Sound Transit begins a series of open houses this week designed to convince voters to pay for a series of rail and road projects.
It's critical that voters approve the roughly $11 billion in funding, which would extend the light rail starter system that's currently under construction. That's why problems with the proposal are so painful to discuss. Here are three examples:
-- The light rail line suffers from dimished expectations. For example, the Eastside line won't open for almost 20 years (!) and the route already has been shortened, thanks to a dispute developing over how to route the future line through downtown Bellevue. It appears the line would end near Microsoft rather than in downtown Redmond.
-- Sound Transit appears to have taken the most expedient route -- not the best route -- for commuter rail south of Tacoma, where the project may interfere with redevelopment of the neighborhood. Dan Voelpel correctly notes that the agency wants to avoid any further delays that could hinder this fall's vote.
-- Both costs and ridership are low-balled. The agency wants to keep the total bill down in order to avoid sticker shock. Meanwhile ridership figures appear based on current land-use patterns and don't take into consideration future congestion or factors like tolls or more costly gasoline. It's likely that density will increase around train stations, boosting ridership, and the region will need to spend more on the system once construction starts and people realize how much they really want it.
These are serious issues but shouldn't derail the overall projects. I plan to be skeptical at the open houses, vote for funding this fall and then demand the projects be built as efficiently as possible.