ST Downtown Tunnel Board Meeting

The Sound Transit board met today to discuss alternatives to building the second downtown Link tunnel (DSTT2), as part of its monthly board meeting. Video of the meeting will be available in 24-48 hours on ST's YouTube channel. (Here's the meeting agenda and webpage.)

Sound Transit did an ad hoc study of two alternatives to the second tunnel and presented the results last week in a committee meeting:

• Interline alternative: Merge the Ballard extension into the existing downtown tunnel (DSTT1) at Symphony station, bypassing Westlake station. This preserves ST3's Ballard - Tacoma Dome line (the future 1 Line).
• Stub-End alternative: Build Ballard - Westlake as a standalone line. Everybody would transfer at Westlake to the rest of the Link system.

Concept Slide comparing ST3, Interlining, and Stub-end configurations for Ballard Link (Sound Transit)

Today's full-board meeting concluded with no decision for or against the alternatives, but further substantial work on them would require the board to allocate resources and contracts to it.

The Seattle Transit Blog favors the Stub-End alternative over Interline or DSTT2. We also want ST to study making it automated, an automated Ballard - Westlake line. And we'd like it to be forward-compatible with a potential future extension to First Hill, Judkins Park, and Mt Baker station in a future vote.

Boardmembers' discussion on the alternatives is below the fold.

We wrote some live comments on the meeting as it was occurring. Here's my written testimony. Three people including me submitted written testimony supporting Stub-End. Sixteen people or so gave in-person testimony but I wasn't able to keep track of what they said.

A staff rep presented a 33-page report on the alternatives. It contained no new information compared to last week's 110-page report to the committee that we covered in the No New Tunnel? article. (Reference links are at the end of that article.)

Here's what Michael Smith and I noted during the boardmembers' discussion. It may contain some mistakes in what they said or leave some things out, since we were listening and writing on the fly. The meeting video will have the definitive content on what the boardmembers said.

Dan Strauss (Seattle city council): One tunnel does not serve my residents as well as two tunnels." But North King doesn't have enough funding for a full two-tunnel buildout and reaching Ballard and West Seattle. This raises a tradeoff. Do we get to Ballard and West Seattle on time, or do we build the second tunnel?" Strauss would rather get to Ballard and West Seattle on time. The Stub-End alternative gets us back to financial stability". It would be harder to switch to it if we had an FTA Record of Decision on the current DSTT2/Ballard alignment, but we don't have that yet due to previous board changes to the project. That gives us more flexibility to consider alternatives. If the region really wants the second tunnel" (the other subareas outside North King), given the costs and tradeoffs that emerged after the ST3 vote, the region needs to contribute more than 49% of the cost". He said that cost share was based on projected ridership in 2016. He said a bunch of other things too.

Cassie Franklin (Everett mayor): We need to move forward with both tunnels. The delay of switching to an alternative might eat up any cost savings. Single-tunnel reduces resiliency.

Angela Birney (Redmond mayor): Still not convinced of single-tunnel. Studying it further would lead to more delays. But she recognizes Strauss's concerns about the two-tunnel status quo.

Claudia Balducci (King County district 6, representing part of the Eastside): Nobody proposed to walk away from the second tunnel just because'." It's because of the cost and tradeoffs of the preferred alignment, and the fact that upcoming decisions will get harder. We need to keep these alternatives available to keep our options open. We're retrofitting a major downtown with a system that should have been built decades ago." Balducci also alluded to upgrades DSTT1 needs anyway to improve reliability regardless of whether DSTT2 gets built. She asked staff to come back later with information on when will these upgrades be done, and how long will the tunnel be shut down for them? She said ST wasn't planning to consider these until the 2040s, but they're needed now, and they impact the decision on whether to do the single-tunnel upgrades along with them.

Bruce Harrell (Seattle mayor, outgoing): The one-tunnel solution is fraught with a lot of issues." Several boardmembers probably have more concerns about it than they're saying. But it's worth keeping these alternatives available. Four years ago we probably wouldn't have considered a one-tunnel solution." But the current challenges require out-of-the-box thinking."

Dave Somers and Hunter George asked the staff rep about FTA risk. He said these changes to the EIS would be large enough to require conferring with the Federal Transit Administration, which is evaluating ST's grant application. It's hard to say what the risk is. It may require more paperwork and process. It may affect the underlying assumptions in the other ST3 projects, and require their EISes to be adjusted, and more process on them.

CEO Dow Constantine was asked if there was a staff recommendation. He said ST learned a lot about the system through this study. These results are preliminary. It's the board's decision whether to continue studying these alternatives. The discussions today are exactly the kinds of things the board should do to address these issues.

Dave Somers (Snohomish County executive and ST board chair): The potential $4 billion savings of these alternatives isn't nearly enough to close North King's financial gap. Changing the preferred alignment would trigger further delays across ST3 to adjust EISes, etc. If our inflation estimates are off, we could end up spending more money for less benefit. The biggest recommendation from the audit panel was to not delay anymore. He's quite concerned" that changing the downtown alignment will cause other projects to stop or be delayed (like Everett Link). Changing the alignment is not worth it. This was an ad hoc study; there is no current plan to continue pursuing it. If the board decides to study and develop these alternatives substantially further, it would have to allocate resources and contracts for it.

Let the comments begin.