Just when Puget Sound area residents thought they had spoken once and for all about how highly they prioritize getting a regional light rail network built, along comes the state Legislature in a year of down revenues to use procedural tricks to potentially delay a recently-approved expansion for up to 4 years over a fraction of its funding.
This is going to be an exciting year for Seattle, when Link Light Rail opens up from downtown to the airport by the end of the year. The initial segment, from downtown to just near the airport, will open up in July. Light rail service is a welcome addition to the Seattle area.
Link Light Rail Initial Segment Map. University Link to open 2016
In November, voters approved a second and third line – one linking the University of Washington with Northgate Mall to the north, and one linking downtown to Bellevue and Redmond across Lake Washington on the I-90 bridge.
The I-90 bridge crosses affluent Mercer Island, which has always been a point of contention for transportation projects linking Seattle and the Eastside. I-90 includes “Express Lanes” – dedicated lanes in the middle of the freeway which are reversed to assist with the heaviest traffic direction in the morning and evening commutes by handling buses and carpools. Or, at least the morning and evening commutes ca. so long ago nobody remembers. One perk Islanders get, however, is that they get to use the express lanes even if they’re not a carpool. It’s the price the rest of us paid I guess, for being able to cross the northern tip of their fair hamlet.
The Express Lanes are the key to the light rail project. Remove the cars from those lanes, and run trains on them instead and all of a sudden you have just cost effectively done a large chunk of the work required to get light rail linking the two halves of the region’s economic engine.
The clincher here is that in order to turn the Express Lanes over to trains, the HOV capacity has to be moved to the main roadway. Most of that project is done. All that’s missing is $24 million in funding the state agreed to dedicate to the project, which Sound Transit is also contributing to. Several key lawmakers in the state Leg are currently working to thwart that $24 million in funding – and calling for new studies – and bending over backward to find any tortured logic they can that will justify stalling this project.
The money, of course, is being diverted to more highway projects around the state.
It seems like decades following Robert Moses’ exit from road building and transit starving for the purposes of expanding the road network, transit is still quite vulnerable to being held hostage by its opponents – even in the face of overwhelming voter support.
This must stop. Seattle Transit Blog has called for citizens to write their legislators and I for one am joining the chorus. Here are some key email addresses (lifted right from STB’s pages):
More great info on this, of course, can be found at Seattle Transit Blog, and once in a while SLOG even writes about it.
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