No Cheap Route For Sound Transit’s Big New Plans

You probably know there’s going to be a big Sound Transit package on the ballot next fall. On Friday, Sound Transit released cost studies examining all the different routes being considered.

King County Executive Dow Constantine says we can’t pay for everything we want, so we’ll have to prioritize.

For example, Sound Transit hopes to run light rail from Ballard to downtown Seattle. It has a couple ways to save a few billion dollars on that route. It could put light rail on surface streets downtown, instead of in a new tunnel, or it could skip the South Lake Union neighborhood entirely.

There are nine big projects on the table going everywhere from Tacoma to Everett and on to the Eastside, too.

To build everything on the list could cost over $24 billion. Voters had been expecting a $15 billion tax package.