What Snohomish County Wants in ST3
Everett's Proposed Alignment
In the ST3 project list comments, Edmonds, Everett, Mountlake Terrace, Snohomish County, and Community Transit all sent their input. Here the key headlines:
Everyone Wants the Spine. All the letters cited extending light rail to Everett as a top priority, and both Lynnwood and Everett expressed a preference for service to the 55,000 jobs at Paine Field. The County supported Paine Field but hedged a bit, suggesting alternate options and alignments "should be retained" until funding and financing options are determined."
Lynnwood and Everett also emphasized the extension beyond Everett Station to North Everett to access Everett Community College, Providence Regional Medical Center, and other educational institutions.
Interestingly, Lynnwood was articulate about all of these requests, suggesting perceived reverse-peak demand. It cited the jobs at Paine Field, potential commercial flights, and a plausible location for a maintenance facility as discriminators for the Paine Field alignment.
Lynnwood Embraces Urbanism. Lynnwood asked for three more stations: City Center, Alderwood, and Ash Way*. Encouragingly, for the first two the letter states that "Little or no on-site parking would be needed or even desirable" because the city prefers walkability, transit access, and to "increase development density."
Everett Doesn't. Everett's letter announced it "does not support and will oppose" an SR 99 alignment because Swift already serves it, and SR 99 is a "fully developed, long-standing commercial center," instead favoring an alignment that mostly hugs freeways. That they would consider Evergreen Way a finished product is, frankly, astounding in 2015.
Instead, Everett both suggested a hybrid of the alternatives, following I-5 the entire way except for the diversion to Paine Field between 128th St SW and SR 526.
Having already demanded a Link alignment almost certainly well beyond Snohomish County's financial capacity, Everett went on to ask for a 1,000 space parking structure at Everett Station to service "robust ridership [that] is expected from outlying areas including Skagit County, Island County, [and] north and east Snohomish County." Aside from equity issues in serving residents outside the taxing district, it's not clear how 1,000 parking spaces could possibly serve a ridership described as "robust."
In a similar vein, Mountlake Terrace focused on the 220th St SW infill station and a parking garage for 236th St SW.
North Sounder Barely Mentioned. The City of Edmonds mentioned completion of "a long term solution" for the Edmonds Sounder Station, a solution previously deferred from ST2. There was no other mention of improvements for this line, leaving it in its limbo of high costs without the scale to be economical.
Snohomish County Pushes Multimodal. The Snohomish County and Community Transit letters, refreshingly, implored Sound Transit to think hard about bus/rail integration. They advocated for stations at 128th and 164th because those would both be served by Swift lines.
Snohomish County already hired a consultant to look at access issues and asked for $90m as part of a larger funding plan for a separate bus/bike/pedestrian crossing of I-5 at these locations.
* Which the city would annex.