Hutchison: Light Rail Tomorrow and Light Rail Yesterday—But Never Light Rail Today

Earlier this week, Susan Hutchison said the light rail line to the Eastside line that voters approved last fall should cross a new 520 bridge across Lake Washington instead of using the existing I-90 express lanes. Bad enough idea in itself—added delays, an Eastside route that skips most of Bellevue, and generally impractical—but wait! How long does Hutchison want us to wait before light rail would be built? In early September, she said (here and here) that Sound Transit should have laid its tracks eastward instead of building the initial line from downtown to the airport.

But let’s retrace the dots. If you connect those two statements, Hutchison is basically saying Sound Transit should have built no light rail at all until a new 520 bridge is open—in 2014 at the earliest. Considering Bellevue developer and anti-transit zealot Kemper Freeman’s support (his company donated $25,000 to the hit ad against light-rail champion Dow Constantine, who’s running against Hutchy, and he and his wife have both made maximum contributions to her campaign), delaying light rail to death would make sense. According to Hutchinstein’s logic, the airport line should have never been built. Now that it’s there, she says she supports building another light rail line in the future—an impractical line—but come 2014, who knows if she’ll even support that.