Voters understood the value of investing in mobility

Metropolitan Seattle's homegrown economic-stimulus plan looks forward to a good year. Sound Transit wraps up major projects in 2009, as others begin. Keeping people moving keeps the region moving.

Voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties know that, and spoke loudly in November as a second phase of light rail, express bus service and commuter rail was approved by 56 percent — an extraordinary endorsement after September's national plunge into the economic abyss.

Picking apart two national stimulus packages is now a political pastime, with good reason. An early round of unregulated largesse was manipulated into gratuities and bonuses by the nation's lenders and finance industry. Congress is wrestling with where and how best to spend $900 billion more.

Conservative critics respond with hand-wringing over President Roosevelt's New Deal, 75 years later. Yet even some of the skeptics acknowledge hard times create opportunities to make basic investments that look ahead.

Building and extending Puget Sound's transit system is the future. Tangible dividends from money spent on better ways to get around will still be here when the economy improves. Households, businesses and employers all gain.

Such long-term investments are precisely the kinds of improvements that sustain a healthy, resilient community, especially with a million new neighbors expected to arrive. Mass transit is part of the dynamic of getting people to work and school, and taking cars off the road to keep commerce flowing.

Environmental benefits are important, but mobility is a fundamental American value.

Sound Transit expects to begin light-rail service from downtown Seattle to Tukwila in July. Thirty-five rail cars are here for the July 3 grand opening. Passengers continuing to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport will board shuttles to the terminal until a last segment is finished in December.

Work on the Beacon Hill tunnel and station dragged, but the elevator is being installed and architectural touches completed. The station is 165 feet below ground.

Attention will turn to the connection from downtown Seattle through Capitol Hill to the University of Washington. The $1.9 billion project is expected to produce pay checks for 2,600 workers. In November, the federal government committed to an $813 million grant agreement.

Tough economic times create a competitive environment. Bids for preliminary work under Interstate 5 came in 34 percent below estimates. The University Link — Sound Transit has more links than Jimmy Dean — is all underground, and eventually gets to campus via a 3.2 mile twin-bore tunnel.

Groundbreaking is set for March, and the completion date is 2016. How to put the next part gently? After next fall's football season, Husky Stadium will lose six acres of parking for 5 ½ years. Sound Transit will pay for temporary parking. Net loss after construction is 100 spaces.

Voter approval of ST2, the term of art, comes with a shorter horizon on the big stuff and immediate expansion of express-bus service and Sounder rail. Ridership on both blossomed with $4 gasoline, and riders stayed. Light rail looks to Federal Way, and Northgate, and beyond to Lynnwood.

The Eastside Link carves a path from Seattle's International District across the Interstate 90 bridge with light-rail lanes and a new high-occupancy lane in each direction. Mercer Island commuters stay happy.

Big decisions remain. Bellevue is enamored with an underground alignment through downtown, for which there is no money. Redmond sits at the end of the line, anxious the money will run out before light rail arrives.

Give Sound Transit's Citizens Oversight Panel, chaired by Dick Chapin, credit for jabbing the agency in the backside about finances. A report last week wagged a finger about rising operating costs and raised its eyebrows at three items. The agency was singed along with America's 401(k)s. Investments with insurer AIG, Lehman Brothers and the King County Investment Pool all turned dodgy.

Sound Transit crossed a threshold. Distant deadlines arrived with results. The agency generates expectations, not indignation. Money raised locally is spent locally with long-term benefits — a homegrown stimulus, precisely when it is needed.

Lance Dickie's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is ldickie@seattletimes.com; for a podcast Q&A with the author, go to www.seattletimes.com/edcetera