48th District Class Action Complaint

(I’m back and looking for a Class Action Lawyer,  anyone interested?)

I’ve decided to file a class action complaint detailing how Sound Transit’s wrongful actions have injured 48^th District residents both financially and physically.  That Sound Transit has misled 48^th District residents with claims of both costs and benefits from their Prop 1 and ST3 light rail extensions across I-90 Bridge.  That as a result they have needlessly endured years of increased congestion, forced to pay and continue to be forced to pay thousands of dollars to fund a light rail extension that will do nothing to ease the area’s congestion and will increase the congestion they encounter on the I-90 Bridge.

The primary basis for the class action is Sound Transit’s failure to comply with the Revised Code of Washington (RCW).  RCW 81.104.100 details the code requirement for high capacity transit system planning.  The relevant excerpted portions of the RCW are as follows:

To assure development of an effective high capacity transportation system, local authorities shall follow the following planning process only if their system plan includes a rail fixed guide-way system component or a bus rapid transit component that is planned by a regional transit authority:

 (2) High capacity transportation system planning is the detailed evaluation of a range of high capacity transportation system options, including: Do nothing, low capital, and ranges of higher capital facilities.  High capacity transportation system planning shall proceed as follows:

 (b) Development of options. Options to be studied shall be developed to ensure an appropriate range of technologies and service policies can be evaluated. A do-nothing option and a low capital option that maximizes the current system shall be developed. 

When I raised the issue with A.G. Ferguson’s Consumer Protection Division I received the following response

Dear William James Hirt,

Thank you for contacting the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General’s Office. Your complaint has been reviewed and it was determined that the issues presented are under the regulatory authority of another agency. Your complaint has been closed accordingly.

We referred your complaint to the following agency. Please contact the identified agency directly with questions about the status of your complaint.  

Sound Transit Board of Directors

c/o Board Administrator

401 Jackson S

Seattle, WA 98104

While his office apparently admitted I had a “legitimate concern” they delegated the response as to whether Sound Transit had violated the RCW to Sound Transit.  The below excerpts from Sound Transit’s response gives a whole new meaning to attempting to “exculpate” their approach.

As you noted in your complaint, Chapter 81.104 RCW requires development of a high capacity transportation system plan, and RCW 81.104.100 specifically sets forth the requirements that must be included in that system-wide plan. Sound Transit developed draft and final system plans that complied with these requirements and included extensive public outreach from 2005 to 2008.

Yet there is no indication Sound Transit ever considered BRT on limited access lanes as a low cost alternative for any of the Prop 1 light rail extensions.  The below Sound Transit response concerning East Link was even more "problematic".

Project level reviews are not subject to the requirements in RCW 81.104.100. As noted in your complaint, the project level review of the East Link project did include a no-build option. Your presumption that this was due to the requirement in RCW 81.104.100(2)(b) is not correct. As indicated above, this statutory requirement applies to system-wide plans, not project level reviews.

Sound Transit simply “decided” East Link wasn’t required to comply with RCW.   When I contacted Ferguson’s office attempting to hold Sound Transit “accountable” for their refusal to comply the response included the following:

Thank you for your recent e-mail to the office of the Attorney General regarding Sound Transit RCW compliance.

Regarding Sound Transit, our office does not advise or represent regional transit authorities, nor does our office have the role of supervising or correcting the activities of such authorities. 

Clearly 48^th District residents deserve better that what they’ve been getting from Sound Transit and the state Attorney's General.   Even a cursory attempt to comply with RCW would have concluded Sound Transit could have added 4^th lanes to the I-90 Bridge outer roadways for non-transit HOV and implemented two-way bus only service on the bridge center roadways.  

They could have done so 10 years ago, providing 10 times light rail capacity, at 1/10^th the cost and avoided the need to devastate the route into Bellevue.  48th District residents have been forced to pay increased taxes and endure years of congestion as a result. Instead Sound Transit has been allowed to locate their Operation Maintenance Facility (OMF) in the 48^th District meaning Sound Transit light rail trains will be trundling through the area for servicing between 12:00 am to 5:00 am beginning in 2020.

Sound Transit’s failure to comply with the RCW regarding East Link is surely reason for 48^th District resident class action.  Even more important, the vast majority of their future taxes will be spent, not on East Link, but on light rail extensions to Everett and Tacoma.  48^th District class action regarding Sound Transit’s failure to comply with RCW for those extensions is even more imperative. 

Again, there is no indication Sound Transit ever considered implementing added bus service along limited access HOV lanes as a "low cost" alternative.  Something they could have done years earlier.  Their refusal to add bus service is demonstrated by the fact their annual  “Revenue Vehicle Miles Operated” in 2005, 10,254,710, only increased to 11,991,374 in 2017. 

Sound Transit compounded the problem with their failure to comply with RCW with added bus service by routing their light rail spine through a Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel that severely limits its capacity.   That neither 48^th District funds nor the entire area's ST3 funding of the light rail extensions will do anything to increase transit capacity into the city.  If allowed to continue the operating costs for the extensions added route lengths will create a financial black hole for the entire areas transportation funds. 

I intend to try to use a class action complaint to mitigate impact of Sound Transit debacle for 48^th District.