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While Sound Transit plans to revisit its financial plans in response to increased project costs, even if and when ST3 is fully completed, the agency’s system will still make up a small percentage of daily transportation trips, according to regional forecasts.
The Puget Sound Regional Council develops policies and coordinates transportation, growth management decisions within the central Puget Sound region, which includes King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties. According to its Regional Transportation Plan approved in 2022, by 2050 there will be an estimated 24,000,000 daily trips, with 3% of them via Sound Transit light rail or bus.
Overall, all public transit agencies combined will compose 13% of daily work trips, but only 7% of nonwork trips.
Annually, there will be 746,686,000 public transit boardings, with 278,515,000 or 37% of them within Sound Transit’s system. According to the PSRC’s plan, the largest shift in modes of travel will be away from single-occupancy vehicles in favor of carpooling.
Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers is the chair of both PSRC and Sound Transit. He told The Center Square that the PSRC’s transportation plan’s forecast are based on modeling, but “It’s our best estimate of what most likely to achieve given the plan.” Regarding public transit’s share of daily trips by 2050, he said “we have an opportunity to do better or worse, I’d prefer to see it better.”
Sound Transit earlier this year announced it intended to reexamine its financial planning in response to project cost overruns, which could be exacerbated by reduction in federal funding. Additionally, the agency has struggled to recover its pre-pandemic ridership levels.
Some organizations such as Smart Transit have argued that rather than building out light rail, the emphasis should be on less expensive alternatives to single occupancy vehicles, such as vanpools, automated shuttles, and on-demand car or van service. In a statement given to the PSRC last month, Smart Transit argued that Sound Transit should “reprogram” ST3 funds “to make the four-county bus network the best on earth. We have 300 miles of HOV lanes–grade separated transit. Let us use them as they were intended for increasingly electric bus transit, vanpools, and carpools.”
Nevertheless, Somers indicated that while timelines and other aspects of ST3 projects may change, none of them are getting scrapped.
“If we start lopping off parts [of ST3], the attorneys start saying, ‘You can make minor tweaks, but if you make major changes, you have an obligation to go back to voters.’ There’s not any discussion of lopping off light rail," Somers said. "We have not had any conversations [about that]. If we did, we’d have to go to the voters.”
“We have a voter approved plan, so we want to figure out how to deliver it,” he added. “The financial model plan that we have tells us that some of the projects are going to cost more than we thought. We’re going to have to adjust project scope and timelines like we did before. At the end of the day the finances are going to drive the decision.”
According to feedback given to PSRC by residents in central Puget Sound, “participants said they would prefer not to drive in Puget Sound because it can be frustrating, unpredictable, expensive, and time-consuming. However, they still drive because of the unpredictability of public transit options, and because hyper-local pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is incomplete or unsafe to use for travel to transit.”
The feedback also noted that “to enable a mode shift away from single-occupancy vehicles, the region must think beyond expanding transit stations and stops, and prioritize the half mile between stations and nearby residences. If there’s a transit station within a half mile of their home, but they have no sidewalks, crosswalks, or well-lit pathways between their home and that station, or no covered area to stay dry while they wait for their bus, participants say they would still drive a car to their final destination.”
Somers said that a certain amount of money has been set aside for access improvements to planned ST3 projects, such as enabling bikers or cyclists to get on and off buses easier.
“There are funds for that,” he said. “They are limited, but it is part of the plan.”
He added that they’re looking at potential pedestrian/vehicle overpasses over Interstate 5 for the Everett light rail line. “Those facilities [are] not funded in the plan, but we are having them modeled.”