Earl is the one to shift Sound Transit into gear

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Sound Transit has the right person in charge. New executive director Joni Earl must now use her position to help develop a reasoned, workable vision of how to start light rail.

Earl has performed extremely well since being appointed as interim director in January. Among an outstanding list of finalists for the permanent position, she stood out for a very simple reason. She was doing the job, cleaning up the mess made by Sound Transit’s continual inflation of planned light rail costs.

The board, composed of elected officials from around the region, would have engaged in the folly of political posturing if it had rejected Earl and brought in an outsider just to show the public that changes were being made. Sadly, though, that’s what some of the agency’s critics are now saying should have been done. Their condescending message — worry about sending a signal to the public, not doing the job — is an insult to taxpayers.

The public expects results, not games. And that’s just what you get with the honest, hard-working, focused leadership provided by Joni Earl. Her track record is clear, at Sound Transit and in other positions, including as Snohomish County deputy executive.

Earl has made Sound Transit more open and accountable. She is providing ample information to the board, rather than letting staff control the flow of information. With her permanent appointment, Earl must take an even more active role in ensuring that the board makes farsighted decisions.

The board still seems tentative about a drastic change in a light rail route. It won’t be easy for board members to adopt an enlarged vision that will free them from the doctrinaire views that have gripped staff at Sound Transit and, historically, at most transit agencies here for at least 20 years. The old-time transit planning religion always demands some new route that ignores the region’s most convenient, buildable paths in favor of picking up every possible rider. At Sound Transit, the belief hardened into a mindset gripped by the need for an impossibly expensive tunnel under Capitol Hill. Earl must empower board members with enough information to escape the transit-planners’ dogmatism.

The best option appears to be a route that heads north from downtown to run along the east side of Lake Union to the University District and then, hopefully, to points north. That won’t grab quite as many riders. But it will be affordable and it will be a start toward regional light rail. And it’s the type of new idea that Earl and the board must be serious about considering.

It’s easy to think up other ways to spend Sound Transit’s money, but light rail is what voters approved. The region has a choice between finding a good route or starting another round of searching for the salvation of a supposedly perfect plan. It’s up to the board, with a strong assist from Earl, to bring us back to earth so that the region can get moving with a new approach.