While I know I’ll enjoy riding a commuter train into Seattle, Sound Transit’s imminent signing of a contract costing $377 million for commuter rail between Everett and Seattle seems to be an exceedingly bad decision.
Consider the following:
About $377 million would pay the remaining amount needed for all the projects on I-5 in Snohomish County listed on the Herald’s Fix Your Commute Web site, with $100 million left over – plenty for improvements to I-5 in North King County.
Even if the maximum allowed four trains are all filled, many, many more people will still be using commuter buses rather than commuter rail. Spending these hundreds of millions on improvements to I-5 would help many more transit users than this commuter rail line will.
At $377 million, we will paying more than $100,000 per rider. And taking those riders off the road won’t have any visible impact on congestion – especially since most of them will probably be people who already use transit anyway.
And now that we know regional voters aren’t supportive of another tax increase for other needed improvements to our transportation system, these funds are probably the only practical source for many of these improvements.
Please, will someone at Sound Transit have the courage to stand up and say stop?
Everett
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