Sound Transit ‘cost-cutting approaches’ would ‘defer’ light rail to Ballard and West Seattle
It’s the kind of news that could ruin a 10th birthday party.
As CHS is reporting on the predictable but still satisfying transit success of Capitol Hill Station’s first decade of service, officials are sounding an even louder alarm about the financial plight of Sound Transit in trying to delivery the plans for the ST3 package including light rail expansions to West Seattle and Ballard.
Rising land and construction costs have helped pushed project costs so high, Sound Transit’s governing board is now considering options to save money by potentially cutting projects. Board members met Wednesday to figure out a strategy. Sound Transit’s CEO Dow Constantine likes to say the agency is on firm financial footing right now. It has billions in cash on hand. But he warns that starting in the mid-2030s, the agency will hit major cash flow problems. The crunch will last a decade. The agency spent much of the last two years figuring out how it got here. Now, the board has a menu of three cost-cutting approaches.
For Seattle transit riders with hopes of light rail connections to the city’s most far flung major neighborhoods, those “three cost-cutting approaches” presented at the Sound Transit Board’s Wednesday retreat meeting could be a rough landing — none would complete the proposed expansion lines to Ballard or West Seattle, according to the board’s presentation (PDF) from its meeting.
CHS reported here in September on the growing concerns about increasingly dismal economic forecasts for the Sound Transit 3 package as officials were jockeying to keep the West Seattle (2032) and Ballard (2039) light rail expansions on schedule.
There are also a few small hopes. While most of the funding for ST3 will come from taxes in the region, federal funding could also keep some of the plans on schedule. Sound Transit’s approach is to scale back its plans, not cancel, in hopes of either moving forward on the expansions and completing planning and design as much as possible, or getting a federal boost to dig in on the projects.
In the document, the agency’s board presentation includes a glossary just to clear things up. “Defer,” one entry reads. “Project is maintained in the ST3 program, but no or limited funding is allocated, and the project will advance as funding becomes available.”
Other relatively small gains could come from cost-cutting thanks to legislation to streamline transit permit and construction costs and a change in Olympia to raise the cap on how much Sound Transit can borrow, meaning significant cuts to the ST3 plans and timelines are pretty much, now, inevitable.
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