Transportation - Transportation

Making sense of Prop 1

THE TRANSIT

QUESTION A special section for voters OCTOBER 2016

2 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

Let’s Complete Our Regional Light Rail Network and Get Out of Congestion Your YES vote on Prop 1 means: 116 miles of light rail to connect our entire region.

New Bus Rapid Transit on I-405 and SR522.

Investments in additional Sounder service and capacity.

Connect people from across the region with major job centers.

Complete a mass transit system that can move 1 million people every day.

BROAD SUPPORT FOR MASS TRANSIT NOW ELECTED LEADERS Governor Jay Inslee Attorney General Bob Ferguson King County Executive Dow Constantine Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy

ENVIRONMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS Climate Solutions Futurewise Sierra Club Washington Conservation Voters Washington Environmental Council

LABOR UNIONS Aerospace Machinists Lodge 751 Martin Luther King Jr. County Labor Council Pierce County Building and Construction Trades Pierce County Labor Council WA State Labor Council AFL-CIO WA State Bldg. & Construction Trades Council

COMMUNITY GROUPS Fair Housing Center of Washington Housing Development Consortium of Seattle/King County Low Income Housing Institute OneAmerica Votes Puget Sound Sage Rainbow Center

YES! on Sound Transit Prop 1 1701226

TRANSPORTATION ADVOCATES Cascade Bicycle Club Tacoma: Downtown on the Go Transportation Choices Coalition Transit Riders Union BUSINESS ASSOCIATIONS Bellevue Downtown Association Downtown Seattle Association Economic Alliance of Snohomish County Economic Development Board for Tacoma-Pierce County Greater Seattle Business Association Issaquah Chamber of Commerce OneRedmond Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce

Paid for by Mass Transit Now (Top 5 Contributors: Microsoft, Costco Wholesale, WA and Northern Idaho District Council of Laborers, Expedia, Amazon) 119 1st Avenue South, Suite 320 | Seattle, WA 98104 | (206) 329-2336 | info@masstransitnow.com

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 3

EDITOR’S NOTE

EVERETT

At a crossroads Is ST3 the $54-billion answer to our congestion?

W

e dare you: Read this introduction.

And read it again. And again.

And again and again.

Time-consuming, isn’t it? Not to mention tedious.

The 15 or 16 minutes it would take to read this article five times is about what commuters spend creeping from the KingSnohomish county line to Lynnwood’s offramps. And that’s just a few interstate exits.

If drivers are heading to Everett, Marysville or points north, it often gets nastier. (And no less tedious.)

The problem is big, and so is the solution proposed by Sound Transit: A $54 billion tax package that would extend the current light-rail “spine” to DuPont in the south and Everett in the north — plus add arms reaching to the Eastside, West Seattle and Ballard.

This project, commonly known as ST3, will appear as Proposition 1 on the Nov. 8 ballot in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties — the jurisdictions that would be served by the proposed system and whose taxpayers would shoulder the cost.

Nobody debating this proposal — pro or con — denies traffic is a mess. There’s agreement, however, about the timing, configuration and pricetag of ST3. And steadfast critics insist buses, not rail, could provide enough capacity with more flexibility and lower costs.

When it comes to timing, Snohomish County really has been at the end of the line.

An initial draft of ST3 would have extended light rail to Everett by 2041.

Before the plan was finalized, however, the county’s Sound Transit representatives came up with an alternative that moved the date up to 2036 — with further hope of shaving a year or two off that target.

Snohomish County representatives also pushed back on the configuration. Proposition 1 reflects their insistence that light

rail needs to reach Everett — as originally envisioned by transit planners — but also must serve the burgeoning employment center that Paine Field has become.

Even if Snohomish County voters are placated about timing and configuration, they must contemplate the $54 billion cost.

Let’s face it: Few light-rail proponents have experienced as much delayed gratification as those in Snohomish County.

From 1995 to 2015, Snohomish County contributed $1 billion in taxes to the transit district, but received only $870 million in benefits, mostly in the form of buses and an unreliable Sounder line. The county got the second-lowest level of return among all of Sound Transit’s five sub-areas.

Construction on the light-rail line to Lynnwood from Northgate is expected to break ground in 2018, with service starting in 2023.

And the ST3 plan shows Snohomish County getting back bus and rail projects equivalent to all $9.3 billion that it would put in.

ST3 would be paid for with sales tax, property tax and car tabs. Sales tax would increase by half a percent (which would raise the rate to 9.7 cents per dollar in Everett and to more than 10 cents per dollar in much of south Snohomish County). Cartab fees would go up by 0.8 percent, and property tax would go up 25 cents for each $1,000 of assessed valuation.

As opponents flinch at the price, ST3 advocates point out there will never be a cheaper time to build the system. After all, it would have cost less if voters had approved it in the late 1960s.

Now, citizens are left to consider: How much are we willing to pay to fix this problem? And if not a regional light-rail system, what is the alternative? We hope the information and analysis in this section helps you sort through these questions — and motivates you to vote on Nov. 8.

— NEAL PATTISON, Executive Editor, The Daily Herald

INSIDE Rogoff Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Yays and Nays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Solving for X . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Follow the money . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Page 4 Page 5 Page 7 Page 8

New numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Local perspective . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rapid ride . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Sound Transit ridership . . . . . . . .

Page 12 Page 14 Page 17 Page 18

Lynnwood

Bothell Woodinville

Shoreline

Kirkland

Redmond

BELLEVUE SEATTLE Issaquah

Renton

Burien Tukwila

Kent

Des Moines Federal Way

Auburn

TACOMA Sumner Puyallup

Lakewood DuPont

Bonney Lake Orting

KEY PROPOSED ST3 PROJECTS Link Light Rail Bus Rapid Transit Sounder Rail Proposed shoulder running buses / speed and reliability improvements SOURCE: SOUND TRANSIT

CURRENT AND PLANNED SERVICE Link Light Rail Sounder Rail ST Express Bus Major Rail Transfer

SHARON ADJIRI / SEATTLE WEEKLY

4 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

Q&A

On ST3 Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff

F

By MARK BAUMGARTEN Seattle Weekly

rom his office in the Sound Transit office in Union Station, Peter Rogoff sits at the hub of the regional transit authority he has overseen since taking the helm as Chief Executive Officer in January. Before arriving here, he served as the Undersecretary of Transportation for Policy in the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he oversaw a study that estimates an explosive growth in the population of 11 American cities. Now he is charged with doing something about that growth — building the transit capacity to ably serve the 800,000 new residents expected in the Puget Sound region over the next 25 years. The key to accomplishing that feat, he says, is Sound Transit 3, the $54 billion package that voters will be asked to approve on Election Day. It’s a massive project with lofty goals and a big pricetag. We asked him why it’s worth it.

What is the most frustrating thing about the ST3 debate right now?

I don’t know if frustrating is the right word, but what I sometimes find lacking in the debate is an appreciation for the fact that we are not proposing this system based on conditions today. A lot of people want to evaluate the merits or deficiencies on any particular investment with a mind toward what they’re experiencing in that corridor today. I think that is just human nature, but the reality is that we will be rolling out these investments over the next 25 years and things are going to change quite dramatically in that time. There will be an estimated 800,000 additional residents in the Puget Sound region. A great many of them are going to be locating in areas where housing might still be able to be built or where it will be more affordable and as such we need to make sure that there are viable transit connections for those communities.

Soon after ST2 passed, the subprime mortgage crisis happened and it really changed the landscape. What if something unforeseeable happens again?

Obviously the biggest recession since

the Great Depression did happen during the pendency of ST2, and what it really meant was not that projects were permanently canceled, but that they were going to have to be delayed long into the future because of the dramatic drop in revenue.

One of course hopes that a recession of that size will not happen again anytime in the near future, but the financial plan that we put out to the public does assume a reasonable cycle of recessions and recoveries over the 25-year period. It would be irresponsible to model revenues any other way.

Can you, in the simplest terms possible, explain how the number $15 billion, which was being tossed around when the Legislature granted the taxing authority to Sound Transit, became $54 billion?

That $15 billion, if you will, as a revenue increase, is comparable to about $27 billion of the $54 billion — the rest comes from existing taxes, bonding and federal money.

The reason why the revenue increase is a higher number is that it is the same level of taxes allowed by the legislature put out over a greater number of years. The legislature was assuming a 15-year package, and what we put together is a 25-year package.

Late last month, the Angle Lake light rail station opened. That station came in $40 million under budget. In comparison, the U-Link project connecting the University District in Seattle to SeaTac was 86 percent over budget. Is there something in the approach to that Angle Lake project that you can apply to ST3 projects?

Well, we are. First, a very voluminous series of audits and oversight that we not only impose on ourselves. We will continue to be subject to that oversight, and we will have voluminous audits throughout the ST3 project and we welcome that.

In the case of Angle Lake, we were able to bring some creativity to bear over the fact that during a downturn in the economy where construction bidding was coming in at very competitive rates, we were able to fill the funding hole with a federal grant, and we were able to get that project launched earlier than originally thought, which meant that we were not just $40

Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff (center) takes a ride on light rail from the new Angle Lake Station in SeaTac, with King County Executive Dow Constantine (left), Sept. 21.

IAN TERRY / THE HERALD

million under budget, but we are four years earlier than we thought we would be.

Whenever you can accelerate a project and make it happen sooner, you save money.

The Seattle Times reported that the amount spent on the Angle Lake opening ceremony was a third of the amount it was originally budgeted for, and that this was in reaction to the blowback of the amount of money spent when U-Link opened. Was that a political decision in an election year, or is this a shift in priorities of spending for Sound Transit?

We certainly took note of and were cognizant of the fact that we probably went too far with the U-Link opening. But let’s talk about what the U-Link opening was about. It was about the historic opening of two stations that extended high-capacity rail to two of the densest neighborhoods in the entire state. While the $800,000 spent on the U-Link opening gets a lot of attention, I don’t think that a lot of people understand that a large chunk of that funding was devoted to things like porta-potties and line minders and security. We had tens of thousands of people show up for opening day. There are certain things that we certainly dialed back as a part of the Angle Lake opening, but we were fortunate to be able to secure a corporate sponsor for some of the activities and Alaska Airlines for the Angle Lake opening. And the City of SeaTac was willing to include a celebration as part of this with their resources.

Some critics say that our taxing priorities should be toward education first and transportation second. What’s your response to that critique?

The calculations that I have been informed of basically estimate that the property-tax adjustment that would come with the ST3 ballot measure, depending on where you live, would come in the range of 1.5 to 2.5 percent. The issues of solving education and state funding for elementary and secondary education has been vexing this state for a few decades, and I don’t think that anyone credibly believes that a 1.5 or 2.5 percent uptick ensures or dooms a solution to the significant issue of elementary and secondary education.

It’s also probably worth noting that there is in our ballot measure a unique animal that actually, should it pass, generates $518 million for education services in the three-county region. Those who believe that education and transportation have to vie against one another would have you believe that we are competing for the same authorized tax envelope, and we’re not.

What does Sound Transit do if ST3 fails?

The next step is to complete light rail to Kent/Des Moines, Lynnwood, and Bellevue and Overlake and toward Redmond.

And that will be the end of our capital program. It’s ironic. Some have criticized the agency with this banner of being Seattle-centric. There is an argument to be made that if our light rail network stops at the end of the ST2 program, at least the light rail network will be Seattle-centric. If it fails, we finish building the system we’ve been authorized to build. There is no secret plan B sitting in a file drawer here.  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

MARK BAUMGARTEN: 206-467-4374; mbaumgarten@seattleweekly.com

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 5

Two sides of the debate “Crossed Pinkies” by Seattle artist Ellen Forney, at the Capitol Hill Link light rail staion in Seattle.

It’s a massive plan, so there is a lot to love – and not love.

Meet the constituencies that have come out for and against the mass transit plan IAN TERRY / THE HERALD

YAY WHO: Major Democratic politicians SUCH AS: King County Executive Dow Constantine, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, Governor Jay Inslee, former governor Chris Gregoire, and city and county councilmembers from across the region.

THE ARGUMENT: In short: Traffic.

Gridlock threatens to choke our economy, our atmosphere, our lives. ST3 is the best way to prevent the Puget Sound region from coming to a complete standstill, as it provides a real alternative to driving. “Free yourself — and all your friends — from gridlock,” Executive Constantine told a packed crowd at the Seattle launch party for the Yes on ST3 campaign. He lauded the launch of two new light rail stations in Seattle, arguing that “for tens of thousands of people now, their lives are transformed. … They have more time to do the things they want to do, and a lot less time wasted sitting in traffic.”

NAY

WHO: Cost-conscious citizens and WHO: Labor groups SUCH AS: The Washington State BuildSUCH AS: Kirkland Democrats Frank ing and Construction Trades Council, Dennis and David Greschler, Pierce County Building former Metro Transit direcand Construction Trades,

By SARA BERNARD tor Chuck Collins, transporand the Martin Luther King Seattle Weekly tation consultant John Niles, County Labor Council and engineer Mark Ahlers.

(MLKCLC).

THE ARGUMENT: ST3 is THE ARGUMENT: Jobs. ST3 far too expensive for far too little of a will create tens of thousands of familyreturn. It won’t help traffic. ST3 will only wage, unionized jobs in the region, and displace a tiny fraction of the 19 milcould account for nearly 10 percent of lion transit trips we’re expecting people all construction jobs here by 2029. From across the region to take in 2040. It could the workers who will be driving the trains cost the average Puget Sound homeownand buses to the electricians wiring the er some $25,000 over 25 years for projects system, ST3 creates “the right kinds of that do very little; according to Sound jobs in the right places at the right time,” Transit’s data, ST3 is expected to create says Nicole Grant, Secretary-Treasurer of only 32,000 new riders and less than 1 the MLKCLC. These are jobs that could percent of the new trips in 2040 — all that allow people to buy a home and raise a for $54 billion, or some half-a-million family, yet are “accessible to people from dollars per rider. different education levels.” It also puts

WHO: Pro-transit, anti-light rail advocates SUCH AS: Former King County Councilmember and Edmonds resident Maggie Fimia, Kirkland City Councilmember Toby Nixon, Capitol Hill resident and transportation blogger Troy Serad.

THE ARGUMENT: ST3 invests heavily in light rail, and light rail is not the answer.

A bigger investment in what we already have, and especially in Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), would be a better, quicker solution.

Also, with ST3, we’re locking ourselves into an old technology that could be superseded by a better one long before we’ve even broken ground on the light rail promised. “While technology rapidly marches ahead,” writes Kirkland Views editor Rob Butcher, “Sound Transit will plod along building trains to the Cascade foothills, that can’t be justified economically and that won’t even run until 2040.”

6 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

YAY those jobs in places that need them the most: high-paying construction jobs, for instance, will exist well outside Seattle city limits.

WHO: Environmental activists SUCH AS: The Washington Environmental Council (WEC), the Sierra Club, and the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy.

THE ARGUMENT: Climate change.

The only way the region and the state can meet its climate goals is to invest heavily in electric light rail, not in any other form of transport. Light rail has a far lighter carbon footprint and results in less environmental contamination than do buses or cars, and anything we can do to get people to drive less is a very good thing. “The biggest source of our climate emissions here in Washington state is transportation,” says the WEC in a Pro-ST3 statement.

WHO: Community and social justice groups SUCH AS: OneAmerica, GotGreen, Transportation Choices Coalition, and Puget Sound Sage.

THE ARGUMENT: Equity. Many lowincome people have been priced out of

urban areas, and therefore spend hours commuting on slow buses or in cars because there is no other option. ST3 will improve their lives dramatically. It also explicitly creates opportunities for affordable housing along new transit lines. “The second any land is surplussed, the right of first refusal goes to nonprofit and affordable housing developers — it’s revolutionary,” says OneAmerica advocacy manager Endicott Dandy.

WHO: Tax relativists SUCH AS: King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci and state representative Joe Fitzgibbon; also urbanists and fiscallyliberal community activists.

THE ARGUMENT: Yes, $54 billion sounds like a lot. Yes, this is a tax increase. But it’s not as horrific as it’s made out to be, and the alternative to light rail (prioritizing buses and building new HOV lanes) could cost almost as much. “With Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), there’s nothing magic about the ‘R,’ ” says Balducci. “It’s not rapid, unless you put the buses in a separated right of way,” and “if you have to build that extra road space, then the costs are just about the same as building light rail.” 

NAY WHO: Public officials outside Seattle SUCH AS: Pierce County AssessorTreasurer Mike Lonergan, Sammamish Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama, former Snohomish County Councilmember Gary Nelson, and Bellevue City Councilmember Kevin Wallace; also the Bellevue Chamber of Commerce.

THE ARGUMENT: ST3 favors Seattle. It’s supposedly an investment in the whole region, but many taxpayers from cities like Everett, Renton, Kirkland, or Sammamish will be paying the price for years without seeing much in return. “In 25 years, we’re going to be basically the only city without light rail,” Renton city councilmember Ruth Pérez testified during a Sound Transit board meeting in June. “I call it taxation without transportation,” Sammamish Deputy Mayor Ramiro Valderrama told KIRO 7.

WHO: Prominent Democrats SUCH AS: Senator Reuven Carlyle, State Treasurer Jim McIntire, and State Superintendent Randy Dorn.

THE ARGUMENT: ST3 spends too many tax dollars on a project that could threaten the state’s ability to fund other crucial public services, like education. If ST3 takes up part of the state cap on property taxes,

for instance, that could damage a potential source of revenue for public schools. “I am unsettled that the package consumes the oxygen in the room on taxes for virtually all other public services at all levels of government for years to come,” wrote Senator Carlyle. State Superintendent Randy Dorn also has his misgivings. “Roads before kids is, I guess, what’s going on right now,” Dorn told KING 5.

WHO: Sound Transit critics SUCH AS: The Seattle Times editorial board, KIRO’s Jason Rantz, conservative blogs such as ShiftWA, and Maggie Fimia.

THE ARGUMENT: Sound Transit shouldn’t get a blank check. Voting in ST3 means the plan is locked in for decades, without continual voter oversight to make sure the promised infrastructure is getting built within budget and on time. “Unlike ST1 and ST2, this measure creates a new property tax and permanent taxing authority for Sound Transit,” writes the Seattle Times editorial board. “If ST3 is approved as written, Sound Transit wouldn’t have to periodically ask voters for more support for decades.”  — SARA BERNARD: 206-467-4370; sbernard@seattleweekly.com

A Tacoma Link streetcar on Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma on Sept. 24.

IAN TERRY / THE HERALD

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 7

POLITICS

Solving for X Who does Sound Transit need to vote for their new plan, and how are they getting those votes?

L

By JERRY CORNFIELD The Daily Herald

et’s be honest. Voters in Snohomish and Pierce counties are important to the fate of Sound Transit 3. But it will be those living in King County, specifically the city of Seattle, who will determine the outcome Nov. 8.

ST3 will pass, or fail, with a simple majority of votes among those cast in the areas of the three counties served by the regional agency. Yet, since roughly 60 percent of transit district voters reside in Seattle and King County, it is their decision on the $54 billion proposal that will hold the most sway.

Historically, in Washington, voters living in larger cities and urban areas tend to be politically and fiscally more progressive and their turnout soars in presidential years like this one. It proved a winning formula for Sound Transit in 1996 and 2008. Backers of ST3 are counting on it working again in 2016.

Still, ST3 isn’t like its predecessors. It adds more miles of track and builds more stations. It also costs more money and requires more taxes. Supporters are working to convince voters of the worthiness of easing congestion at this price and in this manner while opponents counter that those dollars will not deliver the promised benefits.

It’s a completely different campaign than Sound Transit’s prior efforts.

“If in 2008 we were selling the vision, in 2016 we’re selling the reality,” said Christian Sinderman, the Seattle political consultant who managed the ST2 campaign and is in the same role for ST3.

Eight years ago people could see some elevated tracks and construction, but light-rail service had not begun. Since then stations have opened from the airport to the University District in Seattle.

“Then it was much more aspirational,” Sinderman added. “Now we can say we’ve got rail, trains are running, there are more stations on the way so let’s keep the momentum going.”

It’s an easy sell in Seattle, so long as the many Millennial and Generation X riders remember there’s more on the ballot than

Protesters at the opening of the Angle Lake Transit Station in September.

IAN TERRY / THE HERALD

just the race for president. Sound Transit is utilizing a variety of means, including social media, to make sure those voters don’t forget to weigh in on Proposition 1, the Sound Transit measure, which will appear near the end of the ballot, Sinderman said.

It’s going to be a harder sell to people in a place such as Everett. Those voters can’t easily discern the benefits of 20 years of taxation, and they now are getting asked to pay even higher taxes knowing it could be another couple decades before they see a light-rail train pull into Everett station.

“The fundamental calculation (for voters) is ‘Is what I’m getting out of this package worth what I am being asked to contribute?’ ” said Rick Desimone, a political consultant and former aide to U.S. Sen. Patty Murray who worked on the 2008 transit campaign, but is not involved in this year’s ballot measure.

“How you win is making sure the different constituencies in each service area feel like they’re getting something for their money,” he said.

With Sound Transit 3 that begins in Seattle. With success hinging on an overwhelming yes vote in the urban center, adding service to Ballard and West Seattle

is intended to shore up votes.

And agreeing to a route that takes trains through the Paine Field industrial area in Everett, and near the Boeing Co. plant, is aimed at bolstering support in Snohomish County, where the agency so far has not spent as much money as it has soaked up in taxes.

From 1995 to 2015, the regional transit agency took in nearly $1 billion from the Snohomish County portion of the transit district while reinvesting only $870 million, according to agency figures. That’s the lowest sum of investment in any of Sound Transit’s five sub-areas.

East King County, which includes Bellevue, is the only other sub area with an imbalance. It generated $1.9 billion in taxes during the 20-year period while receiving $1.6 billion in projects and service, according to Sound Transit figures.

ST3 will reset the balance sheet, Sinderman said. The campaign must make Snohomish County voters know “there’s a lot in it” for the community, including light rail and expanded bus rapid transit.

This will be the fifth time the question of financing Sound Transit projects will appear on ballots. Thus far the regional transit

agency is batting .500 with voters.

They rejected Sound Move in 1995, then approved a retooled version in 1996, coincidentally a presidential election year.

In 2007, voters in all three counties turned down the Roads and Transit proposal. The following year — again a presidential year — Sound Transit 2 reached the ballot and passed, in the process revealing the imbalance of political power.

Pierce County voters rejected the measure by a slim margin. But it won with a large majority (60.5 percent) in King County and a comfortable one (54.2 percent) in Snohomish County.

One could clearly see the influence wielded by King County in the final tally.

Of the nearly 1.2 million votes cast on ST2, 63 percent came from precincts in King County. Pierce County accounted for 22 percent and Snohomish County 15 percent.

Drilling down further, the measure passed by roughly 155,000 votes in King County alone. For perspective, in Snohomish County, the total number of votes cast on ST3 that year — for and against combined — was 174,767.

No magic bullet Opponents of ST3 are conducting a barebones campaign fueled with confidence.

No Sound Transit 3 had raised only $10,636 by the end of September, while Mass Transit Now, the ST3 campaign operation, had amassed $2.4 million.

A lack of money means those fighting the measure must be nimble and tireless, said Maggie Fimia of Edmonds, a founder of Smarter Transit and leader of the opposition. She also is a former member of the King County Council.

“The strategy is and has been to get the truth out to as many people as possible as soon as possible,” she said. “We won’t have anywhere near $3 million. We have to have a scaled down, targeted strategic plan.”

They are putting up yard signs, talking with friends and being “present and accounted for” at City Council meetings when resolutions of support or opposition for ST3 are on the agenda, she said.

The opposition’s message is that ST3 will

8 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition not ease congestion as claimed and may be passé when completed, supplanted by a “transportation revolution” that will be steering travelers to rideshare and automated cars, not light rail.

And Puget Sound residents like their buses. The region enjoys one of the highest bus rider per capita rates in the nation, she said.

“We need more transit now,” she said.

“Rail is not a magic bullet for a region like ours.”

Tim Eyman of Mukilteo, promoter of anti-tax initiatives, also opposes ST3 and is a co-author of dissenting statements in the voter’s pamphlet in all three counties.

Fimia isn’t happy about that. Eyman is disliked in many areas of King County, and she said his involvement in the opposition could be enough to get some voters to back ST3 when they might not otherwise.

While Eyman stirs up strong feelings among King County voters, he does have a knack for getting them to reject new and higher taxes. And if there’s one issue Sinderman and supporters don’t want to dwell on too long, it is taxation. Doing so tends to make voters think hard about the potential impact on their wallets.

Paul Berendt, an Olympia-based political strategist and former chairman of the state Democratic Party, said the strong economy

in the three counties should help.

“The stress of the pocketbook issues is less pronounced when your income is rising,” he said. “There’s so much need and so much growth going on that people will support anything that reduces their commute times.”

Eyman and former Snohomish County councilman Gary Nelson focused on the cost issue in their voter’s pamphlet statement in Snohomish County.

“Just say No to new property taxes. Just say No to 55 percent increase in sales taxes. Just say No to tripling car tab taxes,” they wrote. “Nothing requires them to deliver what’s promised — projects, costs, and timelines are not binding. Only thing certain are its massive permanent tax increases.”

In an interview in late September, Eyman didn’t forecast ST3’s defeat, noting that having it on the ballot in a presidential year is by design.

“I’ve always had this thought that it is going to be a wave. Voters either repudiate by a huge margin or there is going to be this massive wave of support in Seattle,” he said.

“Sound Transit picked a presidential year for that reason. They wanted the crazies in Seattle to turn out.”  — JERRY CORNFIELD: 360-352-8623; jcornfield@heraldnet.com

TAXED & SPENT

EVERETT 1 EDMONDS

SHORELINE REDMOND

2

3 SEATTLE

BELLEVUE

BURIEN

4

KENT

FEDERAL WAY

TACOMA 5

Total money raised through taxes and grants in each Sound Transit sub-region and how much each got back.

SNOHOMISH

$1.04B $870M NORTH KING

$3.28B $4.14B EAST KING

$2.14B $1.61B

SOUTH KING

$1.68B $2.07B

PIERCE

$1.58B $1.55B SOURCE: SOUND TRANSIT

LYNNWOOD, ON TRACK FOR LIGHT RAIL

Link Light Rail arriving at Lynnwood City Center in 2023 1699978

(425) 670-5249 www.LynnwoodWA.gov 1699136

JOSE TRUJILLO / SEATTLE WEEKLY

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 9

Does ST3 Take Too Long, Cost Too Much?

WE CAN DO BETTER.

The story is familiar in our region—politicians promise to reduce traffic congestion, if we just give them more taxes. Then the promises crumble under the weight of bad planning, missed deadlines and over-spending, until they come back with a new set of promises, asking for even higher taxes.

This year voter trust will be tested—again—by Sound Transit. For the fifth time in 21 years, light rail is on the ballot, with Regional Proposition 1 (or ST3 as it’s called). And just like in 1995, 1996, 2007, and 2008, big promises are being made to justify the billions they want to spend.

Yes, Sound Transit is back, even though as the Seattle Times wrote in August, the first phase that voters approved 20 years ago is not finished, and won’t be finished until 2021, and is 86% over-budget!

“Sound Transit’s cost overruns for first phase hit about 86 percent.”

—Seattle Times, 8/20/16

CONSIDER THESE FACTS ABOUT ST3: • The projects in this year’s plan will take 25 years to finish.

Tax increases will start next year for trains that won’t be running until 2041—if everything goes according to plan.

• ST3 will create “permanent” taxes according to the Seattle Times— including a first-ever property tax for transit—continuing even after the projects are completed.

• Even Sound Transit leaders admit this plan will not actually reduce traffic congestion.

Voters have faced this choice before — in both 1995 and 2007, the voters said “No”. Then, after changes were made, in both 1996 and 2008, they said “Yes”. On November 8, we’ll know if the people of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties have decided Sound Transit has earned their trust—and more of their tax dollars.

SERVING 2X THE PEOPLE AT HALF THE COST Compare ST3 and Mobility Now $16.00

Transit

$14.32

MOBILITY NOW Highway

$14.00

Cost

Population Served

$12.00

MOBILITY NOW Ped/Bike

$10.00 $8.00

$7.45 Population Served

$6.00

Cost

$4.00 $2.00

$.65

$.12

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10 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

12 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

ANALYSIS

Waiting for the train  Back in March, Sound Transit said that some light rail lines wouldn’t be completed until 2041. Then after some complaints, they turned around and, poof, the dates were moved up.

What happened?

By Casey Jaywork

F

Seattle Weekly

aster. That’s the number-one thing Sound Transit heard from critics after releasing a draft version of its ST3 expansion plan in March. If passed, the then-$50 billion project would have upgraded our transit network with lots more light rail and commuter trains, among other things, but many of the target dates were too far-flung. The Ballard line wouldn’t be done until 2038, for instance, and Everett wouldn’t see a train until 2038.

So when the regional transit agency announced in June that it had moved up the timelines on eight different projects — speeding them up by five years in some cases — there was much rejoicing in Seattle’s urbanist enclaves and transit-hungry suburbs alike.

But cork the champagne for a second and put on your thinking cap. How did they move the timelines up?

We put the question to Sound Transit spokesperson Geoff Patrick. The answer: Finance.

Yes, usury! That dark and arcane art that gave us the housing-market bubble and the credit-card economy — this is the magic that will deliver fast transit to the Puget Sound region, faster. “Working closely with a financial team that included outside consultants, we were able to leverage bonding to borrow about $4 billion in addition to what we’d assumed,” says Patrick. “By increasing the funding by that $4 billion, we were able to move up the timelines.” As a result, the overall ST3 budget rose from $50 billion to $53.8 billion.

In other words, some hired-gun economists put their heads together and found a way to materialize $4 billion out of thin air by borrowing it via bonds (that is, loans from regular citizens to the government).

JEREMY DWYER-LINDGREN / SEATTLE WEEKLY

Riders gather to board the light rail at the Capitol Hill Station in Seattle during the station’s first day of operation.

In the long run, of course, taxpayers have to pay back those bonds with interest, but in the relatively short term — in this case, a quarter-century — this economic magic trick frees enough cash flow to allow Sound Transit to break ground on eight of its projects years earlier than planned.

Cash flow: That’s the keyword here. The whole dilemma of finance, after all, is balancing the value of getting money you can invest in transit now (which will pay dividends to individuals and the economy as the Puget Sound area gets more and more crowded) against the price of borrowing (that is, interest). Functional governments can usually borrow money on the cheap because it’s a safe investment: It’s hard for a debtor to skip town when the debtor is a town. On the other hand, there’s a limit to how much even a municipality can borrow before it has so much debt — and so much associated risk of default — that its credit score gets downgraded and borrowing money via bonds becomes more expensive. This is what famously happened to our country’s credit score during the 2011

debt crisis.

In this case, Patrick says, the eggheads of fortune concluded that borrowing an extra $4 billion wouldn’t trigger a credit-score downgrade. So while it’s not free money — taxpayers have to pay it back eventually — it is cheap money.

Patrick explains how that cheap $4 billion can speed up eight different ST3 capital projects by 30 years cumulatively.

“There’s two main factors in how long it takes to build a project,” he says. “First, let’s say money’s no object, it’s just how long it will take to build something. You have to go through several steps.” In some cases, project timelines — without accounting for any kind of legal delays — can take up to 15 years, he says. “[You] go through all the steps of alternatives analysis and environmental review, and then preliminary engineering takes you up to 30 percent design completion, then you go to final design — that’s 100 percent — and then you have to build it and open it,” says Patrick. “So it’s a significant time period with any major mass-transit project.

“Factor two is you also have to take into account your cash flow,” he says. That means making sure the right amount of money is available at the right time to pay for pencils, asphalt, and whatever else the builder gnomes of the regional transit district need to complete their transit mission. “Part of the challenge that we had with the draft measure is the cash flow was such that some projects were occurring later in the timeline than we wanted to, just by virtue of cash flow,” says Patrick. “In other words, [projects were delayed] not by how long it would take to build them, but by revenues.”

So you want to borrow revenues to speed them up. But doesn’t that add risk?

One of the main talking points against ST3 — as articulated by the reliably anti-transit Seattle Times editorial board — is that it has too big a budget and too little oversight. On the other hand, the Times and the No on ST3 campaign website (which entirely relies on that Times editorial as its supporting “research”) are mostly upset about ST3 increasing taxes on property and cars.

Patrick says bonding is not particularly risky. “The Sound Transit 3 plan is built using direct funding for about 70 percent of the project cost and borrowing for about 30 percent of the project cost. In the greater scheme of things nationally, that kind of balance is very strong. There’s not an overextension, as far as the amount that’s appropriate to borrow. We’re able to do it with the assumption of maintaining our — outstanding, frankly — credit ratings.”

So are these new dates real? Can ST3 deliver Everett light rail five years sooner?

Well, we who inhabit the region all know how unreliable infrastructure projects are. Sometimes they finish on time, but sometimes they really don’t. Patrick says that ST3’s updated dates were always deliverable in terms of construction timelines.

The problem was cash flow and timing.

Now that those eggheads figured out how to squeeze another $4 billion out of thin air, there’s no built-in reason why ST3 shouldn’t be able to keep the dates that it promises.  — CASEY JAYWORK: 206-467-4332; cjaywork@seattleweekly.com

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 13

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14 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

SNOHOMISH COUNTY PERSPECTIVE

The northern exposure

4

ST3 is being sold as a necessary step in a region poised for exponential growth.

But what are Snohomish County taxpayers getting in return for what they’re giving?

Passengers load the Sounder train for Seattle from Edmonds. The Sounder was supposed to provide relief in Snohomish County as commuters awaited light rail.

But the northern portion of the commuter line has under-performed.

MICHAEL O’LEARY / THE HERALD

By NOAH HAGLUND The Daily Herald

W

hen Sound Transit unveiled a draft plan this spring for a massive regional expansion of light rail and bus lines, a collective gasp went up in the northern reaches of its service area.

The elected leaders from Snohomish County with the most riding on the Sound Transit 3 ballot measure were unwilling to support a plan that would have taken a quarter-century to start serving Everett with light rail and didn’t share their urgency about reaching the region’s aerospace manufacturing hub at Paine Field.

After the agency moved up the delivery date by five years, including the county airport, local leaders got on board. Light rail

is now envisioned to reach Everett in 2036, instead of 2041. There’s even talk of speeding that up by another year or two.

“It seems like a long timeline, but it’s a complex project,” said County Executive Dave Somers, who serves on Sound Transit’s Board of Directors. “I think the timeline we have now is a realistic one.”

Still, the $54 billion proposal known as ST3 is a tough sell north of the King County line. There is a sense — supported

by Sound Transit’s own numbers — that Snohomish County is bringing up the rear.

After chipping in nearly $1 billion in regional transit taxes since the mid-1990s, the return on the investment for local voters has been a system of buses and heavy rail that can be stalled by a hard rain.

For every dollar an Everett voter has paid into the regional transit system so far,

they’ve seen roughly 83 cents in services and projects, data show. Contrast that to Seattle, where a subway system has been built and voters have seen $1.25 spent for every dollar they’ve paid in regional transit taxes.

Skeptics say that ST3’s emphasis on light rail and continuation of the under-performing Sounder north heavy-rail line are a waste of taxpayer money. Transit riders would be better served, they contend, by focusing on more buses, including busbased rapid transit with dedicated lanes.

“With light rail, we’re getting a glorified, astronomically priced streetcar,” reads one handout from the group Smarter Transit.

Supporters, meanwhile, worry that if ST3 fails, the region from Tacoma to Everett could be paying the price for decades, as the area grows by another million people.

They don’t think buses alone will help or even save much money compared with light rail.

“We’re already 30 to 40 years behind,” Somers said.

Sticking point Since Sound Transit’s inception in the 1990s, getting light rail to Everett has been a sticking point.

A majority of Snohomish County voters cast ballots in favor of the successful Sound Move measure in 1996 and Sound Transit 2 in 2008. They opposed the agency’s failed funding proposals in 1995 and 2007.

On Nov. 8, they’ll be making the biggest funding decision in Sound Transit’s history.

The crucial vote comes almost exactly 20 years since the region green-lighted the first round of Sound Transit projects.

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 15 Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff has offered assurances that his agency can deliver the package on time and within budget, if voters give their blessing.

ST3 would knit together the region with new Link light-rail routes to Everett, Tacoma, Ballard, West Seattle, Redmond and Issaquah. The finished system would span 116 miles on four separate lines.

“This proposal is one that would deliver on that vision that has been in place for more than 20 years,” said Geoff Patrick, a Sound Transit spokesman.

Under the plan, by 2036 Link light rail trains would run between Everett and Seattle every six minutes, swooping west along the way to reach Paine Field. The trip would take an hour.

Each Link train to Everett would have four cars, with a combined capacity of 800 passengers. Double-decker commuter buses, by comparison, hold about 100 people with standing room.

Rapid transit buses with fully or partially dedicated travel lanes also figure into the ST3 plan. The package includes a new rapid-transit bus line between Lynnwood and Burien, mostly along I-405, and another serving northeast Seattle, Lake Forest Park, Bothell and Woodinville along Highway 522.

Sounder north stations would get more parking and the southern portion of the commuter line would be extended to DuPont.

In the early days of Sound Transit, leaders in Everett were upset that the initial funding package wouldn’t pay for light rail to their city. In 1994, then-Everett Mayor Ed Hansen objected when the agency agreed to make Everett “a first priority” in the next phase of expansion, rather than “the first priority.”

In 1995, a $6.7 billion transit proposal failed at the polls. Fifty-three percent of the region’s voters said no. In Everett, 80 percent did.

The agency, which wasn’t yet known as Sound Transit, returned in November 1996 with a smaller $3.9 billion package to build light rail between Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and Seattle’s University District. The measure passed, but plans were scaled back in 2001 because of cost overruns.

The Sounder train along waterfront rail tracks was supposed to provide relief in Snohomish County, as commuters awaited light rail. But the northern portion of the commuter line has under-performed.

The Sounder began serving Everett, Edmonds and Seattle in 2003, with a Mukilteo stop added in 2008.

As early as 1997, there were worries about landslides disrupting train service during the rainy season as well as the low number of Sounder riders for the money

Construction on the Northgate Lightrail link extension on the right as cars pass on northbound I-5 in December last year.

IAN TERRY / THE HERALD

invested. Those concerns turned out to be well-founded.

Commuters pay $5 for a rail trip from Everett to Seattle. The most recent Sound Transit figures show a cost of $17.23 per boarding on Seattle-to-Everett trains. That number comes from the agency and is disputed by some critics, who believe the true cost is actually higher.

The north line carries only about a tenth of the commuter passengers as the south Sounder line between Tacoma and Seattle but costs nearly twice as much per boarding, according to recent Sound Transit figures. Slide-related cancellations after rainstorms have dampened ridership on the north line, though things did improve last year after a series of slope-stabilization projects near the tracks.

Edmonds Mayor Dave Earling serves on the Sound Transit board now and also was one of the original board members in the 1990s. Though the agency hasn’t delivered everything people envisioned at the outset, Earling backs ST3 as the best path forward.

To understand why traffic solutions are so difficult, he asks people to step back and imagine a map of the Puget Sound area.

“We bulge at the top and the bottom, in Snohomish and Pierce counties,” he said.

“That land mass starts to become pretty narrow as you go into Seattle and there’s the same kind of restriction on the east side of Lake Washington.”

Earling isn’t convinced that more buses will help relieve the congestion, especially considering the strain geography puts on local roads, starting with I-5.

“Part of the challenge we’ve dealt with from day one is the hourglass shape of our area,” he said.

Gary Nelson, also of Edmonds, helped write the opposition statement on ST3 for the voter pamphlet. A former Snohomish

County councilman and state lawmaker, the Republican used to support Sound Transit. He no longer does, given his past experience with Sounder trains and other aspects of the system.

“I love transit. I think it’s one of the best things for the Puget Sound region,” Nelson said. “I’m also realistic enough to determine how many people are going to use the transit and how much it’s going to cost.”

Buses, in his opinion, are a much better option than light rail.

“The question people have to ask themselves is, ‘Are we getting a good investment on tax dollars over the next 20 to 30 years?’” he said.

Big money Sound Transit collected more than $7.7 billion in taxes and another $2 billion in grants from 1997 through 2015. Its service district includes most of the urban portions of Snohomish, King and Pierce counties.

Snohomish County, least populous of the three counties, has put in more than $1 billion of the total and has received $870 million back in projects and services, according to figures from the agency.

That doesn’t mean the county is getting short-changed, said Patrick, the Sound Transit spokesman. The transit money spent in Snohomish County should start to even out, as construction begins on projects approved in 2008 as part of Sound Transit 2.

Construction on the light-rail line to Lynnwood from Northgate is expected to break ground in 2018, with service starting in 2023.

“It’s in construction when you start burning dollars in a big way,” Patrick said.

The ST3 plan shows Snohomish County getting back rail, bus and Sounder projects equivalent to all $9.3 billion that

it would put in.

ST3 would pay for projects through sales tax, property tax and car-tab fees.

The money is collected and spent within five separate subareas that are intended to provide geographical equity throughout the system, but also are viewed by some insiders as an impediment to doing what’s right for the region as a whole.

Sales tax would rise by a half a percent or 50 cents on a $100 purchase. The rate would rise to 9.7 cents per dollar in Everett and to more than 10 cents per dollar in much of south Snohomish County.

Car-tab fees would go up by 0.8 percent, the equivalent of $80 annually on a $10,000 vehicle.

Property tax would go up 25 cents for each $1,000 of assessed valuation, or $100 annually for a house valued at $400,000.

That’s on top of what people are paying already for Sound Transit: 0.9 percent in sales tax and 0.3 percent in car-tab fees, also known as motor vehicle excise tax.

Tax statements identify those amounts as funding for the “Regional Transit Authority.” Sound Transit also collects a smaller portion of its revenue through a 0.8 percent sales tax on rental cars.

Basic research Not everyone’s sold on the plan.

“People need to do some basic research to figure out what they’re being asked to buy,” said Maggie Fimia, a former King County council member who has helped lead opposition to ST3.

Fimia, who now calls Edmonds home, says many of the new light-rail riders Sound Transit forecasts would actually be current transit users switching over from a bus route rather than abandoning their cars or SUVs. She’d rather see tax money spent on bus lines similar to Community Transit’s Swift service along Highway 99.

“Buses are great because you can do things incrementally,” she said. “You don’t have to invest a lot of money to see the results.”

Somers, the Snohomish County executive, counters that ST3 may be the last, best chance to complete a regional transit system before traffic gets worse. Buses won’t cut it, he said, because they would either wind up stuck in gridlock or would require taking away freeway lanes from drivers.

Getting another transit plan to a vote could take years, he said, and is likely to be more expensive than ST3.

“The stakes are that it might never get done,” he said. “We’ll be adding to future costs if we don’t do this now.”

The question is up to voters on Nov. 8.  — NOAH HAGLUND: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com.

Twitter: @NWhaglund.

16 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition

Why should you vote against Sound Transit 3?

It Doesn’t Reduce Congestion.

Sound Transit admits that its $54 billion plan will not reduce traffic congestion. Even in a best-case scenario, Sound Transit 3 projects won’t be completed for another 25 years - until 2041 and then over 90% of the projected trips will be taken by existing bus riders. Dozens of bus routes have and will be cancelled or rerouted to feed the trains.

$54 Billion in Harmful Tax Increases.

Sound Transit 3 would be the largest tax increase in state history - a $54 billion blank check that creates a “forever tax” and does not have to come back to voters. Sound Transit 3 will cost the average family of four more than $700 per year in new sales, property, and vehicle taxes. These new taxes will jeopardize education funding and limit the ability of cities and counties to make necessary infrastructure investments. Our State Superintendent of schools is opposed to ST3.

Wasteful Spending.

For more information, please visit: NoST3.org Paid for by No on Sound Transit 3.

11410 NE 124th St #734, Kirkland, WA 98034. TOP 5 Contributors: Charles Collins, Bruce Hand, Kevin Wallace, and Save Our Trail.

A Seattle Times investigation found Sound Transit’s overruns were already 86% over what voters approved in 1996. Just last year, Sound Transit spent $1 million taxpayer dollars on a fancy party to “celebrate” the opening of a station nearly 10 years behind schedule. Sound Transit’s unelected and unaccountable Board cannot be trusted with an additional $54 billion of our money - especially for a proposal that won’t be completed until 2041.

Special Interest Conflicts.

The Sound Transit 3 campaign is powered by millions of dollars from special interests - such as the large engineering and construction firms which stand to benefit from another 25 years worth of work paid for by property, vehicle, and sales tax hikes. The motivation behind Sound Transit 3 isn’t improving our transportation system - it’s about making money for the special interests. $95 million dollars is in ST3 for ST4 planning!

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The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 17

BUS RAPID TRANSIT

The BRT route

A RapidRide B-Line bus at the Bellevue Transit Center on Sept. 23.

IAN TERRY / THE HERALD

Buses are oft-cited as a cheaper, easier option to expanding light rail: Here’s what ST3 offers

By Daniel Person Seattle Weekly

In Seattle Weekly’s “Best of Seattle” reader poll this year, readers voted the D Line, which runs from downtown to Crown Heights, Seattle’s best bus route.

D Line driver Steve Ford wasn’t surprised. With far fewer stops than a conventional bus route and a ticketing system that allows people to board in the front or the back, he says riders appreciate the quicker rides through town. “You see how long it can take to get people on and off the bus.

This eliminates a lot of that.”

The D Line is part of King County Metro’s

RapidRide system, which is a form of what’s known as Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT, and the rider experience on the D Line could be a harbinger of things to come.

While building out the region’s light rail network is clearly the centerpiece of ST3, two vital corridors in the region would receive “Bus Rapid Transit” service under the plan, and the RapidRide system will get an infusion of funds to improve existing lines.

King County’s RapidRide system is considered “BRT-lite,” since it doesn’t feature many of the amenities more robust systems do.

The buses have no dedicated lanes, meaning they are still subject to traffic congestion.

Still, the lines, which began to roll out in

2010, do have traffic-signal priority — that is, lights turn green to get them through intersections — and a few special lanes they can use to bypass traffic. While some commuters continue to grumble that the rides are hardly rapid, the Weekly’s reader poll isn’t the only vote of confidence the buses have received.

The three busiest RapidRide lines have about 50 percent more ridership than the lines they replaced.

Proponents of BRT argue that ST3 spends way too much on rail where it could just deploy buses. Done right, they say, most of the benefits of rail transit can be achieved for a fraction of the cost and with far more flexibility, since buses can be

deployed elsewhere if ridership demand shifts. “Gold standard” BRT — a rarity in the United States but common in South America — features grade-separated lanes for buses as long as Link Light Rail trains.

Though still not up to Gold Standard, the new BRT lines planned for in ST3 are more robust than RapidRide, and the overall plan shows some of the advantages of BRT over light rail.

First, there’s the speed of building out the systems. The BRT lines in the plan will run along I-405/SR 518 and SR 522 — all Eastside highways that are notorious for their choked traffic and in need of quick relief. While many places promised light

18 October 2016 The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition rail in ST3 will be waiting decades for the service to actually get built, the BRT lines are scheduled to be deployed by 2024.

Also, the cost-per-rider on the BRT lines is expected to be lower than with other Eastside projects. The I-405 BRT, running from Lynnwood to Burien, is estimated to cost between $687 million and $735 million to build (in 2014 dollars), and is expected to carry 11,000 to 13,000 riders per day by 2040.

By comparison, the light rail between downtown Redmond and the Microsoft campus — a distance of 3.7 miles — is expected to cost between $1 billion and $1.1 billion and carry between 7,000 and 9,000 people.

However, those savings may come at the expense of reliability. Sound Transit would not be building a dedicated lane for buses along I-405 (though it would build a dedicated lane on SR 518 between Tukwila and Burien). In general, the buses will use general-purpose lanes, including the new Express Toll Lanes on I-405, which use a sliding rate to manage traffic volume. That may strike some as worrisome, since the Express Toll Lanes are already filling up and traffic is expected to get worse in coming years. While the Washington Department of Transportation says the express toll has achieved its goal of keeping traffic moving at 45 mph or faster 90 percent of the time, the toll is already routinely maxing out at $10, leading to questions of how long it will be until even $10 draws more drivers than the lane can handle.

A few cities along I-405 were also miffed that ST3 moved away from features entertained early in the planning process. This includes so-called “in-line stops” throughout the line that would allow riders to pick up the bus directly from the side of the freeway, rather than forcing the bus to get off and back onto the highway. The current plan includes two in-line stations — one in Kirkland and another in Renton — but Eastsiders wanted more, since in-line stops allow the line to serve more people with very little impact on travel time (a letter signed by the mayors of Bellevue, Bothell and several other cities questioned if the line even deserved to be called “BRT” at all, given what they perceived as a lack of investment in the line).

As far as what the actual service will look like, the I-405 BRT would run every 10 minutes during rush hours, and every 15 minutes for the rest of the day. There would be just 11 stops on the line, and it would take 87 minutes to get from Lynnwood to Burien. On the SR 522 end, there would be nine stops between UW Bothell and NE 145th in Seattle. Service frequency would be the same as I-405.

Last but not least: parking. The BRT projects would include construction of five new garages, creating 2,200 new parking spaces across the two lines. 

LIGHT RAIL

Not a smooth ride A brief history of light rail in the Puget Sound area

By DANIEL PERSON Seattle Weekly

W

hen voters say “yes” or “no” this fall to Proposition 1, they in essence will be saying “yes” or “no” to light rail.

Elsewhere in this package you have read arguments for and against ST3, and nearly every one of those arguments will come down to whether or not the light rail system now in its infancy in Seattle should be expanded region-wide, from Tacoma to Everett, from Redmond to West Seattle.

Central to arguments both for and against will be the region’s history so far with light rail, with proponents arguing that it has fundamentally changed the way people get around Seattle — and that that shift is necessary for the entire region — and opponents saying it has been too slow in coming on line, too expensive to build, and not as impactful as others make it out to be.

Voters first said yes to light rail back in 1996, with the $3.9 billion Sound Move initiative, which also created Sound Transit as a regional authority. Like ST3, the package offered a mix of light rail, bus and commuter rail services. But the big-ticket item was a $1.7 billion light rail system running from the University of Washington to SeaTac Airport, expected to be completed within 10 years. Creating an entirely new transportation system in Seattle promised both big risks and rewards. It delivered both.

Early on in the construction of Link Light Rail, it appeared Sound Transit may collapse completely, and the light rail plan

along with it. The cost of the project quickly began to balloon — the Associated Press reported in 2001 that the project was already $1 billion over budget, and no rail had even been laid down. The cost overruns led federal officials to withhold large grants, further imperiling the plan’s finances.

A series of executives resigned from the agency, and in 2001 new CEO Joni Earl announced that the light rail line would only go 2/3s of the promised length — stopping at Westlake rather than UW; would cost more; and would take longer to complete.

Not a good way to introduce taxpayers to a new, multibillion-dollar agency.

And yet, with all that, voters within the designated Sound Transit taxing district continued to respond to the idea of a light rail system in the region. In 2008, before the initial expanse of light rail had even been completed, voters approved ST2, which included 36 miles of new light rail track.

That vote marked the beginning of brighter days for Sound Transit, and in particular its light rail system. In 2009, the light rail from Westlake to SeaTac finally opened; also, in the mid-aughts, the federal government restored the hundreds of millions of dollars in funding it had previously withheld, allowing Sound Transit to move forward with its plan to bring light rail to Capitol Hill and UW under the auspices of the 1996 Sound Move measure. While critics long groused that light rail ridership has not lived up to what was promised, with the UW-SeaTac line finally complete, ridership has exploded — up 77 percent in summer 2016 compared to summer 2015 — and is far exceeding forecasts.

RIDERSHIP SHAPE

** With the passage of ST2 in 2008 came the promise of

a number of projects scheduled to be completed by 2030. These include Link light-rail service to the Eastside, Lynnwood, and the Kent-Des Moines area by 2023.

*** If the $54 billion Sound Transit 3 package passes this

150,740*

2030 2040 SOURCE: SOUND TRANSIT

— DANIEL PERSON: 206-467-4381; dperson@seattleweekly.com

* Current ridership of Sound Transit includes express buses, Sounder rail, Link light rail, and paratransit.

The average number of Sound Transit riders each weekday.

2016

It’s not hard to understand why the public has responded to the new line.

People have attested to literally crying as they commuted from the U District to downtown in eight minutes after years of seeing trips to the city center become more and more impossible due to surface streettraffic snarls. Light rail advocates hope that Everett, Eastside, and Tacoma commuters will imagine the same joyous escape from the freeway in their own lives and approve a plan that would connect them to the system (though, to be clear, trips from out of Seattle promise to be longer than eight minutes; the Tacoma Dome-to-downtown Seattle trip is pegged at 70 minutes).

There’s also evidence that Sound Transit is becoming better at predicting how expensive light rail will be to build, and how long it will take to build it. Mike Lindblom at The Seattle Times recently calculated the total cost overruns of the 1996 ballot measure, and arrived at about 86 percent.

Not good. However, in applying for federal grants to finish the Westlake to UW line, the agency was required to complete a new budget and timeline; it beat both.

And yet the early history of light rail will provide critics with a ready — and legitimate — argument against the system: its ability to lock the region into wildly expensive transit systems. Once you start laying track, it’s very difficult to scrap the plan altogether.

Still, if you’re one of those people crying on your commute to downtown, you probably don’t care. 

358,000**

November, riders should expect light-rail service to West Seattle, Tacoma, Ballard, and Everett to be completed by 2036. ST3 also includes a new bus rapid-transit line between Lynnwood and Burien, as well as the extension of the Sounder heavy rail line as far south as DuPont.

695,000*** JOE TRUJILLO / SEATTLE WEEKLY

The Transit Question: A Sound Publishing Special Edition October 2016 19

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BUILD SOMETHING BETTER TOGETHER, WITH IBEW MEMBERS! • THE WORLD’S FINEST ELECTRICIANS • IBEW Local 46 is home to quality skilled electricians.

Creating local jobs IBEW is working to inspire our regional transit system With FREE Continuing Education to our members, their skills and knowledge stay up to date with the lastest regulations and technologies.

WE SUPPORT ST3 19802 62nd Ave S • Suite 105 • Kent WA 98032 253-395-6500 • www.ibew46.org 1697578