We Are Here Because No One Will Make A Decision

In the latest installment of uneasiness around ST3, Bruce Harrell rejected the idea ($) of jettisoning West Seattle or Ballard from the plan to balance the books. I would expect nothing less from the Mayor of Seattle. He also proposed another advisory group and some regulatory reforms.

Uncertainty Everywhere (Sound Transit, June 2025)

No doubt, regulatory reforms would help. But it's worth understanding why we're here. Costs are spiraling ($) because construction dates keep slipping, and they're slipping because the Sound Transit board - in particular, the Seattle delegation - is not making key decisions.

We are in year nine of ST3, and we still don't know where many of the stations will be, much less started design. There is plenty of reporting, here and elsewhere, on all of these stations. But to illustrate, let's focus on Chinatown.

The basic tension here is that anyone thinking about the interests of future riders can easily see that a station next to the existing one is the best for riders, easing key transfers between the Rainier Valley, Eastside, and West Seattle. Meanwhile, many Chinatown business owners are entirely rational in believing that a new station mostly means construction disruption in the short term and higher rents in the long term.

Any Seattle politician trying to maximize their popularity can most easily do so by deferring the decision. Punting it to another study won't change opponents' (correct) assumption about the future, but might delay a decision until it falls to someone else, or the decision environment somehow changes. Non-Seattle board members have plenty of other things to fight the City about beyond station locations in Seattle. And another year of our lives passes no closer to being able to ride the line.

As someone who places a very high value in the quality of the system for future riders, and not on the longevity of particular businesses in a particular neighborhood, it's easy for me to root for the ridership-maximizing choice to win out here. Over twenty years ago, Greg Nickels and others on the Board ultimately ignored calls to serve Southcenter, bury the Rainier Valley segment, and keep First Hill Station. We are still enduring the consequences of that. But it was important that the Board made a decision, so that the project could continue. Today, it is equally important to do so in Chinatown and in the other contentious station areas.

As supporters disappointed with the board's performance, what is to be done? There's no transit agency B to come in take over the project. Dismantling the whole thing and starting over puts new service farther away, with all of the fundamental tensions still intact.

Instead, our leverage is the two figures that set the tone for Seattle representation: Mayor of Seattle and (especially) King County Executive. As it happens, both are up for election this Fall. A willingness to alienate a faction to build the system, as Nickels once did, is not a quality that obviously falls on the left/right spectrum that usually frames elections. I won't pretend to know which two of the four candidates are most likely to make hard decisions that anger sympathetic constituencies. But keep it in mind when you vote.