8 years in and ST3 approaching $148B (3x promised cost)

Sound Transit said from the beginning that ST3 would not reduce congestion. On that at least, they were honest. They also said ST3 would cost $54 Billion to complete. On that, they did lie to get the votes.

If you read the Seattle Times article regarding Sound Transit hiring Terri Mestas to help run ST for $600K, you might have overlooked another number buried in that article. $148 Billion. That is the latest price tag on ST3.

In 2016, Puget Sound voted on ST3 which was touted at a cost of $54 Billion and would be completed before I die. Just 8 years later the cost is already up to $148 Billion and that number will likely double, meeting other transportation experts’ estimates, before the tasks identified in ST3 are ever finished. This isn’t just bad planning or mismanagement. This is criminal behavior performed by the leadership at Sound Transit (Peter Rogoff for starters, who has already been fired), and by those private companies who funded the ad campaign during the vote for ST3 and later received the all this business, and the politicians who foolishly believed the lies and pushed for it.

In just 8 years, the cost of ST3 has risen from $54,000,000,000 to $148,000,000,000. That puts the cost to the 2.9 million people living within the Sound Transit taxing district at $51,000 per person. Let me repeat that:

$51,000 debt for each person living in the Sound Transit taxing district to pay for the construction of a train network to service less than 5% of that population. And only a fool would think that cost will suddenly stop going up.

Furthermore, with so much of our money being diverted to cover ST3, existing facilities of Sound Transit are being neglected.

To put those numbers in perspective, the toll lanes on I-405, in all the hoopla and chaos around them, might generate about $20 million per YEAR while Sound Transit is eating up $6.3 million per DAY! We’re bailing the Titanic with a teacup. Not to mix budgets though, because the toll lanes are managed by WSDOT and not counted in Sound Transit’s budget. For comparison, WSDOT has an annual budget of $8.1 Billion to maintain the highways of the entire state which has an annual unmet need of $16 Billion in maintenance of existing bridges and roads that are failing.

If Sound Transit had listened to the independent experts who had nothing to profit from ST3, they would have built the same infrastructure, but made it for buses instead of trains. That would have cost a fraction of the cost of the low capacity trains (euphemistically called “light rail”), would be more adaptable to meet changing travel patterns, and would already be finished! Remember the tunnel downtown was called the “bus tunnel” and the express lanes on the I-90 bridge were already built to serve as dedicated lanes for buses. No extra cost.

It is frustrating to Washington citizens to watch as our state leaders build so much feckless infrastructure that turns our transportation into a Rub Goldberg machine. Sadly, we are the ones who will be stuck paying the price for decades to come. But not Terri Mestas. With a $600K salary, you can be sure she won’t be riding a train or bus to work.