As a Boston expatriate, I'm always intrigued by any comparison of Seattle to Beantown. The latest, and perhaps most dubious: equating the Big Dig to the proposed Alaskan Way viaduct tunnel in an effort to undermine the campaign to build the tunnel - never mind that the Big Dig occurred at the intersection of three major freeways under one of the densest cities in America and included building around the city's major access point to busy Logan airport.
Still, there is at least one lesson Boston can teach us as Sound Transit struggles with its decision to delete the First Hill Station: if you exclude an underserved yet needing community from a major public transit project with the assurance of replacement service, then you must deliver.
By no means is the history of Boston's Silver Line completely analogous to the current quandary Sound Transit finds itself in. Nonetheless, the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority's (MBTA) experience after demolishing the original, elevated Orange Line in Boston offers a lesson Sound Transit should heed.
In 1987, the MBTA tore down an elevated-rail line that connected the minority-heavy communities of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain to downtown. This line, running down Washington Street, offered a one-seat, diesel-exhaust-free trip to metro Boston unencumbered by traffic or weather.
To compensate for removing and then relocating the line, the MBTA promised the neighborhoods "better or equal" replacement service, especially since the relocation would now serve different communities: the Back Bay and South End. The fact that these newly served neighborhoods just happened to be more affluent communities was not lost on neighborhood activists especially after their "better or equal" replacement service finally arrived.
After 15 years of commuting down Washington Street on the busy and sluggish Route 49, Roxbury and J.P. received their replacement and the MBTA delivered the Silver Line.
But, and it's a big but, the new Silver Line should not to be confused with Boston's other "lines" - subways and trolleys that travel on their own rails. The Silver Line is a bus.
Admittedly, the buses are state-of-the-art and the line does have right-of-way privileges at points in its route, but it does not at other points. In the end the replacement is little more than a glorified bus line, and I don't mean glorified like Bob the Chef's famous glorified fried chicken in Roxbury.
As a result many local residents renamed the service "the Silver Lie" and activists are still fuming to this day.
I don't mean to make equal the recent First Hill debate with the MBTA's experience, but there's an important lesson to be learned here.
If Sound Transit makes a final decision this winter to cancel the First Hill station and, in turn, promises to offer some type of substitute service, as they are now considering and as they should consider, then they better get the job done right.
It's difficult to argue against Sound Transit's risk assessment that found considerable roadblocks at the First Hill location. Similarly, the FTA's new grant guidelines, no matter how much we dislike them, are the guidelines by which we must live.
One could say the same thing about the pro-station arguments, however. Not a single Sound Transit Board member argued that First Hill wasn't a major employment center and one of the only urban villages in Seattle.
Indeed, in her First Hill Station recommendation, Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl wrote that Sound Transit should focus on improving transit speed and reliability and on increasing transit frequency in First Hill. Once the Capitol Hill station is built, Earl also recommended adding new connections to the nearby station.
Accordingly, three amendments were offered by the board to investigate alternatives should First Hill be cancelled. King County Executive Ron Sims suggested Sound Transit should determine whether or not the First Hill and Capitol Hill stations might be merged into one at a location that might serve both neighborhoods.
Members also considered whether or not to examine the feasibility of building a rail spur connecting the Capitol Hill station to First Hill.
At the end of the meeting, however, the board tabled each motion. Frankly, this is hardly a positive omen. Sound Transit instead should have sent a clear message to First Hill residents, something like, "We know you were in our plans for more than nine years; we know you need and deserve rapid public transit. But since we cannot build the First Hill station, in turn, we won't leave a single stone unturned in our effort to find a creative solution to get you connected to the light rail line."
No matter how Sound Transit decides to mitigate the consequences of nixing the First Hill station, the First Hill community deserves to be treated more fairly than their counterparts in Roxbury and J.P. Passing the remediative motions at the next Sound Transit Board meeting will help convince First Hill's residents that Sound Transit won't offer the neighborhood a Seattle version of Boston's Silver Lie.
Freelancer writer Mario Paduano lives on Capitol Hill and recently completed an internship at the Capitol Hill Times. He can be reached at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.
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