Light rail to West Seattle and Ballard could get way pricier
Expanding light rail to West Seattle, Ballard and elsewhere could get more expensive — a lot more expensive.
Sound Transit released documents Wednesday night on a number of expansion options for new light rail lines.
For West Seattle, the documents show it could cost up to $1.2 billion more to build a tunnel instead of Sound Transit's cheapest route. Other options would cost $300 million to $700 million more than the basic proposal.
There are eight options on the table for the Ballard line. Some could raise the cost anywhere from $100 million to $500 million.
You can take a look at all of these in this Sound Transit document.
At this point, light rail trains aren't scheduled to roll into West Seattle until 2030 and into Ballard until 2035.
Correction, 2 p.m., 9/14/2018: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described how the cheapest route to West Seattle would be built.
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Gil Aegerter
Gil edits feature pieces and helps guide staff reporters through their stories. He previously served as interim digital director and online managing editor at KUOW. Before that he spent seven years with NBCNews.com, where he was variously a senior editor, editor-producer and features editor. He also worked 25 years as a newspaper editor in Anchorage, Alaska, San Diego, Wilmington, N.C., and Seattle. He also was a freelance researcher for NBC Olympics for the Games in Atlanta; Sydney, Australia; Salt Lake City; Athens; and Torino, Italy. He is a graduate of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks, with a degree in photojournalism.
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