Move Seattle’s 2019 Annual Report

As the 9 year, $900m Move Seattle levy nears its halfway mark this year, it's a good time to take stock of what small projects are already done, and if the big-ticket items are on track. SDOT's Annual Report provides some clues.

The 2018 Levy Assessment recalibrated SDOT's objectives given spiraling costs and the $300m Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) lawsuit ($). SDOT met or exceeded 30 of the 32 targets it set at the beginning of the year.

Through 2019, SDOT had spent $324m in Move Seattle funds to match another $321m from other sources for those projects. Spending remains under budget, partly because most construction work is happening later than planned.

SDOT listed its 2019 highlights as:

• Built over 12 miles of bikeways, including important protected bike lane connections in the Center City Bike Network and neighborhood greenway routes;
• Built 6 Vision Zero corridor projects and began taking aggressive action towards our transportation safety goal;
• Repaved 35 lane miles of arterial streets, including delivery by both contractors and SDOT crews;
• Made 32 transit spot improvements including adding red paint to dedicated buslanes;
• Built 48 blocks of new sidewalk and 29 Safe Routes to School projects;
• Started construction on Fairview Bridge Replacement;
• Reached 90% design on Madison RapidRide G Line and Delridge RapidRide H Line projects;
• Started construction on the Northgate Pedestrian/Bike Bridge;
• Added over 100 bike parking spaces, completing the 9-year Levy commitment to build 1,500 bike parking spaces with Levy funds; and
• Secured $9.9M in grants for Levy projects and programs.

Recall that Move Seattle has three piles of money: "safe routes" (22%), "maintenance and repair" (45%), and "congestion relief" (33%). The last one has freight and station access stuff, but over half of it is corridor mobility projects that include significant bus investments. These are generally behind the original schedule, and haven't yet had time to fall much further behind on the new schedule. Still, quite a bit of external funding isn't locked in yet, so there's tons of risk there.

There is still $312m of budget available ($72m from Move Seattle) to finish these projects. That's good because only one of the 12 is complete - 23rd Avenue Vision zero. Of the other 11, not one has completed design, much less started turning any earth. (Note that the Route 48 "Transit Plus" work is not done, and is distinct from the complete street work.)

RapidRide G (Madison), RapidRide H (Delridge), and Market/45th "Transit Plus" should start construction this year, so that'll be a good test if the high-visibility transit projects are going to have a happy ending.

More happily, SDOT's wildly successful transit spot improvements program made a record 32 fixes with a minimum of fuss and bureaucracy.

Long live red paint!