The News Tribune (Lite) - Preserving the promise of South Sound light rail

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Section: Opinion

Preserving the promise of South Sound light rail

THE NEWS TRIBUNE
We’re not sure how much attention Sound Transit was paying to the South Sound before last week, but we’re glad to see it paying more attention now.

The agency’s board is contemplating a revised version of last November’s unsuccessful Roads and Transit measure, this one without the road projects that drove the price tag up to $18 billion, put off a lot of anti-highway environmentalists and didn’t connect with a lot of other voters.

The decision to go it alone has pretty much been made. The decision to go this November hasn’t. Mass transit measures have failed twice at the ballot in the Puget Sound region, in 1995 and 2007.

Note the odd years: The one successful package was approved in 1996, a presidential election year that drew high turnouts and more pro-transit voters to the polls.

Some think this year’s big turnout would maximize a new proposal’s chances. Others think the current economic uncertainties could kill it. One especially good argument for postponement is that the first segment of Seattle’s long-awaited light rail line will open next year. Experience elsewhere suggests that taxpayers get more willing to invest in rail transit after they actually see the service delivered successfully. Tacoma’s existing line doesn’t count: It’s just too small.

Regardless of when the package reaches the ballot, it won’t be worth much to the South Sound if it doesn’t promise – at least promise – a light rail connection from Tacoma to Sea-Tac Airport, Seattle and its surrounding cities – the heart of the region’s economy.

More express buses would be welcome, but they will increasingly get mired in traffic as the HOV lanes on Interstate 5 get jammed. More Sounder runs would also be welcome, but they don’t have nearly the people- carrying capacity of light rail, and that line runs eastward through Puyallup, Auburn and Kent.

Only light rail would give the hundreds of thousands of people in Federal Way, Des Moines, Tacoma and adjacent communities a reliable alternative to crowded highways.

In putting the new package together, Sound Transit initially seemed to be backing away from a hard commitment to South Sound light rail service. (See Patrick O’Callahan’s column at right.) But now the agency is scraping high and low to find enough money to secure the right-of-way for an eventual link between Tacoma and the airport. That eventual link would be funded years from now in future phase of expansion requiring a third successful ballot measure.

Since the vote in 1996 created Sound Transit, light rail has been the centerpiece of mass transit plans for the Puget Sound region, including the South Sound. Central King County is getting its service. This end of the region deserves no less.