Toss out a plan to build segments of light rail in Everett and Lynnwood.
Those and dozens of other pet projects in a second wave of Sound Transit proposals are being shelved.
Why?
Local transportation leaders want to build light rail that gets thousands of Snohomish County workers to their jobs and off I-5.
Instead of sending transit dollars to as many as 60 projects scattered around the county, transportation leaders have decided they want to “do the right thing,” and invest virtually all of a second wave of Sound Transit dollars in light rail.
If they do, and if taxpayers approve a second round of transit funding, there is money enough to extend light rail from Seattle to Lynnwood, something that transit officials had previously thought was several decades away.
“It’s not, ‘Here’s a trough, let’s line up to get our share,’ ” said Mark Olson, the Everett city councilman who serves as Sound Transit’s vice chairman. “What’s essential is building out the spine of light rail throughout the Puget Sound region.”
Sound Transit is proposing to go to voters in November 2007 for a second wave of transit funding. The proposal is tied to a similar request for road money by the Snohomish, King and Pierce county councils.
That proposal, called the Regional Transportation Investment District, would raise $1.5 billion in Snohomish County, money that would be spent on widening Highway 9 and rebuilding the U.S. 2 trestle.
The Legislature linked the fates of the two separate tax packages. Although they will appear separately on the November 2007 ballot, if one fails, both will fail.
Sound Transit would collect $1 billion in Snohomish County under the most aggressive tax option it is considering, a half-cent sales tax hike.
Even after setting aside a little money for commuter rail Sounder stations in Mukilteo and Edmonds, there would be money enough to extend light rail from the King County line to the Lynnwood Transit Center, said Matt Shelden, who leads Sound Transit’s north corridor planning for the second phase.
The first stretch of light rail, from downtown Seattle to Sea-Tac International Airport, is under construction right now and is scheduled to start service in 2009. Sound Transit has money to extend the line to Seattle’s University District.
If voters say yes to the transit-and-roads package, construction on the Snohomish County light rail line would occur between 2007 and 2027, said Geoff Patrick, an agency spokesman. A more specific schedule would be set later, he said.
A trip from Lynnwood to downtown Seattle would take 30 minutes on trains that can travel up to 55 mph, Patrick said.
Sound Transit projects that light rail would pick up 10,000 riders between Mountlake Terrace and Lynnwood by 2030. It would attract another 50,000 riders from Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood to Mountlake Terrace, but the Snohomish County portion of that number is not broken out.
Those numbers stack up favorably to what the agency has been able to do in Snohomish County with its first wave of projects.
In phase one, which goes from 1997 to 2009, Sound Transit will collect and spend $700 million in Snohomish County. Its commuter bus and Sounder commuter rail service carries about 7,000 riders per day, a number that’s expected to climb when new Sounder trains are added by the end of 2007.
The focus on light rail came about earlier this year when the county’s Sound Transit board members and mayors from the county’s Sound Transit cities realized that they were pushing back the date when the service would get here by focusing on other projects in their specific cities, Olson said.
The change of heart was something Sound Transit board member Richard Marin was solidly behind.
“If you don’t have seriously good, functional, high-capacity arteries, you’re just going to get worse and worse and worse to the point where it will be nearly impossible to conduct our lives,” said Marin, who also is an Edmonds city councilman.
Marin said Everett made the biggest sacrifice, noting that the county seat will have to wait for a third round of Sound Transit projects before it gets light rail, something that could take decades.
“Ultimately, they decided to put their hopes into the bigger perspective,” he said. “It’s that kind of thinking that will ultimately get it to us sooner.”
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