By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
When the Sound Transit board meets in a week, it’ll hear that the Elected Leadership Group for the West Seattle/Ballard light-rail extensions pretty much agrees with the Stakeholder Advisory Group on which alternatives should stay in the running.
That’s the upshot of the ELG’s two-hour meeting downtown this afternoon, its first one since the planning process ramped up in January. As declared at the start, its goal was to recommend which alternatives should move forward to what ST calls Level 2 of review, and for West Seattle, those remain the “Pigeon Ridge/West Seattle Tunnel” and “Oregon Street/Alaska Junction” alternatives.
ELG co-chair King County Councilmember Joe McDermott opened the meeting. ST CEO Peter Rogoff spoke next, lauding the “progress” on the project and reminding everyone that the ST board is to “meet in this room …. less than one year from now” to make a preferred-alternative recommendation.
From among the ELG members, only Mayor Jenny Durkan was not in attendance; the six City Councilmembers were – Sally Bagshaw, Lorena González (who recused herself from discussion of the West Seattle route because it might go right by property she owns in The Junction), Bruce Harrell, Lisa Herbold, Rob Johnson, and (by phone) Mike O’Brien – along with King County Executive Dow Constantine, Seattle Port Commissioner Stephanie Bowman, and ST board chair Snohomish County Executive Dave Somers.
ST executive Cathal Ridge presented a refresher of the timelines, all the way from identifying a preferred alternative early next year for formal environmental study, to launching West Seattle light rail in 2030, Ballard light rail in 2035. And he went over the Stakeholder Advisory Group’s recommendations from last month (WSB coverage here), along with what preceded it. Here’s the slide deck for today’s meeting:
He gave a short version of the evaluation criteria and then launched into the five West Seattle “concepts” that were evaluated. He summarized neighborhood-forum feedback (as you can see on page 20 of the slide deck) including “a lot of support for tunneling” and “a lot of support for moving the Delridge station south.” (He did not explicitly mention that the neighborhood forum for West Seattle, on May 5th, was held after the Stakeholder Advisory Group had made its recommendations April 24th on what should advance and what should not. The forum summaries were added to the ST website this afternoon.)
After the brief review of the West Seattle concepts and the stakeholders’ recommendations, facilitator Diane Adams invited ELG members to comment.
Councilmember McDermott said he’d like to have more information – costs, visualizations, transit-oriented development – and is hopeful that will be provided later in the process. His priorities include a north/south orientation for the Junction station, three stations for West Seattle, seeing the Delridge station south of Andover, seeing both elevated/tunnel options, and protecting Longfellow Creek, which he says might be forced into a pipe under some scenario. He said he feels the SAG recommendations meet those.
County Executive Constantine said he also feels three stations are important. He remains “very concerned” about elevated rail in The Junction and also thinks a further-south Delridge station is “intrigu(ing).” He doesn’t see taking anything further off the table.
Councilmember Herbold said that she hopes there’s a way to get some early visualizations, and she also would like more information about walksheds. Seamless multimodal integration, especially buses, is important to her. She said mixing and matching components could be helpful – perhaps, for example, appending the more-south Delridge station idea to the representative alignment. And overall, she said she’s “largely in alignment” with the SAG recommendations, adding she’d like a little more time to find out about reducing the impacts of possible park-property use, wondering if there’s a way to mitigate federal concern over that.
Commissioner Bowman said she had some concerns to raise as the sole port rep – especially impacts to Terminal 5 and Terminal 18 on Harbor Island. “It’s not just critical- the assets of the Port of Seattle are not city or regional assets – they are state assets.” She says that they’re in “negotiations with some of our international shipping lines” regarding T-5 (which needs a new tenant before modernization work). She’s OK with ST’s original “representative alignment” and thinks perhaps it might be combined with the “golf course option.” In summary: The alignment needs to go south of Spokane Street, she said, period.
ST board chair Somers noted that decisions made for one part of the system can affect other parts, and that needs to be kept in mind, so he will be “arguing for some control” as things go along. Otherwise, he had no specific WS comments.
Before the discussion moved on from West Seattle, Herbold added words of thanks for the way ST has conducted the community-engagement process so far. Bowman invited her fellow electeds to come to the Port and see how it works.
Later in the meeting, the key WS discussion points were summarized on one made-on-the-fly slide as:
With that – they moved on to the SODO segment. The SAG recommendations were moved forward for that segment, too (see them on page 29 of the slide deck).
Then for the downtown segment, the First Hill issue came up, the subject of most of the public comment toward the meeting’s start, with people . Councilmember Bagshaw wondered if ST’s assessment that First Hill was inconsistent with what voters approved really meant it couldn’t be considered. ST’s Ridge allowed that the ELG does have the discretion to recommend something to the ST Board. CEO Rogoff said that they probably should have a lawyer comment on that. And so counsel came forward, saying that there is a “legal requirement to construct it as identified to the voters.” He said the question is whether it was identified in the plan, and whether cost and ridership was identified so that it would have been clear to the voters that it was part of the plan.
So, was it? asked Councilmember González. Bottom line, no, said Ridge – it serves a different urban village, for example. Councilmember Johnson then wondered if that was really the casualty of “an unfortunate decision” made decades ago. “At this point I feel the answers from the technical team support taking First Hill off the table but I’m open to discussion.” McDermott said he isn’t ready “to lose this opportunity.” Somers said basically, he is. Bagshaw said she has mixed feelings. Councilmember González too. Bowman says she’s with McDermott and would like more information. Rogoff says moving things to Level 2 takes a lot of staff time and asks group members “to be rigorous in the down-selecting process.” Ultimately, First Hill was taken off the list, but there will be a note to address the ridership concerns somehow, somewhere.
On to Interbay/Ballard: Bagshaw says that she has heard people strongly support a tunnel. Johnson notes that this group carried forward more options than any other group. Somers says he has serious doubts about funding for a tunnel. Ultimately, they removed one off the SAG-advanced list- “west of BNSF/20th/tunnel” – and moved the others on to Level 2.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR ST: Today’s results will be presented to the ST board one week from today (1:30 pm May 24th). The Stakeholder Advisory Group meets again on May 30th; the Elected Leadership Group is expected to reconvene in July.
WHAT’S NEXT IN THE COMMUNITY: The Pigeon Point Neighborhood Council has a light-rail discussion with ST reps scheduled for its June 11th meeting (7 pm at Pathfinder K-8).
SIDE NOTE: The public comment period included perennially profane gadfly Alex Tsimerman (currently banned from Seattle Council meetings), who didn’t stop at the one-minute limit and subsequently walked out with King County Sheriff’s Deputies who had wasted no time in walking up to the public-comment podium as he railed on. (He returned shortly afterward.) Other commenters included a Delridge resident who identified himself as Max and spoke in support of retaining the draft plan for three stations in West Seattle, and against the route that would go through the West Seattle Golf Course and Delridge Community Center Park. “I encourage everyone to go there …it’s the beating heart and soul of the Delridge community.” He said he felt parks would be ever-more important as Delridge continues to redevelop and densify. ]]
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