This is the package. This is the year.

Rebounding from the voters’ rejection of last year’s Roads & Transit ballot measure, Sound Transit has come back with a new mix of rail-and-bus projects, scaled back and unencumbered by the highway megaprojects that helped drag down the last plan. The agency’s board is poised to send the new version to the November ballot. That’s the right decision: The package is a winner.

This plan would fund 15 years of construction, relying on a nickel-per-$10 sales tax increase collected in the urban sections of King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. It would quickly deliver more express bus and Sounder service through the three counties; eventually, the commuter train would be making 30 trips between Seattle and Lakewood, including mid-day runs.

Light rail service is the major sacrifice from last year’s 20-year construction package. On this end of Puget Sound, the old plan would have brought the high-capacity electric trains all the way down to the Tacoma Dome from Sea-Tac Airport. The new plan would bring the trains along Highway 99 to South 272nd Street on the northern edge of Federal Way.

Pierce County would have to wait for the high speed alternative to Interstate 5 it desperately needs. Yet it was going to have to wait anyway. Under Roads & Transit, light rail wouldn’t have reached the Dome until 2027.

Getting the tracks as far as South 272nd, however, will create powerful incentives to finish the job by running the tracks through Federal Way and into Tacoma in a third round of construction. Both cities would demand that third round, as would Snohomish County. Central King County would also be hungry for additional transit projects by then, such as streetcars and a Sounder-like commuter line running east of Lake Washington.

Historically, metropolitan areas that have invested in light rail – like Portland – have tended to continue building out their lines.

Hunger for transit is the reason the new package should go the ballot this year. Highway congestion and infuriating traffic delays have long driven demand for alternatives to the solo commute. The new, overriding factor is the ruinous cost of fuel, now much higher than in November.

Families are suffering the impact of $4.30-a-gallon gasoline, and a major shift away from automobile commuting appears to have begun. Sound Transit can hardly keep up with the growing demand for its express buses and Sounder trains.

A solid majority of Puget Sounders has probably come to realize that this region needs a serious transit system with trains that bypass the jams on the highways and the pumps at the gas stations. Putting off the vote will put off the solution and leave regional transit at risk of mischief from the Legislature. If $70 fill-ups can’t persuade citizens to invest in buses and trains, nothing will.