To buy and build about $1 billion in roads and highway lanes in Snohomish County, four more cities might be merged into the Sound Transit taxing district.
The idea, floated by politicians and business leaders, is driven by a hope to send voters a balanced and palatable diet of road and transit projects.
“In order to really deal with congestion we have to have both,” Snohomish County Councilman Dave Gossett said.
| Regional Transportation Investment District
Possible taxes * Another penny in sales tax on a $10 purchase * Car tab fees raised as much as 0.6 percent, or $120 on a vehicle valued at $20,000. * Total: Average $100-$120 per year, per household $1.2 billion in projects in Snohomish County * $412.3 million for I-5 and U.S. 2 trestle. * $325 million for more lanes on Highway 9 from Maltby to Marysville. * $168 million for carpool and transit projects. Sound Transit Possible taxes * Up to 5 cents higher sales tax on a $10 purchase Possible $1 billion Sound Transit projects in Snohomish County include: * $272 million to $313 million: Light rail in Everett. * $353 million to $381 million: Nine miles of bus lanes on Highway 99. * Other projects could include parking garages for park-and-ride lots and Sounder stations; a new bus route on Highway 527; a new direct-access ramp to allow Mariner park-and-ride traffic to exit from and enter directly into I-5s carpool lanes; and a permanent Sounder Station at Edmonds Crossing. |
Leaders are working to merge a three-county road-building tax package with Sound Transit’s plan to ask voters for as much as $1 billion for Snohomish County transit projects. They believe they should blend the two proposals into one November ballot measure.
To do that, the region’s transportation backers, which include big business and the real estate industry that would bankroll an ad campaign, say the two voting districts must be matched up. That means scaling what was a countywide roads package down to match Sound Transit’s taxing district, which would have to expand at the same time.
The merger shows how complex fixing the Puget Sound area’s traffic has become.
The region faces about $30 billion in estimated roadwork, and officials are being careful about how and when they ask for a $7.2 billion bite.
The idea of merging boundary lines works fine in the urban areas of King and Pierce counties, where megaprojects such as the Highway 520 floating bridge and Alaskan Way Viaduct are already within Sound Transit’s borders.
Trouble is, in Snohomish County the commuter-clogged U.S. 2 trestle and Highway 9 – which need a combined $737 million in work – are outside Sound Transit’s boundaries and span rural farmland.
“There’s no question in my mind that we find ourselves the county with the most unique problem,” said Gary Nelson, a Snohomish County Councilman and member of the three-county Regional Transportation Investment District.
Some cities left out
Changing the boundaries would leave out Monroe, Stanwood and Granite Falls, which are currently outside the Sound Transit taxing district and would remain so.
Monroe is already feeling left out, Mayor Donnetta Walser said.
Old versions of the district’s work, the road-building tax package, would have widened Highway 522 from Paradise Lake Road to the Snohomish River. There was also money for U.S. 2.
Moving the boundaries to match Sound Transit’s means there would be no money for either road, both of which have been called “killer highways” because of the numerous fatal accidents that have occurred on them.
“I think some people’s vision of Monroe is a sleepy, quiet town that is just the gateway to the Cascades,” Walser said. “Well, it’s more than that. Our population has tripled in the last 10 years.”
The three-county transportation district has languished in debates over which roads and taxes it should send to voters since it formed in 2002.
Paying for road improvements would require decades of borrowing and increases in sales taxes and car license fees.
Sound Transit interested
Sound Transit is open to a joint ballot initiative, said Mark Olson, vice chairman of the agency’s governing board and an Everett councilman.
“It just makes sense, if you’re going to run a joint proposal, you have to make sure the same voters are voting on it,” Olson said.
Still, Sound Transit is prepared to go it alone if the roads package doesn’t come together, Olson said. The agency has the power to ask voters to increase sales taxes from the four-tenths of a cent it currently charges to nine-tenths of a cent.
Expanding Sound Transit’s borders would bring a new wave of transit investments to booming areas including Arlington, Marysville, Snohomish and Lake Stevens.
Sound Transit could build park-and-ride lots, add commuter bus routes and improve roads to benefit transit.
No transit projects have been identified in the expansion areas, but agency rules require that all money collected in a newly annexed area is spent in those communities for at least three years, Olson said.
The agency could also pay for a commuter rail train that picks up passengers in Stanwood, Arlington and Marysville and takes them to Everett Station, where they could catch a Sounder train south, said Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen D-Camano Island, chairwoman of the Senate Highways and Transportation Committee. She hopes for something more.
If Sound Transit is going to be expanded, Stanwood and Monroe should be included, Haugen said.
“Certainly the Stanwood area is one of the fastest growing areas in the state,” she said. “It doesn’t include (Highway) 522 (into Monroe)). That’s a killer highway, for God’s sake.”
To put a road and transit package on the ballot, the county council members in charge of the Regional Transportation Investment District said they need changes in state law.
It’s up to voters
Last week, Haugen’s committee advanced a bill to allow the transportation district’s boundaries to be scaled back.
“We’re trying to listen to RTID, we’re trying to keep some options open,” she said.
On the other side, decisions on expanding Sound Transit’s boundaries lie with cities, which would need to ask voters whether they want to join up, Olson said. It’s unclear if such a measure could be folded into a joint ballot initiative.
“Are jurisdictions and people comfortable coming into Sound Transit borders?” Gossett said. “We’re going to find out who’s interested and who isn’t.”
If voters balk at expanding Sound Transit taxes and projects in Snohomish County, it jeopardizes the marriage of transit and road projects in a joint ballot measure, Nelson said.
“The alternative: We would do it alone,” without King and Pierce counties, Nelson said. State law now allows each county to form a road building district to pay for key state and local road projects.
“Snohomish County is by far the fastest growing in areas where road projects are needed,” Nelson said.
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