Hey, let the bitchin' begin. Let's just remember though that, if the do-nothing crowd had gotten its way with the 1996 ST1 vote or when Sound Transit was facing problems in the early 2000s, we would have no subway to Capitol Hill and the UW today.

I'm a big transit booster, but 22 years for Ballard? Come on, man. At least my grandkids will get a lot of use out of it.

Shockingly disappointing, utterly unacceptable timelines. But at least this is a draft. Let the noise begin.

This is not very good. I have voted for every transit measure going back to 1988 when I could first vote and I am strongly considering voting no.

The timeline is insane. China would have this project done in less than a decade. No fucking way I'm voting on a project that won't come to my neighborhood (West Seattle) until I'm in my 50s.

@1: I wonder how First Hill and the Central District feel about that thing that they voted for 20 years ago, will be paying for 20 years more, and from which they get literally zero useful mobility.

Nobody is riding trains to Federal Way, or from a suburban tract home to a job 2 miles across the Boeing campus from "Industrial Park" station, or to "Lakemont", whatever the fuck that is. It is literally insane to force billions of dollars worth of "light rail" square peg into that sprawling round hole... much less to delay real urban transit (and then build a worst-practices version thereof) in order to do so.

Crap is crap. It's time to stop voting for Sound Transit's endless lipsticked-pig parade.

The Sound Transit 3 (ST3) plan "delivers on the promise of a truly regional mass transit system for generations to come,"

No, it delivers in generations. No way am I voting for something I can't ride until I'm 74! And that's if it is on time! At the estimated tax rate I'll have paid $3400 for the first trip. Will we get free tickets in the amount of taxes we've paid?

You all do realize that they can't just ask taxpayers for the entire $27 billion in one year, right? It has to staggered over many years to make the taxes affordable, not to mention the federal grants involved. And even if they did magically come up with all that money at once, where would they find enough civil engineers and construction workers to meet the demand? And no, we're not China--they can't just forcibly relocate every property owner along the future routes. They have to negotiate and buy the properties. Think it through, people. Jesus.

It's an awesome plan, and bravo to the Board for going bold.

And the alternative to building out the system is what, exactly? Especially considering that a million more people will be living in our region by 2040, maybe more if climate change accelerates. Do we just wave jazz hands and take up permanent residency in our cars?

It was the total failure of previous generations of Seattleites to plan for the future that landed us in the fustercluck that we're living through today.

We won't need this once we're all making $89/hr from home. See @10 for details!

d.p. @7, let's dissect a bit what you had to say about ST3 from another thread today.

First: ST3 would be my first "no" vote on a transit proposition (or frankly on any form of public-good tax levy) ever.

With that in mind, you write: Sound Transit is, quixotically and somewhat anti-democratically, relying on a Seattle supermajority to buoy its electoral math, i.e. to ensure district-wide passage and taxation over the popular objection of 3 subareas already assured to vote "no".

If your complaint about ST3 is that it appeals more to the City of Seattle than the suburbs, then you could made that same complaint in spades about ST1 and ST2. Much of what's driving ST3 is the suburbs' desire, whether you think they're a bunch of misguided hicks or not, to have the central light rail spine extended to reach them.

Next: The weak-sauce Seattle offerings are likely to chip away at the "desparate for transit" vote in the city too.

"Desparate?" Hey, next time you might want to try spell-check. But anyway, those same "weak-sauce" Seattle offerings mainly consist of finally serving the monorail's Green Line corridor that Seattleites consistently voted for until the project couldn't make up its shortfall. If you don't think light rail connecting Ballard and Uptown and West Seattle to downtown and introducing a second downtown light rail tunnel that opens up all sorts of possibilities is the most transformative in-city transit improvement since the thing that just opened a few days ago, then I can understand why you might not be on the same page with those 22K additional daily riders.

And finally from that earlier post: Why would anyone vote for 20 years of no relief at all, and basically useless shit after that?

So hold on here, you complain about the "weak sauce" we're waiting for. But almost by definition, anything that could be delivered sooner will by definition be so much weaker.

Original Andrew @11: And the alternative to building out the system is what, exactly?

I believe the alternative Cascadian and Keenan C and d.p. and crankybiker have is for the next generation's Cascadian and Keenan C and d.p. and crankybiker to be bitchin' about how hard it is to get around town and why previous generations were so selfish and didn't have any foresight. In terms of movies, think "Groundhog Day," not "Pay It Forward."

The sad thing is, so much of what made American this great and affluent nation was the willingness of Americans, some of them real religious types, to sacrifice for future generations. I realize how hard it is for folks today to understand that mindset.

[sigh]

As flattering as it may be that you're making this about me, Cressona, rather than about the abject ineffectiveness of Sound Transit's proposal, you have seemingly bent over backwards to misread what I said.

Indeed, Sound Transit's electoral math has long relied on the desperation of the Seattle voter -- combined with generous helpings of wishful thinking and ignorance about the fundamentals of transit geometry (i.e. what separates "effective and helpful to the masses on a daily basis" from "symbolic crap that sort of looks like Europe if you squint, but won't get you where you actually need to go") -- to give it 60-65% approval in every election. Thus compensating for break-even votes in Snohomish and East King, along with 45% (or less) losses in South King and Pierce.

So yes, this proposal obviously continues to take Seattle votes for granted. My prediction is that the cruddiness of the package will finally cause that strategy to backfire. Badly. Let's check back in November, shall we?

p.s. You should probably not conflate the ribbon-cutting desires of politicians who have been absorbed into the self-justifying ST fold with the genuine transit needs (or willingness to self-tax for questionable aims) of the genuine populace. The mayors of Ogdenville, Brockway, and North Haverbrook just wanted to be on the map too.

p.p.s. Perhaps it's time for you to stop policing the spelling of those you consider threats to your true-believer faith in magic rails to the 5 commercial flights per day that Paine Field will ever see, and to start educating yourself about why some mass transit networks are life-changing, while others run dozens of miles of empty trains around for no reason, at the expense of billions of dollars in other worthwhile priorities. Because you are mindlessly and destructively endorsing the latter.

I'll pay for it. In fact, I will pay $500 a year to have it all done by 2030 and I'm not even one of those rich tech workers. Or better yet, make the millionaires and billionaires in the Puget Sound pay a higher proportion of it and get it done even sooner. Take my money and give us the light rail that will reduce stress (fast transit time/more free time) and reduce environmental damage (fewer cars, cleaner air to breathe)

When I asked Constantine about what the package does to address social justice

Seriously? If the answer was absolutely fucking nothing, it would still be worthwhile.

According to Sound Transit, construction pace isn't the reason for the crazy-long timeline...funding is. Could any of these help speed it up a bunch?: 1) additional federal grants beyond what's budgeted; 2) if the regional economy or population growth continues to boom and tax revenue exceeds estimates; 3) cities hold separate ballot measures to pay what it would take to speed up their project(s) (obviously without slowing down others). Unless the marketing strategy for passing this ballot measure includes raising voters' hopes that the timeline might be *significantly* faster than proposed, I fear it will not pass. I'm a millennial, and I'll be retiring by the time the Seattle lines are open. I personally will vote for it either way, but FFS provide some hope that it'll get done sooner!

Ballard needs light rail yesterday. Fuck the suburbs.

@14 And there is the big picture, right. I HATE the timetable, but do I want to be that guy with his dick in his hand bitching about lack of transit in 20 years?

d.p. @15: Indeed, Sound Transit's electoral math has long relied on the desperationof the Seattle voter -- combined with generous helpings of wishful thinking and ignorance about the fundamentals of transit geometry

Is the existing system ideal? No. But it works. So far Sound Transit has demonstrated that they get a little something or two about transit geometry. You may not wish to admit it, but they have a track record of success.

It's easy for you to call us "true believers" who are "mindlessly" supporting a bad plan. I'll take that over mindlessly having blind faith in doing nothing or in waiting another four years for a better plan (how will we know it's better?) to emerge. I'll take an imperfect plan that promises some big successes even if that comes at the expense of some lesser failures.

Still waiting for that d.p. plan...

d.p. @15: As flattering as it may be that you're making this about me, Cressona, rather than about the abject ineffectiveness of Sound Transit's proposal,

Actually, d.p., as much as it appears you may wish it to be, this is not about you. It's about the ineffectiveness of the alternative you're offering. Or is there an alternative you're offering besides just saying no? Because if that is all your have to offer (and for all practical purposes it is), there's no distinction between your allegedly superior knowledge of transit planning and the desire of folks like Kemper Freeman to stop mass transit expansion in its tracks. (And every time there's a mass transit measure on the ballot, a whole brigade of armchair planners like you comes out of the woodwork to say what a lousy plan we have before us.)

You can say: So yes, this proposal obviously continues to take Seattle votes for granted.. But the thing is, ST3 is giving us Seattle voters pretty much what we've been asking for for years. Taking us for granted would involve not building a second transit tunnel or extending light rail to Ballard and West Seattle. But I guess, as far as you're concerned, none of us knows what's best for us because this whole light rail thing is too complicated for our small minds.

Not to sound like a cheerleader here. I happen to agree with Rotten666 @20: I HATE the timetable.

I think G g @18 offers some good perspective on that. ST3's Achilles' heel isn't the project list; it's the timeline. And giving some tangible hope or mechanisms for accelerating it may be just what's needed to get it over the finish line in November.

It is true that we need light rail to Ballard yesterday. It is also true that voting 'no' on this proposal will not make it happen any sooner. If this doesn't pass in the fall, it will be another four years before it's on the ballot. That's four years in which nothing whatsoever will happen toward building a rail line to Ballard.

Building a line to Ballard requires digging a tunnel and building a bridge. If they started on it tomorrow it would still be 10 years before it's finished. That sucks, but it's the way municipal transportation systems work.

If you really want the rail to Ballard, it's better to vote yes on this package, then lobby state or federal purses to chip in and speed this up. People who are threatening to vote no on this package are letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Hard not to blanche at the timetable. Hard not to gulp at the price. But that's the reality of building public infrastructure in a country with strong property laws. Maybe the Chinese could do it in 10 years, but the PRC has a little different view of eminent domain than we do in the US.

No matter what plan, no matter what timetable, there's always a better solution on paper. A solution that would never see the light of day because of the very real competing interests of the region. No matter what ST builds, somebody's going to be pissed that they didn't get the kind of cake they wanted. At bottom, this is about credibility, and right now, ST has that rarest asset for a public agency--proven performance.

Warts and all we will HAVE to do it anyway. Sorry. Everything that makes this place special will become unbearable without it.

So basically, the nay-sayers' argument seems to boil down to: "we should wait until Sound Transit hands us a perfect plan before proceeding", which of course will never happen, because there IS no "perfect" plan, only a litany of clearly imperfect ones that won't solve all our transit problems, but will still solve enough of them over time to have significant impact on our ability to move people around the region. What's that old saw about "the perfect is the enemy of the good"?

Love the idea of expanding rail. The timeline, however, is ridiculous. We can do better than this!

@26 Spot on. The whining is simply incredible. As someone who lives in Everett and thus won't see stations until 2041, the rest of you whining about time tables can all shut the fuck up. This plan is awesome and I can't wait to vote yes for it.

@21: See @7 again. First Hill + Central District = forever fucked.

No, the agency that has royally botched spacing, design, and access at every stage -- and which has you believing mid-5-digit cumulative usage on billions of dollars in grade-separated expenditures, representing a tiny minority trip-share even in the handful of urban neighborhoods it nominally "serves", somehow equates to "blockbuster" ridership -- does not actually know anything about transit geometry.

(Oooh! People occasionally have to stand in our tiny aisles at noon! We must be Tokyo now!")

It really is very simple, Cressona: This is a $50 billion plan, which somehow anticipates $25 billion in Federal subsidy despite flatly-unqualifying ROI everywhere save Ballard (if that line is not botched any further), that would still fail to get anyone remotely where they need to go in a non-excruciating manner 30 years from now.

You might be aware that I have been persona non grata for years within the credulous environs of Seattle's transit advocacy community. Yet in the past 24 hours, formerly blind supporters of Sound Transit have been emerging from the woodwork to declare this project list useless and unsupportable. As insane as it has always been that "employ your billions based on best practices rather than wishful thinking" has gotten me painted as a fringe or "anti-transit", I'm glad that the mass wake-up call is happening now, rather than 2 decades and tens of billions in waste from now.

So what would I advocate? I've spilled more digital ink on that than I'd ever care to quantify, but all of it can be boiled down to once concept: extremely high-value, wisely-chosen, situationally-appropriate capital investments of uncompromised quality, meticulously sited and conceived holistically as part of an integrated multi-modal transit network.

Here's one well-written (not by me) suggestion of how that might look: http://seattletransitblog.com/2015/11/30…

Vancouver's Skytrain + gridded bus network + suburban feeders add up to another guiding example: urban coverage, reliable transfers, zero architectural overkill, and fewer miles of rail than we'll have from ST2.

A rationalist plan for Seattle transit would necessarily require blowing up Sound Transit's current governing structure. I can see no downside to that, and I believe that a ballot-box failure in November will inevitably lead to the same anyway. A rationalist plan would also require some self-education about the relationships between density, contiguousness of the built area, multiplicity of demand generation (it ain't all about commuting), and usage geometries/demand.

That means we stop pretending that subways to Fife or Paine or some hypothetical "growth area" 2 miles outside of Issaquah (and right along a segment of freeway that will never be crowded) make a single lick of sense. That means building really great transfer termini somewhere in Lynnwood and Des Moines and South Bellevue, and calling lateral expansions a day.

That means we stop pretending West Seattle is fucking Brooklyn -- it isn't even the Central District, or Q… -- or that the Feds would give us money for a $6 billion shuttle to their barely-top-20 commercial district (inaccessible to all other peninsula residents and a total yawn to the rest of the city, and actually making Delridge transit worse). That means we tell Dullard Dow to either grow a brain or go fuck himself.

And that means getting started on the high-value works, such as a 3-mile cross-Seattle subway north of the Canal, a new downtown transit tunnel, and various bus-only ramps and corridor enhancements... now! At this point a go-it-alone vote is vastly better than playing ball with the anointed Regionalist think tank. When ST3 fails, perhaps Sound Transit will come crawling back to this city's voters with something worth spending our appallingly regressive tax dollars on -- move-people projects, not just make-work projects -- if only to keep their jobs.

p.s. Vancouver's highly effective Canada Line was planned and built, soup to nuts, in a little under a decade and for only $2 billion. London and Paris are building massive new cross-city projects (appropriately scaled to their status as mega-cities, of course) in a similar time-frame.

There's only one explanation for asking for a 22-year timeline for the only remotely worthwhile pieces of this package: funding mechanisms hobbled by too much overpriced abject crap in the pipeline. Concoct a high-value package for (significantly) less total expense, and you fix the timeline too.

Yes, d.p., you're smarter than Dow Constantine and Peter Rogoff and all the rest of those Sound Transit idiots--people who will still be idiots even if they came back to the voters in another four years with just the plan you were looking for.

Tell you what, though, I'd rather live in a world led by idiots who get things done, however imperfectly, (see the Civil War, see Obamacare, every other worthwhile thing this republic has ever done), than live in your hermetically sealed world where you get to be the smartest person in the world and you have unlimited amounts of free time to tell everyone in forums like this one and Seattle Transit Blog as much.

And by the way, I don't necessarily disagree with you that you are the smartest person in that world of yours. I fully confess that I'm probably a bit of a dullard myself for siding with "Dullard Dow," who could easily win a contest as the most pro-transit county executive in America.

P.S. d.p. @29, over 600 words for a Slog comment? I'm quite impressed.

And no, I hadn't been aware that you were persona non grata in transit circles, although I'm starting to understand why, and perhaps for reasons that you may not fully appreciate yourself.

A pet rock would be more transit-literate than Constantine, and would likely be able to hold a more interesting conversation.

And Rogoff was the federal representative who came to celebrate RapidRide's pathetically hobbled unveiling a few years back, declaring it "rail on wheels". Whatever the fuck that means.

I will happily accept comparisons. But yeah, Seattle is pretty permanently fucked if you continue to treat either of those guys as Great Progressive Hopes.

p.s. Because, like yourself, that particular Seattle community has long been prone toward blind appeals to authority, alongside accumulated nuggets of "local common wisdom" that stand in direct opposition to decades of global precedent and established best practices, not to mention all accumulated understanding of rational human behavior.

I guess it's some king of tribal-bonding-groupthink thing, owing to Seattle's Germanic cultural heritage. Fortunately, it seems to be gradually evolving along with the demographics of the place.

Try not to remain the last credulous person in the room.

Hey, you could be New York and spend 2.5b and wait 15 years for a single station without any additional new service.

@19 devils advocate, but totally wrong: Ballard is booming with or without lightrail. Given the existing conditions, people are saying "I want in" and driving up rent and land prices with their demand. It certainly doesn't need light rail.

ST1 was started in 1996 and supposed to be completed by 2006. 10 years late and billions over budget and now Sound Transit has spread the lie they are on time and under budget with almost no blowback from the media. This will be the most expensive public works in the history of America, except the entire nationwide highway system which cost 500 billion in 2016 dollars. ST3 will be 10 percent of that!?! To go to ballard and everett in 25 years? Great news for renters who live within walking distance of a station and dont drive, sure we property owners can pick up the tab for the what? 20% of seattleites who can or will use light rail? The 250 million for dedicated bike lanes for 2% of the population? Lets not even start on the failed bike share project.
Oh, and the new emergency 100 million for homeless, more than either New York or Los Angeles spends per person we will pick up that too.
I would love mass transit that works for everyone but this is only great for land owners near stations; that's very profitable, Husky football fans, that's a pretty good hike to the Ave. from there, and if you can walk to a station, because you can't drive and take the train, and maybe buskers?
Until you have some skin in the game stop cheering for every impractical and expensive plan thrown out there without researching the numbers first.

I don't think the proposal is necessarily bad, it's the math! Anytime the government is putting something out there like this we should not be asking what, but how and why? $50 billion, over 25 years? Who bid this? Was there a competitive analysis? Who stands to gain most, and at what point? What will the cost of labor and materials be 10 years, 20 years or even the end at 25 years be? Give me a vote now that reigns in the delivery date of a partial with cost and it makes sense. Once you start this it won't stop and will contracts be negotiated to prevent corruption for the next generation. If I vote this in now, will my children be cursing an outdated and antiquated system that bound them for $billions in tax dollars?

Construction time isn't the issue - funding is. So let's make this a wave election, turn out in droves for Bernary Clinders or Hillernie Sandton, take back the Senate and the all-important funding-deciding House, and make this one of those shovel-ready projects that the Feds can throw money at to accelerate.

Have some Tax Levies, Scarecrow. Thankfully I'll be far and away from Washington State to have to try and afford to live here AND pay for this future debacle (given past experiences with Bertha, leaky new bridges and crumbling Viaducts). I'm sure all the transplants will love forgoing their Audis, Teslas, Beemers and Benzes to help pay the 50b price tag. Welcome to the Emerald City Dorothy!!

Cities, counties, water districts, states, etc all can obtain bond financing to receive the money up front to build a capital project. Look at 520, do you think that is all paid for up front, I would imagine the state has bonds in place to front the money now for repayment by the highway tolls. You can do the same thing with taxes that are directed to a project. Will it cost more to receive this money, yes however it would behove the goverment to move forward on this quickly. This project will impact my life zero other than reproving traffic, I'm about to move to Edmonds.

It needs to be done in 10 or 15 years, and extend out more to the suburbs. Charge rich programmers like me a lot more in taxes (it's okay, I can take it. fucking charge bezos and gates a lot more too).

#45 Nick in Bellevue

So you are a rich programmers what does that mean? You make lots more than the rest us? Note to self rip off anyone claiming to be a rich programer. You have a very low grasp of how tax laws work.

Man I have missed reading d.p. comments and the best part is it is quite true.

Too late, doesn't function well and pretty much blowing billions for sub-par service. Light rail was never meant to go to Tacoma or Everett. That is where you have the RER and S-Bahn come in for those long distances. Sounder South gets nothing out of this. Lynnwood? Another parking garage? Lynnwood-Shoreline could get carved up and Belltown could potentially put a hole in this along with half of Pierce County especially the western section of Tacoma. Will LRT really benefit those travelling I-5? I highly doubt it. Sounder South cities will balk at this and I'm surprised Bonney Lake to Orting isn't asking out of the RTA let alone the rest of rural Pierce County.

Come back to the table will true service to Everett-DuPont using EMUs double stacked electric. Tacoma-Seattle can be done, get UP to buyoff on triple track freight corridor and use BNSF for passenger tracks, that'd get us faster Seattle-Portland too.

Get an actual metro West Seattle-Ballard in a shorter timeframe and make sure it serves Belltown. When you head to Everett with an RER service, have it stop in SLU or maybe an Aurora subway line via SLU. Either way this plan has got more pig than it does practicality.