If the three-county regional transportation package being discussed is put before voters and approved, it would provide enough money to expand key access roads in the Mill Creek area.
The most expensive project on the list, however, is the Edmonds Crossing plan. It would cost about $165 million in 2004 dollars to build, said city of Edmonds community services director Stephen Clifton. The $12.8 billion plan being considered for the fall ballot by the Regional Transportation Improvement District (RTID) – a coalition of 25 county council members from Snohomish, King and Pierce counties – includes $152 million for Edmonds Crossing.
The RTID board approved the project list April 29. Sound Transit board officials were scheduled May 20 and May 27 to discuss a common ballot issue with the RTID in which a small portion of Sound Transit’s funding would be shifted to RTID. The RTID board is then scheduled to adopt a final plan June 3 and the panel will decide by June 11 whether it will go on the fall ballot.
Edmonds Crossing already has $19 million in the bank, with another $2 million coming if and when President Bush signs a transit appropriations bill approved last year, Clifton said. The $21 million would cover most of the acquisition and design for the project. The lower yard of the Unocal property at Point Edwards is targeted as the site.
Local officials have asked the federal government for another $10 million for Edmonds Crossing in the transportation funding package soon expected to go to a conference committee of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. The outcome of that conference, along with President Bush’s decision on what emerges, will determine the amount of funding that results, officials said.
Regionally, the RTID will include large projects such as replacement for the Seattle viaduct and Highway 520 bridge across Lake Washington. In Snohomish County, Edmonds Crossing is the third largest project on the list, following the proposed expansion of the U.S. 2 trestle from Interstate 5 in Everett to Highway 204 ($333 million) and the widening of Highway 9 from 176th Street SE to Highway 92 ($318 million).
“The focus has been on congestion relief,” RTID director Krjis Lund told the Snohomish County Council in a briefing May 18.
Other projects on the Snohomish County list include collector/distributor lanes at I-5 and 196th Street SW ($44 million), improvements to U.S. 2 between Everett and Stevens Pass ($66 million), and widening of Highway 524 (eastern extension of 196th) from 24th Ave. W. to Highway 527 ($56 million). In all, 47 road projects and 12 transit-related projects are on Snohomish County’s RTID list. Snohomish County’s total is about $2 billion. All the money would be spent in the county in which it is raised, officials said.
The main projects in the Shoreline-Lake Forest Park area are improving Highway 522 through Kenmore, and extending the Aurora Corridor project to the county line.
The projects would be built between 2006 and 2018, according to priority. Edmonds Crossing, if the measure were to pass, would be built between 2006 and 2008, according to the plan.
The funds would be raised through a combination of a two-tenths of 1 percent increase in the sales tax; an annual $75 vehicle license fee; a 2.8 cents local increase in the gas tax; a three-tenths of 1 percent increase in the state motor vehicle excise tax. An option, if Sound Transit agrees, would be to have one-tenth of 1 percent of its tax go to the RTID. It would have to be for a Sound Transit project already approved by voters, Lund said.
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