Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist
Transit on fast track to nowhere

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Sound Transit may soon get what it has long had coming: A regional vote on whether to kill its troubled light-rail project.

An anti-rail group called Trust in Transit has filed a statewide initiative that would force all voter-approved transit agencies to build roughly what they promise in those glossy pre-election brochures.

If a project is more than 30 percent over budget or the route is shortened to less than 90 percent of the promised length, the agency must seek voter approval for a new plan. Or quit working on it.

This initiative is an in-your-face rebuke to Sound Transit, which last month won the right in court to change its rail plans however it sees fit.

If the initiative makes the ballot and passes in November, it would bring light rail to a halt and force Sound Transit to ask voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties for permission to continue.

In 1996, Sound Transit proposed a 21-mile light-rail line from the University District to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for $1.8 billion. That seemed like a good deal, and I voted yes.

It has since been changed to a 14-mile line from downtown to somewhere in Tukwila, two miles short of the airport, for $2.5 billion. It's hard to imagine such a dubious route winning voter approval today.

This initiative would apply to any new transit proposal statewide, but it applies retroactively only to Sound Transit. Why not the Seattle monorail?

The same Sound Transit-style mission creep is setting in with it. I voted for the $1.7 billion monorail because it is Seattle's only chance of getting true rapid transit — fast and out of traffic, with trains arriving so frequently there is no need for a schedule.

A year later, and the monorail has a 30 percent revenue shortfall. Now monorail officials want to build parts of the line as a single track, so trains may have to wait for other trains to pass. This undermines a crucial feature of rapid transit — the part about it being rapid. If we want to sit in a motionless mass-transit vehicle, we have the bus for that.
 
Rather than hash over the reasons these projects are so out of whack, it's better to ask: What do we do now?

Among the worst courses is the one Sound Transit has chosen. It is building a rail route to nowhere, because that's what it can afford.

If Sound Transit officials regrouped, put together a more expensive but rational plan that went somewhere (hint: the airport), they would probably get widespread support, including mine. Same with the monorail. Right now I wouldn't back a monorail revote even if we could have one. But if the cost rises, as it probably will, I'd rather vote on a new plan than get stuck with some half-baked compromise.

This yet-to-be numbered initiative has enough flaws to give me pause. If a rail line is mostly finished when it goes 30 percent over budget, do we really want to stop work to hold an election?

Critics also say the initiative's sole intent is to kill off Sound Transit. To that I say: So what? The people in the three-county taxing district should get to choose, and if we no longer want it, we shouldn't build it.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com. More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.

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