Sound Transit Staff Recommend Against New Alternatives for SLU and Denny Stations

Ryan Packer has the scoop on Twitter: Yesterday (May 17), Sound Transit staff delivered a letter to the Sound Transit Board of Directors with an innocuous subject line: Staff recommendation regarding the South Lake Union area alternatives for the Ballard Link Extension

A slide from a staff presentation to the Sound Transit Board System Expansion Committee on May 9 reviewing the work completed to study the feasibility of adding two more SLU and Denny station alternatives.

A brief history: last year, after the Sound Transit Board had selected preferred locations for the Denny Station (Westlake and Denny) and SLU Station (5th and Harrison), the Seattle Chamber of Commerce lobbied Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell to propose a pair of new alternative locations for these stations in an effort to reduce construction impacts on Westlake and Harrison. In December, the Sound Transit Board approved a feasibility study" to review whether these locations were technically feasible, and to determine how severe the impact would be to the project schedule if these alternatives were formally added for review.

After news came out earlier this year that formal study of these alternatives would delay the final Environmental Impact Study for the Ballard Link Extension by almost a year, potentially result in $500M to $1B in extra costs due to delay, the Seattle Chamber of Commerce kicked off a campaign to Save South Lake Union" describing the late-stage alternative as a Community Couplet" that would avoid the worst impacts on Westlake Avenue and place a station closer to Seattle Center", but withheld the fact that the reduction of construction impacts would be meager at best, and would have significantly worse connections to the bus network.

From the letter:

The staff recommendation is to take No Action, maintain the current Board-adopted preferred alternative and not carry forward the potential new alternative into environmental review, given that the current preferred alternative and the potential new South Lake Union and Denny alternative are reasonably comparable from a technical perspective, but the potential new alternative would delay delivery of the Ballard Link Extension by 10 months to 2 years, would add approximately $500M to $1B to the project cost, and would have overall system implications.

As Ryan Packer notes in subsequent tweets, having a direct recommendation is unusual, and apparently a direct result of a report from Sound Transit's Technical Advisory Group (TAG) on speeding project delivery. In February of last year, the TAG delivered six recommendations for improving efficiency, the first of which was to Rebuild trust and clarify the roles and responsibilities of the ST Board and staff" including the specific direction that board members must be explicit in authorizing and expecting staff to bring forward timely information along with their best recommendations for Board decisions."

Although it's been over a year since the TAG published their report, it seems Sound Transit staff are finally feeling empowered to make recommendations against unreasonable political whims of the Board. Other visible changes in response to the TAG report include the hiring of a Deputy CEO for Megaproject Delivery and work towards adoption of a revised betterments policy.