SEATTLE NEWS ARCHIVES & FEATURES

Dori: Sound Transit’s Kirkland bus station more proof of agency’s criminal corruption

Sep 6, 2018, 1:45 PM

light rail, Sound Transit Board, car tabs, Sound transit, ST3, Steve O'Ban, light rail...

(Sound Transit)

(Sound Transit)

Sound Transit’s abuse of the taxpayers in this region knows no bounds, as evidenced by the plans for their Kirkland bus station.

As Mike Lindblom in The Seattle Times stated on Wednesday, “Sound Transit is betting $300 million that people will flock to freeway buses at a Kirkland site where nobody catches transit now.”

RELATED: Sound Transit $4B over budget is a criminal rip-off

How does that make you feel when you pay $300, $400 for your car tabs? Maybe you and your spouse and one of your kids has a car. If you have three cars in your family, you may be coughing up $1,500 a year to the rogue criminal, the most corrupt, wasteful public agency in our nation’s history.

This bus station at Northeast 85th Street just off I-405 is going to be up a steep hill from downtown Kirkland, so the City of Kirkland is talking about putting in a cable car from downtown to this bus station in the hopes that people will start using it.

Sound Transit’s own projection if they build this bus station is that it would start off in 2024 with only 300 riders a day and by 2040 would carry fewer than 1,000 people per day. For $300 million. And that’s because Sound Transit is criminally corrupt. Being stewards of our tax dollars has never been any of their concern. They go 10 years behind schedule and billions over budget and simply declare a “reset.” They open the U-District light rail station late. “Oh, it’s a reset. Look how on-time and on-budget we are.”

I don’t know how people can stand sending their car tab dollars to this agency — especially the people in Pierce County who are getting no benefit. And for the Snohomish County residents, the promises that you’ll get light rail to Everett and Marysville will never happen. Sound Transit just lies and lies and lies.

They’re already a half-billion over budget getting to the Eastside. Now they’re talking about going billions over budget doing some of the other things that they’ve promised. Every family in the Sound Transit taxing district is going to pay six figures of their hard-earned money to this rogue, criminal agency. What an absolute crime Sound Transit continues to be.

I’m sorry, but if you voted for this, what a chump you are. I’m sorry because I don’t like insulting my listeners, but anyone who voted for Sound Transit is an absolute chump. And you people in Seattle who do use Sound Transit, you’re making everyone else pay and subsidize your light rail to the tune of $100,000 per family in this region.

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Dori: Sound Transit’s Kirkland bus station more proof of agency’s criminal corruption