Sound Transit’s 2021 year of debacle began with a January 8th, Seattle Times Traffic Lab article "Costs soar to extend light rail to West Seattle and Ballard". February 14th and 15th Seattle Times Traffic Lab articles, "$11.5 billion shortfall in Sound Transit funding" followed suggesting another transit-tax ballot may be the "new money" needed. In February, the Sound Transit Board decided to no longer archive videos of meetings. The March 24th version of their December 2020, 2021- Financial Plan & Adopted Budgett included $2.7B in “unfunded expenditures” with funding needed exceeding allowable debt in their $96B 2017-2041 long-range plan. An April 22, 2021 "Financial Plan Update" to the Board included a chart, "Financial Plan Unaffordable" with the "Unfunded expenditures" increasing from $2.7B to $7.9B.
Board Chair Keel responded to members' concern with the increased costs with an April 30th letter proposing delaying projects until they could borrow the funds. The “Realignment” was presented to Board during the June 24th meeting and confirmed August 5th. An August 3rd Seattle Transit Blog announced, “Metro and Sound Transit propose service increases in 2022.” In September, the Board adopted the Transit Development Plan 2021-2026 including chart showing Link ridership from March 2020 to March 2021 was flat at ~20% of pre-Covid ridership. The adopted plan finalized the 2022 Service plans for 125 daily 4-car Link routes from Northgate to Angle Lake.
A Sound Transit Q3 Financial Report 10-21-21, provided an August YTD 2021 Financial Performance Report to the Board’s Financial and Audit Committee. It detailed August YTD ridership was 39% or 5.8M under budget. That Link ridership had declined by 70% from 2019 to 2021 August YTD. The August YTD Fare Revenue was 50% or $14.6M under budget and the Link Farebox Recovery was only 6%, a fraction of Sound Transit’s 40% target.
Thus, 2021 was clearly a bad year for Sound Transit, even before the Northgate Link debut. The October 2nd debut seemingly added to Board’s concerns since the October and November meetings were “off-air”. The Board’s December 16th meetings were “on-air” with Sound Transit presenting their 2022 Financial Plan and Proposed Budget and Transportation Improvement Plan (TIP) to the Board’s Financial and Budget Committee meeting for approval and later approval by entire Board.
The 199-page 2022 Budget included extensive details concerning where the money was coming from and how it was spent with Transit Operating Budget and Project Budgets. The Project Budget included $1.71B in 2022 for Link extensions and $22B for authorized TIP. However, it neglected to include any Service Provided by the transit modes. The 2022 Budget and TIP were unanimously approved without question by both the finance committee and Board with no mention of Northgate Link results or service provided by transit modes.
The bottom line is 2021 was the year the Board went from archiving videos of meetings to “off-air” meetings, limiting the exposure of a board composed of elected transit officials with no understanding of what constitutes effective public transit. It was the year the “Service Delivery Performance Report Q1 2021” ended their quarterly reports of trips provided, boardings per trip, and cost per boarding for the transit modes.
Most important, however, it was the year the Northgate Link debut demonstrated a decade of Sound Transit’s failure to provide commuters with access to transit. That light rail extensions without adequate access won’t attract commuters needed to reduce congestion into Seattle. That extending light rail beyond UW stadium station did nothing to increase capacity limited by DSTT. Thus, during peak commute, riders with access to Norhgate Link limited access to UW Link riders. During off-peak commute when parking was full the operating costs for the nearly empty 4-car trains dwarfed farebox revenue.
Finally, 2021 was the year the Northgate Link debut portended the failure of Prop 1 extensions to reduce congestion into Seattle. Yet the Sound Transit Board seemingly ignored that result when they approved a budget to spend $1.7B on Prop 1 extensions in 2022 and $22B on (TIP) to complete them. Now it’s only a question of how long it will take this board to release the Northgate Link debut results that demonstrates that failure.
My Senatorial candidacy's goal is to use the Voters' Pamphlet to expose the need to expedite that release.
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