Seattle Times Decade of Enabling Sound Transit Debacle

This year marks a decade of the Seattle Times enabling Sound Transit to perpetuate the biggest transportation boondoggle in history. It also marks a decade of my filing as a candidate for office, attempting to use the Voters’ Pamphlet to attract attention to this blog detailing that boondoggle. It began when I filed as a candidate against Rep. Ross Hunter for 48th District Representative. My Seattle Times Candidate Interview was cut short because I persisted with my concerns to Editor Kate Riley that East Link was of more concerns to 48th district than the Mcleary school financing issue. That Sound Transit should not be allowed to confiscate I-90 Bridge center roadway and devastate the route into Bellevue for a light rail system limited to half the DSTT capacity. Since then, none of my subsequent candidacies have merited an interview, with the Seattle Times either ignoring or belittling them as that of a “perennial losing candidate.”  

The Times has spent the decade enabling a Sound Transit Board composed of elected officials who clearly haven’t understood what constituted effective public transit. That increasing transit ridership required increasing access to stations and transit routes with the capacity needed to desired destinations. Yet the paper ignored emails of posts detailing Sound Transit’s decade of refusing to add parking at existing or new P&Rs with access to BRT routes into Seattle. They also ignored attempts to expose that failure by including a performance audit of Sound Transit as one of the paper's legislative top-ten priorities. 

Instead, the Seattle Times response to Sound Transit 3 exemplified their failure. They allowed Sound Transit to claim ridership for ST3 extensions that ignored Sound Transit’s failure to add parking for access and ridership that exceeded DSTT capacity. They allowed Sound Transit to lie about MVT fees prior to the 2016 vote and then lie about lying after the vote claiming they hadn't misled voters.  They’ve enabled Sound Transit to use the 2016 vote approval for a $54 billion transit system expansion from 2017 to 2041 to increase to $113 billion from 2017 to 2046 with taxes extended for decades beyond. 

The Times abetted Sound Transit’s 2019 Financial Plan & Proposed Budget Long-Range plan that continued their decade-long refusal to increase bus ridership by adding parking and routes through 2041. However, the lack of added parking didn’t prevent the Times from abiding budget claims annual Link ridership would increase from 26 million in 2019 to 162 million in 2041.  

It was that “optimism” that presumably led to the Seattle Times Traffic Lab heralding the Northgate Link debut as “Transit Transformed” claiming the Link’s “three stations would add 42,000 to 49,000 riders” daily. It’s been 3 months since the debut without any Link ridership results.  What was “Transit Transformed” is no longer of interest. 

The Sound Transit Board’s response has been to ignore the Northgate Link debut’s results and proceed with plans to add $1.7B next year to the ~$8B spent on Prop 1 extensions and $22B on TIP to complete them but nothing to increase parking for access. The Board refuses to recognize increasing transit ridership requires increasing access with parking.  The Seattle Times Traffic Lab could use the Northgate Link debut to demonstrate the problem by "digging-into" how many used the three Link stations for the commutes into Seattle.  Instead they continue abiding  Sound Transit's failure to release the results, enabling they continue with Prop 1 as planned.  My objective as a Senate candidate is to use the Voters’ Pamphlet to expose the need to stop them.