But transit board members probably won’t decide until July whether to put a new plan and tax request on the ballot this November or wait until 2010.

The Sound Transit board of directors decided Thursday to forge ahead with a public feedback campaign on two scaled-down options that would cost between $6.7 billion and $7.8 billion, raise the sales tax in most of Pierce, King and Snohomish counties by 0.4 to 0.5 percent and be finished in 12 years.

Those two options would do much less than Proposition 1 – the measure that voters defeated by a 55-45 margin – would have, especially for Pierce and Snohomish counties.

For instance, the light-rail line would head south from Sea-Tac Airport only to South 200th Street or perhaps to Highline Community College (240th Street), and it wouldn’t get into Snohomish County at all. Proposition 1 would have built light-rail lines all the way to Tacoma, as well as to Lynnwood, but it would have taken until 2027.

If voters were to approve a half-cent sales tax increase and the 2020 time frame, Sound Transit would have enough money to buy only half of the right of way needed to reach Tacoma and Lynnwood. It would take another election and voter approval of a third batch of taxes to raise enough money to build the light-rail line to the end points promised in the original 1996 regional bus-and-rail plan.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who also is Sound Transit chairman, said the executive board concluded that Proposition 1 failed partly because it included $7 billion in road and highway projects in the region, and because it was too big. So the Sound Transit staff crafted the two smaller options.

It was only at the insistence of Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Edmonds City Councilwoman Deanna Dawson that Nickels and staff agreed to update cost figures and include the full-blown transit portion of Proposition 1 among the options that will be taken to citizens in community meetings. That’s about $11 billion of the $18 billion ballot measure that failed.

The final plan is still up in the air, said Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, past chairman of the Sound Transit board.

“We don’t want the public to think it’s only one of these three things,” he said.

The smaller plans are focused largely in Seattle and King County. The would extend the light-rail line from the University of Washington north to Northgate and across Interstate 90 to Bellevue or Redmond.

Pierce County would get more commuter rail service, but only if Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad agreed to let Sounder use its track more often – something the railroad hasn’t done.

Sound Transit also would provide about half the money to extend downtown Tacoma’s Link line either to Tacoma General Hospital to the northeast or to Tacoma’s East Side with the help of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians.

Sound Transit also would expand regional bus service throughout the three counties, something that was largely non-existent in the failed Proposition 1 plan.

State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, a board member, said there are many big unanswered questions that most likely won’t be known in the next six to eight weeks, such as the cost of putting light rail on I-90 and the effect it would have by taking away traffic lanes. She said the new plan might be too hurried.

King County Councilwoman Julia Patterson, a board member from SeaTac, said she was concerned that Sound Transit might not be able to find “real people” to help shape and comment on the next plan, only interest groups.

She noted that most of the public feedback leading up to last November’s vote on Proposition 1 was so positive and promising, yet the measure failed.

Sound Transit is expected to announce the dates and locations of public meetings within a week. The board wants to decide on a plan by June 26 and decide by the end of July whether to put the new plan on this fall’s ballot.

Joseph Turner: 253-597-8436

blogs.thenewstribune.com/politics