Category: Transit

Transit

How Do We Get Transit Champions on Transit Boards?
Sound Transit Special Selection, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Anna Zivarts

Watching the Sound Transit board vote at the end of May, I think I felt like a lot of transit riders. Who in this room is going to the mat for us?

It is a familiar feeling. In 2022, I was organizing disabled nondrivers who were trying to fight proposed transit service cuts in Washington’s  Tri-Cities area. Their transit board, working to burnish their anti-tax bonafides, had proposed cutting the sales tax that funded transit, which would have eliminated Sunday service. Calling into the meetings, I was heartbroken that such a proposal was being considered, and that none of the elected leaders voting on it themselves relied on, or even rode, public transit. 

In organizing disabled transit riders throughout the state, I had heard similar stories about other transit boards. From Vancouver to Bremerton, Skagit Valley to Walla Walla, as I wrote in this PubliCola op-ed from 2023, transit riders shared how they’d show up at their local transit board meeting to advocate for improvements only to hear that none of the elected leaders on the board rode transit, often refusing to do so because it took “too long” and they were “too busy.”

Inspired by the success of Intercity Transit in Thurston County, whose members lobbied hard in the 1980s to be allowed to have community representatives serve as voting members, we started working to pass legislation that would allow the other 20 transit agencies in Washington governed under this state law to add two additional voting seats to their boards. We believed that by including transit riders and organizations that serve transit-dependent communities, these agencies would provide better service and improve communication with the communities they serve. 

Our greatest allies on this bill were local elected leaders who sat on transit boards and saw how thin they were stretched. For elected officials, a transit board appointment is often just one of multiple duties of a part-time, sometimes volunteer elected position. Having the time to deeply engage with the issues facing the transit agency can be a stretch, even for those elected leaders who want to be transit champions. (We heard this same critique from King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci in her recent comments in PubliCola on the need for Sound Transit governance reform). 

Our bill was killed before being introduced in 2023 and failed to pass in 2024, but we were finally able to get it passed last year. As of January 2026, all 20  transit agencies can update their charters to add these seats. But so far, none have done so. Worse, some agencies appear to be actively campaigning against adding transit riders to the boards. 

I wanted to share the history because I hope the research on best practices and the conversations we are having with local transit agencies can inform the Sound Transit governance restructuring debate, and vice versa. Granted, the scale of Sound Transit’s budget and its ambitious light rail plans will require some different considerations, but I think there are useful parallels, especially as we look at how different transit governance structures function in other communities outside of Washington. 

Last fall, as Nondrivers Alliance we started meeting with elected leaders who sat on transit boards across our state, one of the most common concerns was whether it is feasible to have appointed members, in addition to elected officials, serve on transit boards. 

To help address this, I encouraged UW sustainable transportation grad student Naomi Rubin to create a report on transit agency governance structures last fall. She found that many agencies have appointed boards, and sometimes there are specific seats designed for transit riders. For example, on the MBTA (Boston’s board) the governor makes appointments, and one appointee must be a transit rider; another must be from an environmental justice population. In Oregon, the boards of larger transit agencies (Salem and Portland, for instance), are appointed by their governor as well, and one appointee must be a regular transit rider.

Transit governance and restructuring is a hot topic in many jurisdictions struggling to rebuild from pandemic ridership declines and over budget transit expansions. Chicago is going through a process to restructure their regional transit agency. The new board will include two appointed representatives (one voting, one non-voting) from the disability community. In Denver, a proposed restructure of the RTA board would eliminate two-thirds of elected members and replace them with a mix of elected and appointed representatives. 

In Los Angeles, as their County Board of Supervisors expands from 5 to 9 members, LA Metro’s board is being restructured to accommodate this new representation. 

Like Sound Transit, LA Metro is also expanding their system, and fights over alignments and the appeasement of NIMBY concerns have delayed and added costs to projects. With the current governance structure, “no one prioritizes what makes the best transit network, or what is best for riders,” reflected transit advocate Nick Andert.

The decision on how LA Metro’s board will be reconstituted ultimately lies with the state legislature, although the current board wants to present the legislature with a preferred alternative, which they’ll  vote on in July. The LA transit advocates I spoke with aren’t sure yet what board configuration they’ll support. Even the simple prospect of adding four county supervisors to the board has been highly controversial because no one wants to dilute their own power. 

The LA advocates looked at San Francisco Bay Area’s BART, where board members are directly elected to the transit board. But because of the politics of some LA county communities, such a system in LA could result in anti-transit transit board members who would stonewall any efforts to expand transit, the advocates worried. This was a problem with the BART system in the past before the current pro-transit slate of board members won election. 

For context, I reached out to Dr. Rosalie Ray, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies at Texas State University. Dr. Ray published a typology of transit governance in 2020 and continues to research how representation, experiences and identities impact transit board decision-making. (I got to know Dr. Ray because we co-authored a chapter in Edward Elgar’s Handbook of Transportation and Public Policy about how disabled nondrivers are excluded from transit governance and what could be gained through reforming board structures for our inclusion.)

Dr. Ray studied the power-sharing efforts in the formation of King County Metro’s Equity cabinet, and so I asked, from her perspective, if she thinks a transit board that includes some appointed members with specific qualifications would better serve Sound Transit. She thought it would, especially if there was an intentional effort to prevent knowledge loss as members cycled on and off the board. But she also pointed out there were tradeoffs: When elected officials in charge of land use decisions sit on the transit board they (theoretically) have a stake in creating land use policies that make transit work. Without this direct connection, transit and land use decisions risk being decoupled. 

I also spoke to Chrisof Spieler, author of Trains, Buses, People, who currently serves as the transportation director of the city of Madison, Wisconsin. Previously he served on Houston’s appointed transit board.Spieler noted that many appointees to transit boards are there not because they wanted to be transit champions, but because they (and the people who appointed them) saw their board appointment as a resume builder in the context of larger political ambition. 

Because of his experience in Houston, and what he’s seen in other agencies, Spieler is skeptical that governance structures matter. “Every structure has success stories and failures,” he shared. “Dysfunctional structures with the right people can accomplish extraordinary things.” And the reverse is also true. 

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In the context of Sound Transit, LA Metro, and other agencies that are seeking to build rail extensions, Spieler noted that decisions about alignment and which lines get built in what order (or at all) will always be highly political, and even if a transit board consists of appointees, the big decisions will get negotiated between the people with the appointing power. 

For Spieler, the key question is whether transit riders have the political power to hold the key decision makers, these elected leaders, accountable. In the context of Sound Transit, this would mean asking why, with the ability to appoint 10 of the 18 board members, the King County Executive wasn’t able to negotiate more for King County access in the recent re-alignment. 

A partially appointed or directly elected board that includes representation for different geographies will face the same tensions between regions. In Europe, many of these tensions are resolved by the transit agency being managed by a single government entity: the city, county, or state that the transit serves. In Washington, this could translate into Sound Transit being managed by WSDOT, which could look at what the Puget Sound region needs overall. But how would a system that primarily serves the Puget Sound region fare in the context of competing interests from other parts of the state?

Drawing from my conversations with Dr. Ray, Christof Spieler and Los Angeles advocates, as well as our experience with how hard it has been to implement our local transit agency governance reform, I have come to recognize that there may be no magic bullet for transit governance reform. 

But there is one point of concurrence among everyone I spoke with: Our transit agencies would work better if transit boards, transit staff and transit contractors actually relied on transit themselves. 

“Require transit agency staff to rely on transit themselves,” Dr. Ray summed it up. 

Because elected officials, transit agency leadership and contractors rarely, if ever, ride transit, they do not feel the urgency that those of us who rely on transit do in creating transit systems that are truly excellent. This lack of transit familiarity has real costs, not just in what we imagine is possible but also in our expectations for transit service and construction. I would argue this is the root of why US transit agencies and transit construction projects can’t keep up with transit in other parts of the world: the people in charge don’t actually believe transit will replace car dependency. 

I kept wondering as I watched, biking my kid across the bridge to swim lessons over the years, the amount of construction worker time that was spent pouring and repouring concrete on I-90. Had more of the contractors working on the Sound Transit plinths been transit-dependent themselves, would there have been a whistleblower calling out the shoddy fabrication standards much sooner? Would things have been different if the project was managed by an international consulting firm with decades of transit construction experience rather than an American company that is trying to diversify from highways into transit construction? 

Spieler concurred that this could be contributing to the challenges and cost overruns. “Look where consulting firms have their offices,” he said. A firm is unlikely to attract staff that ride transit and want to ride transit if their office is in a suburban office park that can’t be reached on the bus or train. 

“At every level people don’t ride transit enough,” Spieler reflected. “We don’t force it. And we could.” He mentioned that during his tenure in Houston, the transit agency had an internal policy that required staff to ride transit. But many staff members were still reluctant to replace car trips, riding light rail to lunch instead of incorporating transit into other daily trips. And eventually the policy was abandoned. 

Inspired by advocates from Houston, Atlanta, Portland and Minneapolis, this spring my organization, Nondrivers Alliance, conducted a survey of all 219 board members of transit agencies in Washington to ask when the last time they rode transit and how often they ride transit in the system they’re in charge of. We received responses from about a third of the board members, and even among the responses we received (a self-selecting bunch), ten percent of respondents reported never having ridden transit in their jurisdiction. 

It’s not unreasonable to expect transit board members and transit agency leadership to ride the system they manage. We can set up this expectation through organizing challenges like the Week Without Driving, and we can also look at other ways to force transit agencies to institute policies and incentives to encourage this change. 

Other transit agencies have also instituted transit incentives or requirements for board members. In Manila, for example, leaders of the transit agency announced in 2025 they will require staff to ride transit at a minimum once a week. In the US, a 1993 San Francisco ballot measure  made it official city policy to require the mayor, Board of Supervisors, and other top city officials to ride public transit to work at least twice a week. But without an accountability mechanism, they didn’t follow the policy. More recently, in 2025, a bill was introduced in the California state legislature that, among other things, would have prevented transit board members from receiving their $150 daily stipend for participating in board activities if they failed to use the transit system for at least one hour or four trips per month. (The bill also would have added two non-voting members to transit boards representing riders and transit employees). Unfortunately, the parts of the bill regarding transit governance were struck. 

Perhaps it’s time to consider legislation like this in Washington. Or perhaps we just need, as present and future transit riders, to concentrate our political power. With the recent Sound Transit realignment, we saw the anger from all corners of our region. Our communities are demanding reliable, comfortable, and frequent transit. Let’s use this anger to hold accountable our elected leaders who have failed to find solutions that meet this need, starting with insisting they ride transit with us. If it’s too slow, too inconvenient, too unreliable for them, that’s an indictment of their failures and it’s time to find leaders who feel the same urgency we do to build the system we need. 

Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Transit

Seattle Nice: Mayor Wilson Doubles Down on Transit Sales Tax

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s third (!) edition of Seattle Nice, we have a short but (I think) informative show about Mayor Katie Wilson’s proposal to double a sales tax that funds extra Metro bus service and other transit improvements in Seattle. The tax, current 0.15 percent (or 15 cents on every $100 purchase) would double under Wilson’s plan to 0.3 percent, bringing Seattle’s sales tax one step closer to 11 percent (we’re already the highest in the nation).

Sales taxes are among the most regressive types of tax, because they gobble up a much larger percentage of your income if you’re poor than if you’re rich. Nonetheless, Wilson is pitching the increase as a matter of affordability, since lower-income people are more likely to need reliable, frequent transit service. The increase will add about $29 a year to a typical Seattle resident’s sales tax burden.

(As an aside, I would really love it if transit advocates would stop explaining why transit is a good thing like people aren’t familiar with the concept of “bus.” Every pitch for new spending on transit, for some reason, has to involve a long explanation of the noble people who rely on buses and why they use them—e.g. “the nurse who just wants to get home after 12 hours on the night shift, the single mother who needs to pick up her kids from school, the teacher who needs to be there on time for her kids…” People know what buses are and what they do!)

As we discussed, the city does have another option for funding local transit: A vehicle license fee of up to $60. License fees, too, are regressive, and I made a misstatement on the podcast by conflating flat license fees with more progressive motor vehicle excise taxes, which cost more for more expensive cars.

At a council committee meeting to discuss the proposal this week, Wilson’s senior transportation advisor, former Transportation Choices Coalition director Alex Hudson, said a a $50 license fee would “only bring in an additional 15% more revenue each year and “nearly double that amount of the annual cost for households with only one vehicle, and triple or double the cost to households with two or more vehicles.”

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Given that the sales tax is supposed to bring in $138 million a year, another $20 million for transit actually seems worth considering, especially since license fees and vehicle taxes represent some of the only revenue sources in which drivers subsidize people who don’t own cars. (Usually, it’s the other way around.)

Last week, Wilson said she decided not to propose the license fee because it was “controversial,” which is more of a (questionable) political call than a policy one. Hearing Wilson’s office argue against a license fee because it would over-burden car owners (especially those with two, three, or seven cars!) was a bit jarring, especially coming at the very beginning of negotiations with the council over what the final ballot measure will look like.

The council will have the opportunity to amend the measure over the coming weeks. At Thursday’s meeting, Councilmember Debora Juarez said she was “offended” by references to “underserved communities” and people of color, who she accused the mayor’s office of using as “props.” She also said she was “not happy with the legislation and I think it needs a lot of work,” then said the mayor’s office was “not living in the real world” because “some people have to drive a car.” Helpful feedback, I’m sure!

Elections, Mayor Wilson, Taxes, Transit

Wilson Proposes Doubling Transit Sales Tax to Fund Local Bus Service Expansion

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson has proposed doubling a sales tax that funds transit service in Seattle, known as the Seattle Transit Measure, to 0.3 percent, up from the 0.15 percent tax that expires this year. The proposal would raise around $138 million over the next ten years to pay for bus service, service on the city’s two streetcars, and transit passes for low-income riders, among other programs.

The Seattle Transit Measure, originally known as the Seattle Transportation Benefit District, supplements bus service provided by King County Metro by adding service hours in Seattle. The transit measure came out of a failed attempt   2014; in 2020, a proposal to increase the tax from 0.1 percent to 0.15 percent passed with more than 80 percent of the vote.

The extra money would fund 280,000 bus service hours a year on top of Metro’s regular service, Seattle Department of Transportation director Angela Brady said during a press conference on Tuesday. According to SDOT’s most recent annual report on the measure, the tax paid for 143,000 bus hours in 2024. The new funding would also pay for service on the existing streetcars that run between downtown and South Lake Union and Capitol Hill, and would provide free annual transit passes to everyone living in Seattle Housing Authority buildings, a new expansion of the ORCA Lift program for people making up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

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Demonstrating how  much costs have increased, the original, 0.1-percent 2014 transit measure expanded transit access by about 350,000 hours a year.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Wilson pitched her plan to expand transit hours as an urgent matter of affordability.

“When transit is frequent, reliable, and affordable, it does more than move people from one place to another—it gives people freedom,” Wilson said. “Transportation is one of the biggest costs in a household budget, and most of that cost comes from owning a car. Gas, insurance, repairs, parking, monthly payments, and maintenance all add up fast. So when we make our transit system better, we make it possible for more households to live car-free or car-light, and that could put hundreds or thousands of dollars back into a family’s budget. That is real affordability.”

If voters approve Wilson’s proposal, it will bring Seattle residents’ total sales tax burden close to 11 percent. Sales tax is the most regressive form of tax voters regularly pay, meaning that the poorer you are, the greater the percentage of your income you spend on the tax.

Asked about the seeming contradiction between her affordability pitch and the increasingly unaffordable sales tax burden, Wilson said it’s “unfortunate that we don’t have more progressive options for funding our transit system.” But, she said, “when we’re investing in public transit and making it possible for people to live car free or car light, when we’re investing in affordable fares, those are really direct supports that are creating affordability for the people in our communities that need it most.”

Under the state law that authorized the transportation benefit district, the city could also propose a vehicle license fee of up to $60—a tax on drivers that would directly fund the city’s primary alternative to driving. Asked why she didn’t do so, Wilson said she believed a license fee increase might prove too “controversial” to pass.

“I think we’ve seen car tab measures rouse more organized opposition, and I think we wanted to stick with something that we were really confident Seattle voters were going to be able to enthusiastically get on board with.”

A countywide measure to fund transit service with a 0.1 percent sales tax increase and a $60 vehicle license fee failed 55 to 45 percent. Since then, the city has relied on sales taxes alone to pay for additional transit service.

Wilson will have to move her proposal through the city council, starting with Rob Saka’s transportation committee. That committee will get an initial briefing on the proposal on Thursday. So far, Wilson has announced most big-ticket legislation without lining up council support or identifying council sponsors in advance. Saka, who was not present at Wilson’s press conference, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposal, but we’ll update this post if we hear back.

Mayor Wilson, podcasts, Transit

Seattle Nice: How Badly Did Sound Transit Screw Seattle Over?

By Erica C. Barnett

On this week’s episode of the Seattle Nice podcast, we did a deep dive on the Sound Transit board’s decision last week to indefinitely defer the voter-approved light rail extension to Ballard, a stretch that boasts by far the highest projected ridership of any line in the Sound Transit 3 package voters approved ten years ago.

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss, who represents Ballard, has been beating the drum on this issue for months, arguing it would be irresponsible to renege on such a significant commitment to Seattle voters. The new plan preserves the “spine” to Everett and Tacoma, along with a second light rail tunnel through downtown Seattle, leaving Ballard in limbo unless Sound Transit can come up with cost savings and unless someone, most likely Seattle voters, can provide the funds to build the expansion.

The board adopted a couple of amendments last week that will move planning for a potential Ballard line forward and that commit to looking for ways to make the plan more affordable. But they rejected a proposal from Strauss that would have switched up ST3’s sequencing to build a “starter” line between Westlake and Ballard before adding a second transit tunnel.

Suburban Sound Transit board members said last week that prioritizing Ballard would doom the rest of the system. As a result, Sandeep noted, the suburbs got everything they asked for,  leaving Seattle without any leverage to get additional funds for its projects in the future. Indeed, several board members made that explicit, saying Seattle would need to find its own money if it wants to build to Ballard and complete the West Seattle line in the future; there will be no regional Sound Transit 4, they said.

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One suburban Sound Transit board member and longtime light rail proponent who voted (along with Strauss) against the entire proposal, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, told me last week she thought it was time to take a serious look at Sound Transit’s governance. Currently, the agency is run by an 18-member board of elected officials who represent every “subarea” of the region—an ever-changing cast of characters with no specific transit expertise. This structure, Balducci suggested, has made it difficult to anticipate and forestall cost overruns like the $34.5 billion hole Sound Transit is currently attempting to fill.

David, Sandeep, and I also discussed some of the potential reasons for Sound Transit’s persistent overruns—excessive process, changes in response to neighborhood complaints, and engineering decisions that add millions to even relatively simple projects, like the long-deferred Graham Street Station, which the latest plan at least moves into the “funded” column.

Finally, we had to spend a few minutes on the latest shakeup in Mayor Katie Wilson’s office—the departure of housing and homelessness advisor Jon Grant, who was at the center of the mayor’s plan to add thousands of new tiny house-style shelters around the city. Grant, along with Wilson’s former chief of staff Kate Kreuzer, reportedly clashed with council members and staff while the council was working to pass emergency legislation to expedite Wilson’s shelter proposal.

Transit

Sound Transit Sacrifices Light Rail to Ballard, Moves Long-Deferred Graham Station Forward, in Latest “Realignment” Plan

By Erica C. Barnett

The Sound Transit board voted to approve a new “affordable” light rail plan on Thursday afternoon that indefinitely defers construction of light rail to Ballard, builds rail to West Seattle without a planned station on SW Avalon Way, and adds the long-deferred Graham Street Station back to the list of “fully funded” projects.

The cuts, or “realignment,” are Sound Transit’s response to a projected $34.5 billion budget shortfall over the next two decades. In order to restore Ballard and other projects that voters approved in the 2016 Sound Transit 3 plan, the agency will have to come up with between $9 billion and $11 billion in new revenues or cost savings.

The Ballard extension, which would include stops at Seattle Center and NW Market St. would have had the highest ridership in the entire system, with around 150,000 daily boardings—a point City Councilmember Dan Strauss, who represents the neighborhood, has made repeatedly in his effort to get Ballard back on the map. Under the new plan, the “Ballard extension” will terminate at Seattle Center, miles from Ballard, prompting Strauss to urge the board to “, change the name of the alignment—not the Ballard Link Extension, but the Downtown Tunnel.”

Since voters approved the Sound Transit 3 plan in 2016, Ballard has been upzoned by the city three times and grown in population, making it perhaps the most obvious contender in the region for a light rail stop. ”

The board rejected an amendment from Strauss that would have prioritized building the extension to Ballard over building a second light rail tunnel through downtown Seattle. Instead, they adopted two amendments that essentially direct Sound Transit to look for cost savings and new revenue and ask staff to come back with a date for opening the Ballard line.

Those amendments—from King County Executive Girmay Zahilay and Strauss, respectively—are essentially nonbinding and, unlike Strauss’ amendment to add Ballard to Sound Transit’s “funded projects” list, do not commit Sound Transit to actually build light rail to Ballard.

In rejecting Strauss’ amendment, board members said they were actually saving the rest of the light rail system, including the “spine” between Everett and Tacoma and light rail to Issaquah and Kirkland. Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin, who proposed an unsuccessful amendment to table Strauss’ proposal instead of voting on it, said the Ballard proposal “puts the entire system at risk, and for me that is an absolute deal breaker. We cannot risk the entirety of the system for this exploration, and we have to protect the delivery of light rail to all communities.”

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson, who appeared to be leaning toward a “no” vote on Strauss’ proposal on Wednesday, cast one of just four votes in its favor on Thursday (the others were Strauss, Renton Councilmember Ed Prince, and King County Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda).

There was positive news for Seattle light rail supporters on the other end of the line, as the board approved a change that moved the long-deferred Graham Street infill station to the “funded” project list. Advocates have been pushing the board to restore the station, which will fill a two-mile gap between the Columbia City and Othello stations, for decades, ever since Sound Transit “deferred” the voter-approved station for cost savings in the early 2000s.

The Graham amendment, sponsored by Wilson and Zahilay, commits the city to spend up to $30 million on the street-level station; combined with $25 million from an existing federal grant, that would leave a gap of about $130 million, ST’s deputy executive director for enterprise planning, said. The county has not formally committed any funds to the station.

At a rally at the Filipino Community Center Wednesday afternoon, Wilson, Zahilay, and City Councilmembers Dionne Foster and Alexis Mercedes Rinck supported a vote in favor of the station, which was originally proposed as part of the voter-approve Sound Move plan that first funded light and commuter rail in 1996. Without the amendment, the Graham Street Station would have remained among the projects Sound Transit plans to advance to 100 percent design.

“Just a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of being here with so many community members, some of whom I’m looking at right now, at a fantastic rally,” Foster said Wednesday. “And at that rally I looked around and I said, ‘Did we organize for 100% design, or did we organize for trains we can ride?’ And today we have our answer: We organized for trains that we can ride!”

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The Graham Street saga may be coming to a close, 30 years after voters approved the station in the 1996 Sound Move measure. (The station still has a $130 million budget gap, so construction is still far from a done deal). But the length of time it took just to get Graham—a street-level infill station that won’t require new track, much less a water crossing—back on the “funded” list is warning sign for anyone who believed that when they voted to fund light rail to Ballard, they were actually funding light rail to Ballard.

As Councilmember Rinck put it during public comment before the vote, light rail to Ballard “is not a ‘nice to have.’ This is essential infrastructure for the largest city in Washington state.”

The cuts the board made yesterday are the fourth, and by far the largest, “realignment” in Sound Transit’s history, and their magnitude appeared to surprise many board members when the agency announced the $34.5 billion shortfall last year.

The repeated realignments have led some advocates to urge changes to the way the agency is governed. Currently, the board that oversees and makes policy decisions for Sound Transit is made up of an ever-changing roster of elected officials from around the region. This setup was designed to ensure accountability—elected officials, unlike staff, can theoretically be booted for decisions voters don’t like—but it also means the board has no technical experts and little institutional knowledge, since most elected positions turn over frequently.

One of the longest-serving Sound Transit board members, King County Councilmember Claudia Balducci, told PubliCola after Wednesday’s meeting that she thinks it’s time to reconsider how Sound Transit is governed. (As Balducci noted during the meeting, “I have gone gray in the service of expanding transit in this region.” More than 15 years ago, I covered her battle against fellow Bellevue City Councilmember Kevin Wallace to build light rail on the Eastside.)

“I really do think it’s time to start talking about governance,” Balducci said. “If we’re in this constant cycle of crisis, recovery, crisis, recovery, crisis, recovery, maybe a board full of people who are expert at transit running a transit agency and delivering transit projects would be more attuned.”

“I’m an experienced amateur, but an amateur,” Balducci continued. “None of us are experts. How did we not see $35 billion creeping up on us? A hole that big opened up before we took this on. …  Maybe it’s time to evolve.”

Balducci cast one of just two votes, along with Strauss, against the final “realignment” package. (She was one of just three votes, along with Walker and Wilson, against an amendment that moved $100 million away from the Issaquah light rail extension to fund a parking garage in Renton). “I hope to vote yes in the fall,” when staff have a more detailed financial plan, Balducci said before her vote. “But to get from here to there, I want to see more progress on transparency, around the dates that we are delivering projects,” and a “path for Ballard better than we have today.”

Editor’s note: This post originally said the Ballard station would have seen nearly 150,000 daily boardings; in fact, that projection is for the entire Ballard extension. We have corrected the error.

Guest Contributor, Transit

How We Can Save Ballard Light Rail

By Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss

Ballard Light Rail is facing its biggest threat yet. Despite the fact the Ballard Link Extension is projected to serve as many as 148,000 people daily, the most riders of any project in Sound Transit history, the agency is considering postponing the project indefinitely to address its long-term budget issues.

That’s unacceptable. As a Sound Transit board member, I am proposing amendments to get the Ballard Link Extension back on track. They raise the question: Are we going to do everything we can to get this project done, or are we going to make this decision without exploring every option?

Since Sound Transit 3 (ST3) passed in 2016 with the promise to bring light rail to Ballard, we have planned the growth of our city around it. In that decade, Ballard has grown from being just one of Seattle’s many neighborhoods to an officially designated regional center, meaning it is zoned for the highest density of job and housing growth.

Now, under Sound Transit’s current proposal, construction of the so-called Ballard Link Extension would only be funded to Seattle Center. That’s nowhere near Ballard.

So, has Ballard Light Rail reached the end of the line? That would be a generational mistake that we can’t afford to make. Here are some of the solutions I will be proposing to the Sound Transit Board.

First, build a Ballard Starter Line.

One of the key ways Sound Transit’s plan falls short is by prioritizing nearly $11 billion in Seattle-area funding to build a second downtown tunnel over building light rail to Ballard. That’s a policy choice, not a necessity.

That second tunnel would run parallel to the current tunnel and serve roughly the same area. To maximize ridership, we should move Seattle’s funding from the second downtown tunnel to where it’s needed most—building a Westlake to Ballard Starter Line and reaching new light rail riders.

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The second tunnel could then be funded through future revenue and cost-saving strategies identified through Sound Transit’s ongoing Enterprise Initiative. The initiative has already delivered on once-delayed promises to Tacoma and Everett to finish the central “spine” of our light rail system. My amendment would not impact those or any other extension projects. It simply moves Seattle area funding within Seattle.

The second downtown tunnel is important. We need to build it. But it can’t come at the cost of building rail to Ballard.

The biggest challenge to my Westlake to Ballard Starter Line proposal is Sound Transit’s ability to answer valid questions about the impacts of the proposal with certainty before the vote. These questions can be answered but require more time. We should take that time and give this critical decision the consideration it deserves.

Second, we can improve the way we finance light rail.

By improving how Sound Transit finances light rail, we can deliver every project faster without raising taxes. Sound Transit currently only uses 30 percent of its legal debt capacity. Making some limited, commonsense adjustments to this policy would make a huge difference.

It’s not just me advocating for this. Issaquah Mayor Mark Mullet has pushed for this strategy to deliver projects sooner, before inflation drives the costs even higher.

We must also make our case with legislators in Olympia to allow Sound Transit to take longer-term bonds. While 75-year bonds may not be smart for most projects, they are a helpful tool financing infrastructure that outlasts the life of the bond—like the second downtown tunnel.

That’s not to mention the efficiencies we must put in place to rein in Sound Transit’s spending. Transit systems across the globe build and operate light rail at a lower cost. We need to use their best practices.

This month, I hosted a town hall. More than 200 community members showed up to support the Ballard Light Rail extension. I was struck by how many older people told me they voted for ST3 for their grandkids, even though they may never see the Ballard Link completed. That made it so much more heartbreaking to hear from many of those grandkids, now in their 20s, wondering whether Ballard would get light rail in their lifetimes.

It’s time for us to keep our promises. It’s time for us to build Ballard light rail.

Sound Transit’s plan and my proposed amendments are on the agenda for the next Board of Directors Meeting on May 28 at 1:30 PM. Community members are encouraged to participate and can find more information on Sound Transit’s .

Seattle City Councilmember Dan Strauss represents District 6, including Magnolia, Ballard, Phinney Ridge, Green Lake, Greenwood, Fremont and many other microneighborhoods. He also serves as a Sound Transit Board Member.