Seattle Times Abides Sound Transit Board's 15 Year Incompetence

The Dec 19^th Seattle TimesTraffic Lab article “Sound Transit’s CEO nominated for an “excellent” rating and $6,000 bonus despite some problems” typifies their decade-long failure to recognize Sound Transit’s real problem.  It’s not that "Sound Transit’s ridership stopped growing this year, many downtown station escalators and elevators don’t work and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) primarily blamed the agency for failing to prevent a fatal Amtrak derailment two years ago in DuPont, Pierce County."  

Sound Transit's real problem is that, for at least the last fifteen years, they've had a Board of Directors that lacked the competence needed to “direct” public transit policies.  The board should have been aware of a 2004 PSRC study, “High Capacity Transit Corridor Assessment,” funded by Sound Transit.  It included a chart, “Light Rail Transit Technology Characteristics” with the following General Information, “Light Rail capacities were calculated to be at a maximum of 8880 pphpd (people per hour per direction)”.   

They based that capacity on their conclusions the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT) stations limited trains to four cars, that each 74-seat car could accommodate 148 riders, and that safe operation required a minimum of 4 minutes between trains.  (The PSRC has a “new version” of the 2004 study, replete with lots of images but lacking any comparable DSTT capacity conclusions.  Again, presumably funded by Sound Transit)

A competent transit board would have recognized light rail limited by the DSTT to 8880 pphpd didn’t have the transit capacity needed for the Prop 1 extensions.  They should have never proposed the extensions beyond UW, across I-90 Bridge, or beyond SeaTac. 

A competent transit board would instead have recognized the benefit of increased bus transit capacity.  An additional 100 high-capacity buses an hour could add the equivalent of 5 lanes of freeway, and more could be added as needed.   Prop 1 funds should have been spent adding parking near T/Cs or local bus routes to T/Cs to provide access to added BRT routes along restricted HOV lanes into Seattle along I-5 and I-90.  

BRT along SR 520 could have been routed to a T/C at UW station for a Central Link connection benefitting commuters from both sides of the lake.  And they could have done it for a fraction of light rail costs and 10 years sooner. 

Instead Sound Transit has spent the 15 years refusing to add the parking or increased bus service needed to attract the transit ridership required to reduce congestion.  Rather than terminate Central Link at the UW station they chose to spend $2.1 billion on the 4.3-mile extension to Northgate. They initially claimed 15,000 would ride the extension, reducing capacity available for University Link riders. 

The board chose to divert half the DSTT capacity across I-90 Bridge, spending $3.6 billion confiscating the center roadway for 4400 pphpd capacity, halving capacity to SeaTac, and ending forever Bellevue's persona as "The city in the Park".  The loss of the bridge center roadway ended its potential for two-way BRT with 10 times light rail capacity, 10 years sooner at 1/10^th the cost. 

Sound Transit exacerbated their lack-of-competence problem when they hired Peter Rogoff as CEO.  He was purportedly hired because he had used his prior FHA leadership to secure federal funding for the Lynnwood extension.  

Again anyone with a modicum of transit competence would have recognized it made no sense to spend $2.8 billion extending light rail routed through the DSTT 8.5-miles to Lynnwood: doubling the operating cost but nothing to increase capacity.  Rogoff also apparently having his own approach to calculating ridership, increased the Northgate ridership to 41,000 to 49,000 by 2022, and projected Lynnwood Link to 47,000 to 55,000 by 2026.  Even a fraction of that ridership would end University Link access for many.

CEO Rogoff's ability to "secure $1.4 billion in FTA grants and loans for the Angle lake-to-Federal Way line" is another example of "influence gone bad".  The Sound Transit 3 Map for the Federal way extension projected the 5.3-mile link would cost (2014$M) $962-$1,029 and, typical of Rogoff's delusions, would add 38,000 to 58,000 riders.  Even a fraction of that ridership would end access for many current riders to south Central Link's half of the DSTT capacity, 4440 pphpd per PSRC.

A competent transit board would have recognized Rogoff’s 2019 long-term budget plan to spend $96 billion between 2017 and 2041 on “the countries most ambitious transit system expansion" was, to put it mildly, "inept".  The budget claimed “What is not in question is whether we will get to Everett, get to Redmond and to Federal Way, or Tacoma, to Ballard and West Seattle”  His approach to ridership calculation was delusional, projecting 500,000 daily light rail riders by 2041 but no increase in bus ridership.  Yet the board renewed his contract for another three years with a hefty raise.

A competent Sound Transit Board would have never approved Rogoff’s 2020 budget.  Its operating budget for 2020 was limited to one page detailing the funding for each of the transit modes but nothing on how they will be used to fund operations.  Yet the board apparently approved it since the December 19^th announcement of Rogoff’s “excellent rating and $6,000 bonus” was the day they were scheduled to approve the 2020 budget. 

The bottom line is a competent transit board would have never claimed, "At a time when the federal government is not doing much to fund these kinds of systems, we've been successful working with the FTA" justified Rogoff's continued employment, let alone a raise.  

It's time the Seattle Times finally recognized that reality.  Until they do, billions more will be wasted and congestion will continue to increase.