With less than a year remaining until a joint roads and transit ballot measure goes before the region’s voters, Sound Transit is still wrangling over the details of a light-rail proposal that could make or break the joint initiative. Still up in the air are key questions that will determine how long the line will be, when it will be built, and whether it will sell with tax-weary voters.
The discussion is loaded with potential pitfalls and unanswered questions. When will light rail get to Northgate? How much money will Pierce and Snohomish Counties have to give King County to make light rail work? How long will the line ultimately be? And how much future money will King County have to pledge to its partner counties to get them to contribute funding for light rail now? All three counties must agree on a scenario for it to move forward, but all three have very different, often competing, interests. Additionally, money spent in each Sound Transit “subarea” must benefit that area; if it doesn’t, the money has to be repaid.
The first point of contention is how high of a sales tax hike voters will be willing to approve. The smaller level, 0.4 percent, would be more palatable to tax-averse areas such as rural King and Snohomish Counties, where voters are likely to balk at a hike that results in a sales tax near 10 percent. But the lower tax level, as currently configured, wouldn’t get light rail very far at all—to Federal Way on the south end, and to Mountlake Terrace in the north. A more-likely scenario is the higher 0.5 percent tax hike. That gets light rail all the way to Fife (or, as Sound Transit prefers to call it, the “Port of Tacoma”) and Lynnwood. Neither of those scenarios guarantees light rail to Tacoma—a potential deal breaker in Pierce County. And unless Snohomish County agrees to loan King County money, about $385 million, light rail won’t get to Northgate until 2027—a political nonstarter in King County.
Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon is dead-set against spending any Snohomish County money to build light rail faster in King County. He says he “would imagine my voters would not be very warm to it.” After all, Reardon notes, any “loan” by Snohomish County to King County would only be repaid if voters approve additional Sound Transit taxes to be spent in Snohomish County in the future. “Lots of people would be paying that tax, and I couldn’t guarantee them that it would ever be repaid.”
Reardon says his main goal is “to get light rail to Lynnwood in 2027 and maximize the delivery of light rail” in Snohomish County. He’s “not willing,” he adds, “to support the allocation of $385 million to expedite the Northgate project.” What he is willing to do, Reardon says, is “work with my fellow board members from King County to find a way to expedite Northgate.”
But that position doesn’t sit well with King County members of the Sound Transit board and Seattle transit advocates, who are adamant that light rail must get to Northgate by 2018. The reasoning is primarily political: Seattle voters, who must overwhelmingly approve Sound Transit for the next phase to win at the polls, expect light rail to Northgate sooner rather than later. “People thought Sound Move [the original Sound Transit measure, passed in 1996] funded light rail all the way to Northgate,” says Rob Johnson, policy director of the Transportation Choices Coalition. “The project delivery to Northgate and the timeline for light rail will make all the difference.”
In Pierce County, voters will be asked to export as much as $859 million of their tax dollars to King County; in exchange, they’ll get light rail nearby, but not in their largest urban center, Tacoma. Selling that to voters could prove difficult. Pierce County Executive and Sound Transit board chairman John Ladenburg says the expenditure is worth it because the farther south light rail gets, the more it will benefit Pierce County residents.
Even so, Ladenburg acknowledges that “it’s a huge problem” that none of the current scenarios show light rail going all the way to downtown Tacoma. “The Tacoma Dome is our intermodal center. We’ll have Link [light rail] there, bus rapid transit, Sounder [commuter rail], private bus companies, Amtrak—everybody will be there but [light rail from] Seattle. It’ll be two miles away. Pierce County already has numerous Sound Transit projects up and running, including commuter rail, long-distance buses, and a short light-rail line.
Some Sound Transit board members see opportunities to make life easier for themselves at the state legislature, which convenes in January 2007. One option is asking the legislature for additional taxing authority, such as a motor-vehicle excise tax—a move that would lessen pressure on the sales tax and could provide funding for all three counties’ pet projects. Another possibility is splitting up Sound Transit and the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) on the November ballot; currently, both roads and transit measures must pass for either to pass. That would allow Sound Transit to move forward in 2007 independent of the roads measure, or wait until 2008, giving the agency time to concoct a plan that uses new revenue sources.
Currently, Sound Transit spokesman Geoff Patrick says, the board is working through “a bunch of very complicated models” to get to Northgate and, potentially, Tacoma. The ultimate plan will depend on where the board decides to focus its spending, how fast it wants to build, and what financial assumptions it decides to use. “Nothing’s set in stone” yet, Patrick says. 