Sound Transit’s governing board will soon decide whether to take a transit expansion plan to voters later this year.
Though a final decision might not come until June, the board must decide on a draft expansion plan by April 10 if it hopes to bring it to voters in November, said agency spokeswoman Linda Robson.
Last November voters rejected an $18 billion roads-and-transit construction plan for Pierce, King and Snohomish counties. The plan included an extension of light rail from Sea-Tac Airport to Tacoma.
Since then the Sound Transit board has been weighing when to offer voters a transit-only expansion plan. Pierce County’s board representatives differ on the best approach.
Tacoma City Councilwoman Julie Anderson, a member of the Sound Transit board, said the board must finalize a package before deciding whether to take it to voters this year or wait until 2010.
That said, she favors taking a plan to voters this year. She said the big turnout of a presidential election year might work to Sound Transit’s advantage.
And “it never gets easier and it never gets less expensive” to build a transit system, Anderson said.
Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, another Sound Transit board member, is not convinced.
“It’s never a good year to be on the ballot with the wrong plan,” he said.
A proposal under consideration would postpone extending light rail from the airport to Tacoma. Instead, light rail would stop at South 200th Street in SeaTac.
The proposal would extend the Tacoma Link line from downtown west to Tacoma General Hospital and perhaps as far as Tacoma Community College. It could include an extension of the Link east to Fife. And it would expand Sounder commuter rail service.
Anderson said the plan is a good one “given that we heard voters tell us they wanted something quicker and smaller.”
Ladenburg is not impressed with the plans. He said it might make more sense to take a more ambitious plan to voters in 2010. By then, the light-rail line from Seattle to the airport will be open. Ladenburg said that will allow people to see what they’re buying.
“I don’t think there’s a big public desire to build light rail to the hospital,” he said.
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