A New ST CEO, Another Year of Folly

The 2023 December 15^th Sound Transit video included Julie Timms final report as Sound Transit CEO.  While it took nearly a year to replace her predecessor a January 11^th Special Board of Directors Meeting announced the hiring of Goran Sparrman as “interim CEO” for from Jan13, 2024 to Jan 12, 2025.  It was clearly a Dow Constantine decision since the board’s System Expansion Committee meeting scheduled earlier and the following Special board meeting  had released an agenda showing Timms as CEO.

Sparrman had previously served 12 years as director of transportation for the city of Bellevue where he had “worked extensively with Sound Transit implementing the East Link extension”.  He'd recently served as business development officer, vice president of HDR Engineering Inc.  (The System Expansion Committee meeting agenda had included Motion No M2024-01 authorizing $7,000,000 for a new total authorized contract not to exceed $125,440,000 with HDR.)

 

His comments followed Constantine’s introduction included a clear indication he was eager to proceed with another year of Sound Transit’s current policies.  That those policies including implementing the recommendations of the Transit Advisory Group and private consultant to improve the process for Sound Transit expansion.

 

Clearly Constantine wanted to avoid the problem he had with replacing Rogoff as CEO.  That effort included the board creating a CEO Selection Committee that hired CPS HR Consulting for a three-month contract to find suitable candidates. That effort failed and it took nearly a year before Timms was installed as new CEO. Sparrman was clearly chosen because of his history of supporting Sound Transit plans for "the largest system expansion in the country".

 

Constantine still doesn’t recognize Sound Transit’s problem is not with the “process” of implementing the “voter approved” expansion.  It’s that any competent transit system CEO would recognize the “product”, 4-car light rail trains, don’t have the capacity needed to reduce multilane freeway congestion. Sound Transit exacerbates that problem by not adding access to light rail trains, choosing instead to use light rail trains to replace far less expensive bus routes. 

 Any competent transit system CEO would recognize spending billions on light rail extensions to replace bus routes reduces transit capacity and nothing to reduce freeway GP lane congestion. That those transferring from buses only reduce access for current riders.

 

The bottom line is Goren Sparrman was hired to continue the folly of implementing voter approved extensions. Thus, it’s going to take another year of the East Link Starter Line and Lynnwood extension to demonstrate that folly.