(The Seattle Post-Intelligencer posted the following Associated Press article on its website on June 9.)
SEATTLE — Sound Transit’s promise of commuter rail service to Everett will cost local taxpayers more than double what the agency estimated when voters approved the regional transit plan seven years ago.
Boosting the bill is $250 million the agency must spend on track improvements so passenger trains won’t affect future freight travel along the 35-mile corridor.
In return, Sounder trains will have access to the tracks until the year 2100, a century of service for several generations, the transit agency’s leaders said of the preliminary agreement signed May 28.
The Everett-Seattle commuter rail service is part of the Sound Move plan approved by voters in three counties in 1996.
The estimated price then was $132 million, but has since climbed to $380 million. And the local share is up to $288 million – up from $104 million.
The $250 million track agreement with railroad owner Burlington Northern Santa Fe is the largest share of the overall cost to cover tracks, trains, design and operations through 2010.
Federal contributions make up $77 million toward the cost and the state would pay an additional $15 million, leaving the local share at $288 million – or $715 per resident of urban Snohomish County.
While taxpayers are taking on a larger burden, the promised daily round trips are being cut from six to four.
“Money is no object, apparently, to this agency, and they expect citizens to settle for very little,” says Maggie Fimia of the opposition group Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives, which favors bus rapid transit.
Dave Earling, an Edmonds city councilman on the Sound Transit governing board, said residents are happy with commuter rail arriving to Snohomish County.
“That is what people focus on when I talk to them,” he said. “They’re just ecstatic we’re finally going to get this mode of transportation.”
The long-term pact with the railroad is an attractive deal, said Hugh Simpson, finance director for Sound Transit. If the tracks wear out or a mudslide damages the railbed, transit taxpayers are off the hook, he said. “We don’t have to deal with inflation, either.”
State Transportation Commission Chairman Aubrey Davis called the price “staggering,” but one he accepts.
“It’s so hard to get anything done, that if anything works, let’s do it,” he said.
Rolling transit trains onto existing tracks sounds straightforward and inexpensive. But Burlington Northern Santa Fe owns the tracks and is making Sound Transit pay for building another track along those stretches that now have only one line. The expansions require filling a mile of beach in Mukilteo and a segment in Woodway.
“The agency just didn’t realize the full extent of the improvements necessary,” said Snohomish County Executive Bob Drewel, a Sound Transit board member.
The track deal turned out more expensive than budgeted even a few months ago, when the agency allocated $155 million for it.
Even before the latest price increase, the agency expected to max out its Snohomish County funds through 2009, so the Sounder deal may require issuing up to $100 million in bond debt.
Sound Transit already intends to either prolong the current tax rates indefinitely, or seek a voter-approved increase for a second round of projects.
Following the May 28 announcement, Sound Transit officials predicted that by 2010 there would be 600,000 annual boardings, or 2,350 daily one-way trips on the Everett-Seattle segment.
King County Executive Ron Sims predicted, “We’re going to move as many people per day as you would move in a peak-hour lane of Interstate 5.”
Ultimately, the success or failure of Sounder depends on whether cities can attract high-density housing around the stations, said Mark Hallenbeck, director of the Washington State Transportation Center at the University of Washington, who said he is optimistic.
In another part of the deal that affects Pierce County, Sound Transit would have an option to lease or buy 21 miles of track, away from the freight mainline, for $30 million, creating a 100-mile corridor that extends Sounder from Tacoma to Lakewood, and perhaps someday, Nisqually.