Get fucked, Amazon. On Thursday, the Sound Transit Board of Directors did their job and picked what’s best for transit riders instead of doing favors for big business.
Last July, the board picked a spot on 7th Avenue and Harrison Street next to Aurora as their preferred alternative for the future South Lake Union station, a stop on the Ballard Line that is expected to open in 2039. But then, citing concerns about traffic, Vulcan Real Estate and Amazon asked the board to consider shifting the station a few blocks west, closer to the Seattle Center.
According to a memo from Sound Transit staff, the suggestion from big business would decrease ridership by about 2%, or about 3,000 people per day. The project would also need to go through environmental review, causing a delay of up to two years. Because of inflation, a month of delay means $50 million in added costs, so switching courses at this point would add up to between $500 million and more than $1 billion, as staff said in their memo. Ultimately, staff recommended the board “take no action, maintain the current preferred alternative, and not carry the potential new alternative into environmental review.”
Transit advocates got a little nervous about this proposal because Mayor Bruce Harrell, a powerful player on the board, would side with Amazon. So Seattle Subway asked supporters of well-connected transit to send an open letter to the board.
“You are faced with a pivotal decision today,” Seattle Subway’s letter opened. “What is more important to you: building a world class transit system that delivers on your promise to voters, or doing Amazon a favor?”
The advocates pointed out the inconsistency in switching the preferred alternative. Meeting after meeting, dozens of elders from the Chinatown-International District (CID) sat before the board and demanded the agency build the new CID station on 4th Avenue instead of on the less-connected North and South placement. Instead, the board chose the North and South placement as its preferred alternative, arguing that the 4th Avenue version would cost more. But now, Amazon and Vulcan waltz in and suddenly money’s not an issue?
But, to the somewhat confused delight of transit riders, Harrell gave Amazon and Vulcan the same cold shoulder he gives to the CID elders when they want expensive things. In the meeting, Harrell ultimately sided with the staff at Sound Transit. He said that while the corporate plan was feasible, he would not motion to carry it to an environmental review because he could not ignore the price associated with delays.
No one on the board fought him. He’s the freaking Mayor of Seattle.
While urbanists can put a tick on their side of the scoreboard, transit riders will continue to advocate for the 4th Ave regional hub in the CID instead of the North/South placement that anti-displacement advocates lobbied for and the board ultimately favored. Brien Chew from Transit Equity for All told The Stranger that there’s hope yet for the better-connected station because it is still going through environmental review.
“Sound Transit must prioritize transit riders in all of their decisions,” A Seattle Subway spokesperson said in a statement to The Stranger, “They did that today by preserving connections between Link and Rapid Ride. We hope that they prioritize transit riders again by building a consolidated transit hub in the CID —- the approach a responsible transit agency would take to serve transit riders and connect our region.”
Seattle Subway is still a thing?
Giving kudos to Mayor Harrell? This post is clearly the work of an imposter. What have you done with the real Ms Krieg?
Wonderful news. It’s nice that for once, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell chose to side with the Sound Transit Board, commuters utilizing the rail system, and the voters who elected him, and NOT KKKorporate billionaires.
Fuck you, Jeff Bezos ad nauseum! Amazon, like Boeing, for Bankruptcy 2024!
I just saw a disgusting picture [in The Seattle Times, “Landing in 3..2..1: Developers have revved up their projects in Seattle’s core, hoping to revitalize the area into a ‘livable downtown’,” Anna Edgerton, Front page, A1, Thursday, May 23, 2024] of a British made Formula 1 McLaren supercar valued at $1.7 million being lowered onto a $5 million Lake Union penthouse rooftop landing pad. All this excessive high rise megawealth while the property owners do their damnedest to avoid the city streets.
Hey, wasteful megarich pro-Turdist dumbfucks: wait until there’s a fire on your top floor with that unobstructed all-exclusive view of Puget Sound. That panic room isn’t gonna save your pathetic entitled asses, no matter how much you have in hedge funds. And especially if firefighters, like teachers, can’t afford to live in Seattle anymore.
I blame the GOP since Richard M. Nixon, the Reagans, Bushes, and especially the Orange Turd and its enablers for this shit.
I guess it’s time to punish those uppity Asians (F the concerns about their historically screwed over hood – we have phantom bus riders to worry about). Sick
sorry to @4 but Seattle is a rich peoples’s playground, a theme park where those of us who can’t afford even one home, let alone multiples, and have to live where we work are like Disney cast members. Blame all the boldfaced names you want but the boomers who are now living their best life from rental property, both multifamily and single family homes, own a lot of this.
Curmudgeon dear, I think the real villians in that particular melodrama is the City of Seattle, which has pretty much locked in single-family home ownership through the bastardization of the ADU program. It used to be that you could have an ADU, and it would be your rental property. Now, with the city allowing different ownership of a SFR and the associated ADU’s, they’ve created a situation where 4-6 property owners occupy a plot of land where there was formerly one property owners – thus making truly “dense” development in neighborhoods almost impossible.
And they did this while at the same time waiving all parking requirements, thus giving builders a big sloppy French Kiss without getting anything in return.
As for the light rail station, I agree that they should keep it where it was planned for the sake of cost containment and expediency, but I do think the location is sort of dumb and off the beaten path for employment centers. And I really don’t understand why Amazon would have wanted it closer to the Seattle Center.
As for the “North/South Placement” in “The CID,” it would be nice if Our Correspondent could be a little more descriptive about what that actually means, instead of just keeping a score of all the imagined victories and defeats of the business community. If by 4th AVe, they mean the area between King Street Station and the Union Station building, that seems to make an immense amount of sense, given the proximity to Link, Sounder, and Amtrak. Not to mention that the 4th Ave Viaduct that runs parallel to Union Station needs to be replaced anyway.
@6 local curmudgeon: I’m a Boomer, too, and I’m simply stating facts regarding the severe lack of housing affordability in Seattle. The days of a one bedroom apartment with a kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom and parking garage space for $560.00 / month are long gone.
The front page article I read in The Seattle Times offers glaring proof that the very PNW city where my parents, siblings, and I were born is now being groomed to only serve the 1%ers. To hell with what happens on the ground level anymore. Meanwhile, profiteering developers are chortling all the way to the bank.
@7: Nope. RepubliKKKans are horrible excuses for people. The GOP ever since Tricky Dicky has gotten infinitely worse over the last five decades. If I struck a sensitive nerve, tough noogies. It’s the indisputable truth.
Perhaps you should stop to reconsider before obediently mailing your SSDI check to pay off the Orange Turd’s lawyers, raindrop dear.
@8 Catalina Vel-DuRay; +1 Thank you. So well said. Agreed: The City of Seattle is equally to blame for poor housing policy. I find it sad that so much of what has made Seattle a livable and desirable place to work and live has been lost to corporate greed.
Let’s see, Raindrop dear…..
Greed
Racism
Voter suppression
Transactional Christianity
Anti-Regulation
Anti-Environment
Anti-Healthcare
High taxation for the middle class in order to support the wealthy
Budget Busting tax cuts
Anti-social programs
Anti-choice
Anti-affirmative action
Fear Mongering
Judicial captivity/corruption
Really, all Republicans have to offer is anti anything. They are horrible people.
@10: I recommend you read comment @11 and take serious notes, provided youo know how to read.
Then go eat your paste before you really start to crack up, raindrop dear.
@11 Catalina Vel-DuRay: +1 for the WIN!!! 🙂
@13: Too late–you’re cracking up enough, already, raindrop dear!
The rocks come with the farm, Raindrop dear. trump is the presumed Republican candidate.
As for “conservative”, what is a conservative these days? It seems to be a name for a collection of crooks, bible-addled nitwits, racists, fascists, and/or sociopaths.
Speaking of names and what we call things, didn’t Vulcan quietly change their name recently? It’s something a little more generic and less “my brother was a scifi nerd” like Vale or Vail.
Stop evading the question, Raindrop dear. It’s unbecoming.