‘Almost no accountability’: Transportation expert says Sound Transit is ‘building for the past’ amid ballooning budget

In May, the Sound Transit Board of Directors shared an updated Sound Transit 3 (ST3) System Plan that outlines the next phase of transit expansion. ST3 is a voter-approved $54 billion mass transit expansion program for the central Puget Sound region.

KIRO host John Curley, a longtime skeptic of public transportation and its ballooning costs, brought on Charles Prestrud, the director of the Coles Center for Transportation and transportation policy expert for The Washington Policy Center, to discuss where Sound Transit went wrong.

“I forget the psychological condition, but we have a real problem with sunk cost. ST3 and Sound Transit, as you have shown, the money was how much?” Curley asked. “When will it be delivered? How much will it cost? How many people will it carry? Where will it go? The sunk cost problem on this thing. They continue to spend more and more money. What happens, Charles? Does it ever run out of money? Are they ever asked to pay the piper on this stuff?”

“Well, Sound Transit is almost a special case, both in terms of the magnitude of how much is being thrown at it, and in terms of the very limited benefit that it produces,” Prestrud said. “In Sound Transit’s case, not only do they not want to stop and reconsider whether they’re going in the right direction, they want to speed up, so they’ll go farther in the wrong direction, even faster.

Prestrud shared that Sound Transit’s own analysis in 2016 showed that “expected benefits” of the ST3 plan would not exceed costs until 2071.

“There is a serious problem with the way the city and the region have gone about transportation planning, and the decision-making process continues to lead them in the wrong direction,” Prestrud said. “They’re building for the past. That is not the future.”

Sound Transit justifies its spending by citing population growth figures and projections, expecting hundreds of thousands of new residents and that moving them from Point A to Point B remains a top priority. According to Prestrud, while the population growth is real, it’s not where Sound Transit expects it to occur.

“They say we’re going to concentrate all this growth in the regional centers, but that isn’t where it goes,” Prestrud shared. “The vast majority of growth is around the suburban fringe. It’s not in downtown Tacoma or downtown Everett, where you could practically lie down in the middle of the street and take a nap. It’s not really even in Seattle, where, as we’ve seen tens of thousands of jobs have left.”

Puget Sound Regional Council’s new 2050 plan revealed a forecast that light rail is expected to carry approximately 2% of the person trips daily in the Puget Sound region.

“So we’re going to spend $150 billion, actually more than that, to serve just 2% of the trips?” Prestrud asked. “This is not a plan that makes sense. It doesn’t pencil out. It’s not even close, and it isn’t going to meet the needs. What we want to see, what we need, is a plan for the 98% of the trips that aren’t on light rail.”

Where’s the money going?

“I can’t see anybody demanding we have a trolley or demanding we have a light rail somewhere at these costs,” Curley said. “Where’s the money going, and who wants it?”

“We know who’s getting rich off it, and that is the contractors, the consultants, and some real estate developers too,” Prestrud answered. “By the way, they’re doing quite well, but I think the decision is based as much, or maybe more, on the political considerations of the Sound Transit board members and a number of other elected officials. They’re the ones really calling the shots, and to them, this is almost a dream agency because it has tremendous revenue, but almost no accountability.”

Curley wanted to know if Prestrud was in Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine’s shoes, what would he do to lead the transportation agency.

“Well, if I was Mr. Nice guy, I would go about it diplomatically and say, ‘You know, we’ve discovered that we have a huge multi-billion-dollar budget gap. We’re not going to be able to deliver the projects that we promised the public, nor are we going to be able to deliver the ridership and the public benefits that were promised,'” Prestrud answered.

He then offered a 20-year timeline and budget fit for cost-effective transit improvements, regardless of mode.

“If we’re looking 20 years ahead, we’re going to have autonomous vehicles, things like Waymo, robo-taxis, and transit agencies don’t like to talk about this,” Prestrud added. “They don’t even like to think about it. But the reality is, some of their ridership is going to get peeled off by these on-demand point-to-point services.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to John Curley weekday afternoons from 3 – 7 p.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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