Sound Transit’s Real “Emergency”

The Saturday Seattle Times reported CEO Goran Sparrman’s former employer HNTB is being paid $1.5M to help solve frequent light rail stalls. Presumably the result of a Thursday front page headline, “As light rail prepares to expand, its leader declares “existence of an emergency”. That the 92% of planned trips took place with 85% on time were less than Sound Transit’s target, 98.5% of trips and 90% of time.

While any improvement in trip-number and on-time performance is worth pursuing, it’s hardly an emergency and pales in comparison with Sound Transit’s real problem.  An inept CEO and a transit board of directors that lack even a modicum of public transit system competence, despite the more than $200,000 annual compensation they receive for serving. (The Seattle Times charitably called them "non-specialists")

They’ve demonstrated more interest in transit-oriented development and providing affordable housing than in reducing the area’s roadway congestion. They’ve never acknowledged the area already had transit service with bus routes throughout the entire Sound Transit Service area from Snohomish Community Transit (CT), King County Metro (KCM), and Pierce County Transit (PT). 

The three county transit systems provide the -500 series bus routes for Sound Transits ST Express and could have been increased to meet traffic growth. Adding 40 CT and KCM bus routes an hour could have added the 8800 boardings-per-hour capacity available with 4-car light rail trains.  Funds used extending tracks could have provided additional parking and local bus routes to ST Express stations as well as additional bus routes as needed.

Instead, Sound Transit continues with implementing a light rail “spine” from Tacoma to Everett and across I-90 to Redmond for 4-car trains that will never have the capacity needed to reduce peak-hour multilane freeway congestion.  That during off-peak hours the cost of operating a 4-car train will dwarf that of a bus.  

Sound Transit exacerbates the lack-of-capacity problem by using the 4-car trains to replace transit buses into the city.  A “Fantasy-Land” decision that reduces transit capacity into the city, nothing to reduce freeway congestion, and the transferred bus riders reduce access for existing Line 1 riders.  

The article cites the 100,000 daily riders in October. Yet the four Lynnwood Link Extension Stations added 7009 boarders, a fraction of the the 24,400 to 35,000 predicted. Nearly all of whom were former Snohomish Community Transit 400 bus riders: doing nothing to reduce I-5 congestion. The claim, “another 6000 are using the Eastside’s local Line 2” is belied by Sound Transit Ridership report only 3425 weekday boardings for the 8 stations in November, indicating only 1712.5  riders.

The 2024 debut riderships exposed another Sound Transit “emergency”.  Their failure to recognize that providing commuter access to light rail stations doesn’t assure they’ll ride light rail trains. That only a small fraction of the 80,000 living within a mile of Lynnwood stations and 70,000 within a  mile of Starter Line stations chose light rail for their commute.  An “emergency” concern for ridership on all the “spine” extensions.

The Sound Transit failure to recognize access to light rail trains doesn’t assure ridership is another concern for the Ballard-to-SODO and West Seattle-to-SODO light rail extensions. Both assume current and future commuters will choose to use light rail into and out of Seattle rather than the more convenient bus service already available throughout the service area.  Recognizing that reality could save the more than $12B and $7B for the two light rail extensions. 

That need to avoid that funding surely qualifies as an “emergency”.