance to fund Metro bus ser­vice hours with a city-lev­el vehi­cle fee. They said yes, and the city began an enor­mous­ly suc­cess­ful part­ner­ship with King Coun­ty Metro that ensured the city would have more and bet­ter ser­vice than with coun­ty dol­lars alone.

Now, our polling shows Seat­tle vot­ers would wel­come the chance to keep ST3 on track with a cap­i­tal tran­sit fund­ing bal­lot measure.

Since cities only have the rev­enue author­i­ty that the state gives them, it’s up to our state leg­is­la­tors to act. How­ev­er, Sound Tran­sit board­mem­bers have a role to play in this: they can and should be lob­by­ing for the req­ui­site leg­is­la­tion to be part of the trans­porta­tion pack­age that the Leg­is­la­ture adopts.

Cli­mate-aware Demo­c­ra­t­ic majori­ties con­trol both cham­bers in the state­house and the gov­er­nor­ship, so this ought to be achievable.

We and Seat­tle Sub­way and the MASS coali­tion will do our part.

Our region and our plan­et’s future is at stake. We can­not afford to wait until the 2030s and the 2040s to cut the rib­bon on the essen­tial projects we autho­rized in 2016. We need to work togeth­er to speed up the time­frame and bring high capac­i­ty tran­sit to more neigh­bor­hoods as quick­ly as we can.