Sound Transit built a very nice parking garage and transit center in Lakewood. Nearby is a platform and kiosks for passengers to buy tickets for the Sounder train.
That cost $33 million.
A little north is the $16 million South Tacoma station with a platform and a few hundred parking spaces. Track work and crossing improvements have been completed as well.
Nearly everything is in place for trains to reach commuters in Lakewood and South Tacoma, a service they have been paying for since 1997 and that was to begin in 2001.
But the Sounder service between the Tacoma Dome and Seattle’s King Street Station that began in 2000 doesn’t reach these two stations. That’s because they’re on the wrong side of the physical and political abyss known as the D-to-M Street line.
The gap spans only a bit more than a mile. But it seems a lot wider than that.
Initially trains were going to cross Pacific Avenue at street level, stopping traffic only briefly every 30 minutes or so. But then the feds decided that was too dangerous, and the Tacoma City Council went along. Sound Transit would need to go over the street via a trestle about where the Elephant Car Wash sign now spins.
That seemingly small change led to this sequence of events (take a deep breath): Sound Transit had to find a way for tracks to gradually climb to the height of the trestle; which led designers to an earthen berm configuration; which caused Dome District merchants and transit-oriented-development backers to complain that a berm would cut the district in two; which led Sound Transit to say building a less-intrusive post-and-beam structure would be too expensive and cause more delays; which caused post-and-beamers to accuse Sound Transit of overestimating costs; which led Sound Transit backers to claim that anti-bermers were really anti-transit; which prodded some Sound Transit board members to threaten Tacoma with losing the project altogether; which required the City Council to come up with a fig-leaf solution that endorsed the berm but asked Sound Transit to use a post-and-beam structure where appropriate.
“We did the best we could, and it’s time to move on,” said Councilman Jake Fey last October when the council gave final approval to the plan.
Sound Transit designed a project that is mostly berm but has a little post-and-beam thrown in. Based on the current schedule, construction will begin in early fall and take 20 months. The first Sounder train could pull out of the Lakewood station in early summer 2012, only 11 years late.
Then came some good news that might be anything but. Construction companies are so hungry for work (or Sound Transit engineers did overestimate the costs) that a chunk of the project they thought would cost $66 million can be had for closer to $40 million.
Did the Tacoma council celebrate when they heard? Well, yes, if celebrating means suggesting ways to spend the savings.
Councilmen David Boe and Ryan Mello reopened the post-and-beam debate by asking for ways to make the berm less wide at the base, perhaps freeing up space for development. Councilman Joe Lonergan wanted the existing South 66th Street trestle south of the South Tacoma station to be dressed up – creating a kind of “Gateway to Manitou.”
All three members are new to the council and didn’t vote on the October agreement. Not so Fey and Mayor Marilyn Strickland, who suggested the council come up with a “punch list” of items to add, despite a Sound Transit project manager’s gentle attempts to stop the frenzy.
“What you’re hearing today is, if you thought post-and-berm (yes, she said post-and-berm) was the end of the controversy in Tacoma, it’s not,” said Strickland. “We have a lot of people here at the table with a lot of ideas, and we want to make sure that our neighborhoods and business districts are treated well.”
Sorry, Lakewood and South Tacoma. That 2012 “all aboard” might not be heard until 2013. Or 2014. Or 2015.
Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657 peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com blog.thenewstribune.com/politics
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