SEATTLE – When talk of extending light rail into Snohomish County started two years ago, the tracks were supposed to end in Mountlake Terrace and hundreds of millions of local dollars were to move south to pay for light rail in north King County.
Snohomish County came out swinging, telling the region that all transit tax revenue collected in Snohomish County would stay in the state’s fastest-growing county, that they needed to get light rail as far north as possible.
After a year of talks, three months of hard-nosed negotiating and two protest votes, Snohomish County’s three Sound Transit board members were happy to vote yes Thursday on a $14 billion transit tax package that would push the end of the light rail line to the Ash Way park-and-ride at 164th Street SW, nearly all the way to south Everett. The transit plan, adopted unanimously by the Sound Transit board, also keeps all of the $1 billion in tax revenue that would be collected during the 20-year tax package in Snohomish County.
“There are so many victories in this vote that they’re hard to count,” said Aaron Reardon, Snohomish County executive and Sound Transit board member.
Most significant among them is shaving 20 years off the time it would take to extend light rail to the Ash Way park-and-ride, the new planned terminus of light rail. Plans to extend light rail to Everett were also moved up by 20 years, moving that section of light rail up from a phase 40 years out.
But perhaps the biggest victory is adopting a plan that Snohomish County voters will want to support, said Richard Marin, a Sound Transit board member from the Edmonds City Council.
“This lays out the future,” Marin said, noting that the agency has gone from talking about “if” to “when.” “I’m very pleased to be a part of this.”
Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson said he could not support spending Snohomish County money in Shoreline, but he and the Everett City Council voted this week to get behind the plan to extend light rail to 164th Street SW despite the fact that doing so strips away $150 million that was going to be used to begin buying right of way and designing the light rail route from Lynnwood to Everett Station.
Mark Olson, an Everett city councilman and Sound Transit board member, echoed the mayor’s statements.
“We’re happy to give up this money in pursuit of the larger goal,” Olson said.
Stephanson and Olson said Everett residents may have not wanted to drive to Mountlake Terrace or Lynnwood to catch a train, but they believe that 164th Street SW is well within what’s reasonable.
“I feel good about this,” Stephanson said. “I can support this and I can encourage my citizens to support this.”
With its vote, the Sound Transit board adopted a final list of projects for Sound Transit 2, a second wave of transit projects designed to build on the 10-year Sound Move package approved by voters in 1996. The agency needs to hold one more vote in May on the package before it will be ready to go to voters.
The new tax package focuses almost exclusively on extending the spine of light rail that’s now being built between downtown Seattle and the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to 164th Street SW in the north, to Tacoma in the south and to Redmond in east King County.
The transit tax package is paired with a roads package that proposes to spend $6.8 billion (in 2006 dollars) in the three counties, including $2 billion in Snohomish County. With improvements on the I-5 corridor, Highway 9 and U.S. 2 planned, the road portion of the joint ballot tax package is crucial to getting voter support for the package, especially in Everett.
Those road projects, which are focused on the north part of the county, helped convince Everett to get behind the Sound Transit rail plan, Stephanson said.
Everett’s goal is still to get light rail to Everett Station as soon as possible.
“There is a belief that when people see the success of light rail to (Ash Way), they’re going to want more,” Stephanson said.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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