Seattle and King County Should Sue Sound Transit

The Nov 7^th Seattle Times front page article, “Seattle, King county to sue over I-976” exemplifies their continued failure to recognize Sound Transit mendacity regarding Prop 1 and beyond” ST3 light rail extensions. Neither apparently recognizes Sound Transit “misled” voters with their 7/08/16 post claiming “An adult owning the median value motor vehicle would pay an additional $43 per year in MVET if ST3 were passed.”  

Yet they chose to respond to objections to the higher taxes in an April 2017 post headlined “Sound Transit 3 car tab rollback threatens light rail to Everett” claiming, “During the campaign, Sound Transit was completely transparent about the taxes.”   A Joel Connelly June 8^th, 2017 Seattle PI article concluded that mendacity enabled ST3 since it would get “only 37% support were voters given a do-over”.   

Prior to the I-976 vote Sound Transit also “misled” voters claiming it would require an addition 20 years to complete the ST3 extensions. That the $6.5 billion car tab loss would also add $20 billion to the $96 billion Sound Transit CEO Rogoff’s 2019 budget for ST3 extensions.   I-976 would have “likely” had even more support without Sound Transit mendacity concerning its impact. 

If Seattle and King County want to take legal action to benefit not only commuters but all residents they should sue Sound Transit for its blatant mendacity regarding the benefits of the Prop 1 and beyond ST3.  Sound Transit’s decision to route the Prop 1 light rail extensions through the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel limited light rail capacity to a fraction of what’s needed to reduce congestion. 

Sound Transit’s plans to use the extensions to Lynnwood and beyond, to Federal Way and beyond, and to Bellevue and beyond to replace buses will do absolutely nothing to increase transit capacity into the city.  Any riders added by the extensions will reduce access for current riders.  The only thing the extensions do is increase the number of expensive train cars required and the costs of operating the trains over the longer routes.

The bottom line is not only would Seattle and King County have problems defending Sound Transit mendacity they would “likely” have difficulty convincing the court that the amount residents have to pay to fund light rail extensions should be based on the value of their car.

Instead Seattle should sue to force Sound Transit expedite the Ballard to West Seattle link and King County should sue to insist they divert light rail extension funds to more buses into and out of Seattle and Bellevue.  They could easily do so even with the loss of the car tab revenue.

Sound Transit’s failure to comply with RCW 81.104.100 regarding high capacity transit planning should make it a relatively easy case to win.  

And the whole area would benefit.