SEATTLE — Transportation advocates are sending a clear message to Sound Transit in the face of the agency’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall: build the trains we were promised.
“The message from voters, riders, and the public is clear,” said Kirk Hovenkotter, Executive Director of the Transportation Choices Coalition. “Build the damn trains.”
It comes days after Sound Transit announced it was billions of dollars short to deliver on voter-approved expansion plans, without cost-saving interventions.
The agency said it would need an additional $14 to $20 billion in today’s dollars to cover just expansion projects outlined in the voter-approved ST3 plan. The figure runs up to $30 billion if you include future dollar values and inflation.
The agency also says it will need a few billion dollars more to cover service delivery costs, including new and replacement light rail vehicles, investments to improve light rail system resiliency, and other maintenance and operations costs.
Some of that increase can be tied to industry-wide issues, while other cost issues are related to “agency process, procedure, and delays since ST3 adoption,” according to Sound Transit documents.
On top of growing costs, staff expect revenue to fall.
The City of Seattle says it will take action to cut red tape to help the agency save money, too.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Mayor Bruce Harrell said he would ask Seattle’s City Council for a budget allocation to hire more staff to streamline the permitting process for Sound Transit projects.
City leaders already voted to streamline this process, but they will need the staff required to do it.
“Seattle will do everything it can do to reduce costs, and we’re going to expect every other jurisdiction, city and county, to do exactly the same,” Harrell said.
Sound Transit is also currently exploring its own cost-saving solutions.
“Is there any realm of possibility in which we could see projects delayed or canceled, or taxpayers could be left to front more money?” KIRO 7’s Madeline Ottilie asked Harrell, a Sound Transit board member.
“We have to see progress,” he said. “We can’t assume there’s going to be drastic delays.”
Harrell also said it will require Sound Transit officials and City of Seattle staff to think critically about how creative they can be.
“Again, our partnership with the federal government, with the state, all other bodies of government are going to be critical so we feel confident in moving forward,” he said. “But we have to acknowledge the realities of the challenges that we have.”
This is not the first time Sound Transit has had to realign its budget for ST3. In 2021, the agency adopted a realignment plan after recognizing an estimated $6.5 billion affordability gap for delivering on ST3.
“What’s to say that we don’t see this again as we move forward over the next few years and continue to work on these projects?” asked KIRO 7’s Madeline Ottilie. “What sort of oversight will there be to ensure that we’re staying in budget?”
“We have to recognize that as elected leaders and labor leaders, we have to listen to community as we go, but we can’t let the process of constantly listening to feedback also cost us critical dollars,” Harrell said, who noted that every day projects are delayed costs go up. “We cannot guarantee that there still won’t be some issues moving forward, but we can guarantee that we’ll be as effective and as efficient as possible.”
Harrell said he couldn’t promise that the Bellevue line would be completed in time for the World Cup, which has been a Sound Transit goal.
“It’s not about whether these projects are going to happen, it’s about when they’re going to happen,” said Seattle Councilman Dan Strauss, who also serves as a Sound Transit Board Member.
The agency is moving forward on its Enterprise Initiative, a comprehensive effort to identify affordability gaps and tools available to cut costs, as well as ways to improve revenue.
Phase 1 of the Enterprise Initiative calls for analyzing how the region has changed since 2016, building a deep understanding of the scale of the problem, and understanding how to use available tools to solve these challenges (or coming up with new tools to fix them).
Phase 2, which the agency has previously said will begin in 2026, calls for identifying approaches for updating the ST3 System Plan and adopting a new long-range financial plan.
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