New report concludes Sound Move goals too optimistic

Sound Transit's buses and commuter trains aren't carrying as many riders as the agency promised voters back in 1996. Operating expenses are higher than anticipated. Many projects are costing more and taking longer to build. Some have been downsized, others eliminated.

But, while acknowledging all that, a new report from the agency's in-house watchdogs concludes that, "on balance, Sound Transit has met the goals and adhered to the principles and commitments" it presented to voters more than eight years ago.

The report was released yesterday by Sound Transit's Citizen Oversight Panel, a 15-member volunteer committee charged with overseeing implementation of "Sound Move," the package of rail and bus projects Seattle-area voters agreed in 1996 to tax themselves to build.

The panel issues quarterly reports. But this is its most ambitious effort so far, its first attempt to assess Sound Transit's performance from Day One.

It comes as the Sound Transit board prepares to submit a second round of proposed projects and tax increases to voters, perhaps next year.

The report concludes that many of the promises contained in Sound Move were based on overly optimistic assumptions or inadequate information. A commitment to have all the projects built by 2006 "clearly was unrealistic and should not have been made," it says.

Sound Transit's signature project, its Seattle light-rail line, isn't scheduled to be finished until 2009. Other projects may take even longer, the study says.

But it also credits Sound Transit with learning from its mistakes. "Sound Transit is a different agency than it was when it started out," said Larry Shannon, the panel's chairman. "It took five years to get going right."

Sound Transit has met most of Sound Move's core goals, the report says, such as improving regional mobility and providing more and better connections. "The vision of an integrated, region-wide, customer-friendly public transportation system is on the way to being realized," Shannon wrote in a cover letter.

Just two months ago, Citizens for Effective Transportation Alternatives (CETA), Sound Transit's harshest critic, issued its own report card on the agency. It gave Sound Transit F's for its Sounder commuter rail and Seattle light-rail projects, and C's for its express bus and Tacoma light-rail programs.

John Niles, CETA's technical coordinator, said the Citizen Oversight Panel report contains much valuable data, "but it continues to be interpreted in the rosiest possible way."

The Citizen Oversight Panel's members are appointed by the Sound Transit board. But "the idea that we're not independent from Sound Transit is just not true," said Karen Miller, a former Snohomish County Council member and the group's vice chair.

The report traces many of Sound Transit's problems to the agency's early days. Almost no engineering or design work had been done on many of the projects approved in the 1996 vote, it says, so the "cost estimates were conceptual and in many cases proved to be a poor basis for program commitments."

To avoid repeating that mistake, Shannon, a retired engineer, urged Sound Transit to do even more detailed preliminary work than it now plans on the next round of proposed projects it submits to voters.

Sound Transit's low point came in late 2000, when the agency admitted its proposed 21-mile light-rail line from Seattle's University District to SeaTac was more than $1 billion over budget and three years behind schedule. The project was later scaled back to a 14-mile line from downtown Seattle to Tukwila.

The citizen report criticizes Sound Transit staff for taking shortcuts in hopes of keeping the project on schedule, and for hiding its problems for months.

But the agency has matured, it adds, and when it has developed detailed baseline cost estimates, "it has performed admirably in bringing in projects within budget."

The report also urges the Sound Transit board to revisit one of the agency's political underpinnings: the principle that tax revenues generated in one of five geographic "subareas" should be spent only on projects or services that benefit that area.

The policy was devised in part to assure some Eastsiders their tax dollars wouldn't be spent on light rail in Seattle. But the citizen report says some projects benefit people in more than one area, and the policy "has been an impediment to the efficient development of the regional system."

Eric Pryne: 206-464-2231 or epryne@seattletimes.com