This Is What the Future of Light Rail Could Look Like



Light rail lines to Ballard, West Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett could be in Sound Transit 3. Click here to enlarge. Transportation Choices Coalition

Transit advocates and elected officials have spent months haggling over the hugely important transit measure that will show up on your ballot this fall. The long-anticipated Sound Transit 3 aims to expand light rail across Puget Sound. But where in Puget Sound? Today, we get a first look.

The map above, created by the Transportation Choices Coalition, is not quite official, but it's close. The Sound Transit Board decides which projects make it into ST3 and they won't release their draft plan until next week. Transportation Choices is the group that will run the campaign to get ST3 passed and is closely tuned in to the behind-the-scenes conversations about what makes it into the package and what gets left out. That means that while TCC's map is only "conceptual," as TCC Director Shefali Ranganathan describes it, it's a very well-educated guess.

So, what does the map tell us?

• The package is likely to be a 25-year-long tax measure, raising about $27 billion, Ranganathan says. The question of the size of the package is significant both for getting it passed and for getting key projects done. Stretching the tax over 25 years instead of 10 or 15 generates a lot more local money and makes it possible to leverage more federal money too. (The "go big" advocates at Seattle Subway have argued for a 30-year measure to build even more projects.)

• ST3 will likely include lines to Ballard and West Seattle, through a new downtown tunnel. This has been all but promised by elected officials already, and the map reiterates that. The Ballard line would run south to Tacoma and the West Seattle line would run north to Everett, a design known as "splitting the spine." Running these lines through a new tunnel will cost significantly more, but is really the only viable option if we want people to use the system. Trains running through a tunnel, rather than alongside traffic, are significantly faster and more reliable. I wrote in more detail about the options for these lines right here.

• A couple of the lines on the map may be planning only, including the span from West Seattle's commercial center of Alaska Junction south to White Center and Burien. That will likely only be studied—not actually built—using ST3 money, Ranganathan says. Where light rail goes in West Seattle is a question of equity. According to Sound Transit, ridership would be higher on a line to the Junction than to White Center, but the people served would be different. Of the people who live within a half mile of the White Center route, 54 percent are nonwhite and 18 percent are low-income, compared with about 28 and 13 percent respectively for the route that ends at the Junction. Building a line to the Junction now and planning for an extension to White Center later is a compromise.

• The line between Bellevue and Issaquah will also probably be planning-only. Ranganathan says it's unlikely the package will include enough funding to actually build that line.

• The map doesn't show an east-west connection between the University of Washington and Ballard, one of Seattle Subway's main asks. King County Executive Dow Constantine, who chairs the Sound Transit Board, told KING 5 recently that route could be included as a study.

• Kirkland should have a big asterisk next to it. Right now, that city is in a fight with Sound Transit over whether it gets any rail at all. Sound Transit has planned on running rail along a right-of-way the agency owns west of I-405 and near some homes. Recently, that right-of-way was temporarily turned into a trail. Now, City of Kirkland officials want bus service through the area instead, and some homeowners near the trail want neither trains nor busses. (Seattle Transit Blog has done some great reporting on this fiasco.) If Kirkland city officials don't get their way on busses, they're threatening to oppose ST3. That could be a big deal. Not only is rail in Kirkland important for connecting that city to the regional system, but the package needs "yes" votes from Kirkland residents in order to win.

• The map's value is in getting voters to imagine how the whole system will look if we vote "yes," so it shows some lines that are already funded, built, or under construction. The portion of the yellow line from downtown to South Seattle is already operating, of course. The dark blue/tealish line running north/south is funded to Lynwood—Capitol Hill and Husky Stadium open this weekend—but the extension to Everett would be new money in ST3. The orange line to the Redmond Tech Center is already funded, but the stubby extension to downtown Redmond would be new. The light blue line on the Eastside and the Seattle lines to Ballard and West Seattle would be entirely new.

“We think the system can be transformative,” TCC's Ranganathan says. “This is something we can do now and reap the benefits for the next 100 years.”

The Sound Transit Board is expected to release its official and more detailed ST3 draft plan on March 24. They'll take public comment through the spring and vote on the package around June. It will be on your November ballot.