WATCH: Sound Transit to reassess light rail projects facing massive budget gap

(The Center Square) — Sound Transit has announced a “realignment” through something called an Enterprise Initiative.

Without giving much in terms of specifics during the July 24 Sound Transit Board meeting, Director of Access, Integration and Station Area Planning at Sound Transit Alex Krieg, told board members the outcome of the initiative will lead to a new system plan for the agency.

“If we don’t act, the ST-3 program as scoped and scheduled will be unaffordable,” said Krieg.

The effort is necessary due to cost increases for several projects already in the works, though Krieg’s presentation gave no cost data to show how big the budget gap may be.

“Through this work, the board will adopt an updated ST-3 system plan, which will necessarily include a balanced and affordable long range finance plan that provides a high degree of confidence that we can deliver on ST-3 commitments,” said Krieg.

Charles Prestrud is the director of Washington Policy Center’s Cole’s Center for Transportation and spoke with The Center Square about the Sound Transit reset.

“This recent development doesn't come as a surprise. Sound Transit has a very long history of underestimating the costs of their projects and also underestimating how long it's going to take to build them, and this finally caught up to them,” said Prestrud.

In a July 29 WPC post, Prestrud noted: “This focus on revenue is all the more remarkable considering Sound Transit hauls in more than $2.5 billion per year from sales tax, property tax, motor vehicle excise tax, farebox revenue, interest on their billions of dollars in reserves, and Federal grants.”

How much does the average household pay in Sound Transit taxes, whether they ride or not?

“The average household in the Puget Sound region is paying over $1,700 per year to Sound Transit in various taxes,” Prestrud told The Center Square. “And that number is going to go up in the future.”

As reported by The Center Square, in 2020, annual ridership fell to 15.5 million, a 67% decrease in boardings, as a result of the pandemic. Since then, Sound Transit has added new extensions to Northgate, Lynnwood and downtown Redmond, and ridership numbers are anticipated to continue increasing as light rail extensions are completed into Federal Way (2026) Tacoma, West Seattle, Ballard and Everett over the next decade.

“Fairly recently, the light rail line finally went over 100,000 boardings per day, which Sound Transit touted as a great accomplishment. Well, King County Metro carries something like 250,000 riders a day at a far lower cost,” said Prestrud.

Prestrud noted that ‘non-revenue boardings’ now make up about 44% of total ridership as King County lets students ride free on trains and buses.

“That means people not paying a fare,” he said.

During the July 24 board meeting, Krieg said they expect to have results from the Enterprise Initiative by the middle of 2026, but again it’s unclear which projects may be scaled back, canceled or delayed.

Prestrud suggested that Sound Transit Board members should be elected, rather than appointed because of the massive amount of tax dollars they are responsible for and ongoing cost overruns and delays.

“When they were cooking up the enabling legislation for Sound Transit, they were very clever and very deliberate in how they did it. And they wanted a board that was beholden to the county executives and that was insulated from public opinion,” explained Prestrud. “So, the three county executives are automatically on the board. The other members of the board are selected by the county executives. So the public really has no way of holding the board accountable. They can't be booted off by the public, and you can't run against them.”

The Center Square reached out to Sound Transit via email for comment on the “realignment” and criticisms raised by WPC.

“The Sound Transit Board will discuss the Enterprise Initiative throughout this month in different committee meetings and at the full Board meeting. In the meantime, we don’t have anything to add,” wrote Rachelle Cunningham, with Sound Transit communications.

Prestrud noted Sound Transit could also lose billions in federal funding for projects no longer deemed cost effective by the Trump administration.

“They are in a very difficult position. I think the situation is much worse than what they have let on, and I think it is inevitable that they're going to have to either substantially defer or outright cance, some of the light rail extensions that are part of the ST-3 plan,” he said.