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LIGHT RAIL: You’re invited to the West Seattle Transportation Coalition’s routing workshop Thursday

June 18, 2017 7:10 pm
|      37 COMMENTS
 |   Transportation | West Seattle news

While Sound Transit 3-funded light rail to West Seattle isn’t scheduled to open until 2030, project development of the route will be “initiated” later this year, according to ST’s newest timeline. That’s why the West Seattle Transportation Coalition is having a community-led workshop on Thursday, and circulating this invitation/reminder tonight:

Life sure gets busy, but you won’t want to miss the West Seattle Transportation Coalition Light Rail Station Routing Workshop this Thursday, June 22, 2017 at the Hall At Fauntleroy, 9131 California Ave SW, from 6 pm to 9 pm.

Here’s the meeting agenda so you can be thinking about what you want to comment on:

6:00 – Welcome – Michael Taylor-Judd

6:30 – Introduction and Background – Thomas Linde

7:30 – Breakout Tables
1 – Delridge Station
2 – Avalon/35th Ave SW Station
3 – Junction Station
4 – Route Maps and Bird’s Eye Views
5 – “The Kitchen Sink”

8:30 – Report Out and Next Steps

9:00 – Conclusion

Our aims for this community-led workshop include sharing information about light rail costs, options and impacts as well as identifying where the community and neighborhoods want light rail to be routed to best serve West Seattle. There will be light refreshments, a Children’s Coloring Corner, and Sound Transit and King County Metro will have a table with local information.

We’ll have several different ways for you to give your comments. After the workshop, WSTC will assemble all the results into a formal document and present it to Sound Transit, the King County and Seattle City Councils, the Seattle Department of Transportation, and local stakeholders, and urge incorporation with ST3 plans.

P.S. While Sound Transit will not be presenting at this event – they’ll be there to observe – they did give a presentation at last month’s WSTC meeting. We weren’t able to cover it, but we did follow up with ST spokesperson Kimberly Reason, who described it as “a very high-level presentation to WSTC that focused on system expansion and the implementation plan. We were sure to be clear that we haven’t started project development yet; the focus was to educate them on our process for moving forward.” We asked for the slide deck with those points – you can see it here (PDF) or below:

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37 Replies to "LIGHT RAIL: You're invited to the West Seattle Transportation Coalition's routing workshop Thursday"

  • justme June 18, 2017 (10:02 pm)

    I just can’t visualize the elevated tracks coming in to the junction without seeing a monstrosity. 

  • Curtis June 19, 2017 (12:17 am)

    you’re gonna wanna bury that sucker after the Delridge or maybe the Avalon Station. 

  • Community Member June 19, 2017 (6:03 am)

    This must all be very preliminary. The words on the slides say that they are envisioning a rail-only bridge.  But the pictures on the slides place the crossing in the same spot as the WS bridge.

    If they build a rail-only bridge, and the line is elevated, why would they want to bring the line into the dense Triangle and Junction? Why not do its own bridge and connect to an elevated line along, say, Roxbury? 

    • s June 20, 2017 (9:20 am)

      Because you want your public transportation hubs in your densest areas.

  • Raincity June 19, 2017 (7:54 am)

    If this is a community input session, why isn’t it being run by Sound transit?

    • WSB June 19, 2017 (8:00 am)

      Their process starts later this year, as reported at the end of the story.

  • Raincity June 19, 2017 (8:29 am)

    Sorry I wasn’t more clear. What I meant is who will be collecting information and what will be done with that information. West Seattle Transportation Coalition is a local/community organization and not affiliated with Sound Transit. I’ve been involved in other community outreach efforts as part of design teams for public projects or projects that require public input and I’ve not seen it approached this way before and was curious. They aren’t elected representatives but they are acting as representatives of the community.

    • West Seattle Transportation Coalition June 20, 2017 (6:35 am)

      @Raincity, we are simply a group of neighbors who follow transportation issues related to the West Seattle peninsula and surroundings. We meet regularly and keep supporters up-to-date on what’s going on. Many folks have questions and want to discuss concerns NOW — ahead of Sound Transit’s planning schedule. So, much like with HALA and other city issues, we are holding a community-led workshop to help people get educated and prepared to work with a government agency. Sound Transit is aware of what we are doing, and we plan to collect all comments and questions for them. We also know that the sooner we start having conversation and the more informed our comments are, the better response we get from agencies like Sound Transit. Come on by and check us out on Thursday!

  • J June 19, 2017 (8:37 am)

    It’d be great if it could go underground, and farther south to the Westwood area planned urban village with the light rail. 

  • West Seattle since 1979 June 19, 2017 (9:45 am)

    I think underground would be best as well. And build it in a way that it could be added to later, if there is a ST4, so that it could go to Westwood or on to Burien.

  • Mark Schletty June 19, 2017 (9:51 am)

    Looks like this would require tearing up the proposed, stupid, Fauntleroy redo project. I know nothing is set yet, but it sure looks cautionary concerning the Fauntleroy redo.

  • Chemist June 19, 2017 (10:11 am)

    I wonder where they’ll bring an elevated station in the junction…  maybe the Bank of America or Rite Aid will be bought up.  Bringing an elevated station into any of the junction merchants’ parking lots for a dual-use parking garage/transit station seems pretty difficult and likely to lead to park-and-ride-type abuses.

  • Triangle Resident June 19, 2017 (11:07 am)

    West Seattle residents should insist that there be a tunnel.  I know, they say it costs too much but they did a tunnel for the U-district and for Roosevelt, they can do the same for us.  Our terrain is far more difficult.  We are finally on the verge of tearing down that giant scar across our city called the viaduct and now they want to add a new scar to West Seattle…tell them no way and stand up to protect our peninsula.  

  • Jon Wright June 19, 2017 (12:16 pm)

    …and Bellevue.

  • Jon Wright June 19, 2017 (12:24 pm)

    Community Member, you answered your own question. The areas you mentioned have the density to justify light rail. That particular rail corridor is also envisioned as facilitating bus/rail transfers: a truncated RR C at the Junction, the 21 at the Triangle, and 120 at Delridge.

  • Tim J June 19, 2017 (12:31 pm)

    I’m for the fastest and cheapest option.  They one with less chances of the project going over budget, like all the other light rail sound transit projects.   I drive under the monorail downtown and under the L in Chicago. you just forget about them after awhile.  Plus less buses on the road. 

    • Les June 19, 2017 (5:15 pm)

      The fastest  and  cheapest option is what Kemper Freeman Jr. wanted he was for  van pools that could be up and running within a year and have the flexibility to go anywhere not a fixed rail line.

    • Katrina June 20, 2017 (8:05 pm)

      actually the line to the U District came in ahead of schedule, and under budget, if I remember correctly.

  • Anonymous Coward June 19, 2017 (5:20 pm)

    Sound Transit plans to continue the light rail line from West Seattle down to Burien.  Does West Seattle Transportation Coalition envision a spur line to the Junction, or are they just not showing their preferred route to the south?

    • WSB June 19, 2017 (5:33 pm)

      No, the Burien line is not part of ST3. That’s a bus line.

  • rob June 19, 2017 (5:37 pm)

     everyone remember the big hole in the ground that sat there forever. What  a  complete missed opertunity the city had to build a transit hub. Well now everyone is scratching there heads on where to put one. Oh well.   

    • WSB June 19, 2017 (5:58 pm)

      At the time, West Seattle wasn’t scheduled to get light rail, and the property was never city-owned, nor was it officially for sale during the time it was “The Hole” (until the auction that eventually put it into Madison’s hands before they finished it as Spruce). You might as well lament the many purchased-for-monorail properties that went back on the market.

  • CAM June 19, 2017 (7:28 pm)

    Les – How is a van pool rapid transit? The problem with the buses is they get stuck in traffic. Also, to transport the number of people you could on light rail via van pool would take an absurd number of vans and merely add to the traffic problems. 

  • justme June 19, 2017 (9:12 pm)

    Rite-aid parking lot, what a great idea! That dump needs to go!

  • Community Member June 20, 2017 (5:40 am)

    Rite-aid lot is Seattle’s premium high-value view property. Just because it’s being held for a future mega deluxe development certainly doesn’t mean it’s cheaply available for transit.

  • CAM June 20, 2017 (9:08 am)

    Just a note to the WSTC, you are holding this event at the same time as a mayoral and city council candidate forum which is sponsored by numerous transit oriented groups in Seattle. The forum is specifically focused on transit and housing issues in Seattle. It’s in Pioneer Square and is scheduled from about 5 to 8ish I think. I’d love to be in 2 places at once but that’s not possible. It’d be great if there were more events in the future like this that didn’t interfere with other events on the same topics. 

    • WSB June 20, 2017 (9:17 am)

      In terms of “interfer(ing),” might be the other way around! WSTC has been planning this for at least three months. We mentioned it in our coverage of their March meeting. (And they always meet on the fourth Thursday.) Don’t know how long the forum mentioned by CAM has been planned, but I just looked around and don’t see anything going back nearly that far. (For anyone interested, this seems to be it: http://www.futurewise.org/action/events/growing-seattle-candidate-forum )

      • West Seattle Transportation Coalition June 20, 2017 (10:25 am)

        Thanks, WSB! Yes, this is unfortunate… especially since we have partner groups involved in that forum who should have been well aware that this workshop was being planned. There are  also OTHER community events happening in corners of the City that evening; but that’s what happens sometimes when you have neighborhood-focused groups and event planning by organizations with a city-wide (or wider) focus.

  • CAM June 20, 2017 (9:29 am)

    A correction to my misconceptions is always appreciated. I was mostly commenting because I was concerned that they weren’t one of the groups organizing the event. Strength in numbers and all that good stuff. I honestly do wish I could attend both but feel like the candidate forum is more pressing at the moment and thus will go there. I’ll watch out for future meetings of the WSTC though. 

  • CAM June 20, 2017 (9:32 am)

    Also, fyi, since the switch to the new servers (or some other technical thing I don’t understand) I haven’t been able to directly reply to a comment and it instead bumps my comment to the end of the line. Not a terrible thing, but frustrating. I’m using the mobile version on an android running a chrome browser. 

    • WSB June 20, 2017 (10:08 am)

      Somebody else pointed that out yesterday and I took one step that should have fixed it – I’m seeing others’ comments show as replies, if they take that option, but I have no way of knowing whether they’re on mobile or desktop and maybe we need to check the former. Thanks.

      • KM June 21, 2017 (10:38 am)

        FWIW, I thought I replied to an comment on the Lincoln Park article this AM, and it posted as a stand-alone. I was on Safari on iPhone.

  • Junction Lady June 21, 2017 (8:03 pm)

    Barf!  I have no confidence in elevated transportation for West Seattle.  It will be a giant construction mess for YEARS and ultimately West Seattle will be a SLUM😩  No thank you,

  • WS Lifer June 22, 2017 (11:44 am)

    THANKS to WSTC for organizing this community meeting to let us know the process, what needs to be done and how we can participate–its good to know all we can, early in these projects.  And, THANKS for handling the task of scheduling, (a thankless job of trying to avoid kids’ soccer games, Sunday market days, vacation or graduation dates and other community events). THANKS to the WSB for covering this and so much more (everything!) in WS and letting those interested know and hopefully participate. Its what makes out community great!  And, THANKS to those nay-sayers who expel that it will cost too much, create construction nightmares and be ‘forever’ before its up and running. These are tough questions we need to answer and find solutions, if possible-but need to be addressed to keep our peninsula a great place to live.  But, GET A CLUE, look at our current growth and projections and consider how getting around will be if we do nothing, or add a bus here and vanpool there. Any of that helps get single-rider cars off the road but we’ll need way more than a Band-Aid.  Just think how much less expensive it would have been if our grandparents added mass transit decades ago as other large cities did, or even if our parents era had voted for monorails citywide.  How will our grandkids wish we had planned? (jeez-this is long! apologies)

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