Harger: Sound Transit votes Thursday on which promises to break. And if you think ST4 isn’t coming, I have a train to sell you
May 28, 2026, 6:01 AM | Updated: 12:03 pm
At 1:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon at Union Station in Seattle, the Sound Transit Board of Directors will vote on which promises to keep and which to quietly set aside.
The resolution in front of them is R2026-11. It updates the ST3 plan voters approved in 2016 to fit inside what the agency can actually afford. The $53.8 billion plan came in $34.5 billion short. Oops. Thursday, the board decides which projects survive intact, which receive partial funding, and which are pushed into the future.
This is not the last vote. It never is.
Sound Transit Resolution R2026-11: what survives, what gets cut, what gets deferred
The board has been telegraphing this for months. An all-day retreat in Tacoma in March. Committee meetings in May. Three scenarios were presented to the public with the gravity of a moon landing. None of them deliver what voters approved nine years ago.
Under the resolution heading for Thursday’s vote: West Seattle Link gets built without an Avalon station. Tacoma Dome Link is in. Everett Link Phase 1 is in. Ballard Link gets planning money, not construction money. Enough to keep the consultants billing. Additional Everett phases get deferred.
The board will also direct the CEO to build an “adaptive program management” plan, an “enterprise workplan” focused on cost-cutting, and, one item worth circling, delay the next Long-Range Plan update to 2028.
Remember that date.
Ballard Link, West Seattle Avalon station, Tacoma Dome Link: less than voters approved in 2016
The light rail station at 15th Avenue and N.W. Market Street in Ballard was on the 2016 ballot. The Alaska Junction stop in West Seattle was on the 2016 ballot. The Tacoma Dome was on the 2016 ballot. Voters said yes. Property owners have been paying ever since. For nine years.
Today’s vote does not deliver those destinations as promised. The Ballard extension gets a planning budget and a timeline that belongs in science fiction. The West Seattle Avalon station gets cut. The Tacoma extension survives on paper, but the harder parts of the route remain in the queue for future rounds of cost-cutting.
These are not new projects. These are the projects voters already paid for and aren’t getting.
Sound Transit car tabs, property taxes, and the $34.5 billion shortfall: $10,000 per person
Sound Transit collects from a taxing district of roughly 3.4 million people through property taxes, sales taxes, and car tabs. That is where the $34.5 billion shortfall lands. Roughly $10,000 per person. The renter in Renton. The retiree in Lynnwood. The family in Auburn with two car seats and one income. Everybody inside the district line is on the hook for this.
The car tab math hits hardest. A 2021 Ford F-150 inside the district pays $615 a year in tab fees. The same truck in Grant County: $108. That gap funds the system. Today’s vote is the official admission that the gap was not enough.
And do you really think $34.5 billion is all they’ll ever need? Because I don’t. If the pattern holds, this shortfall is the opening number, not the final one.
RELATED STORIES
ST4 may not be official yet. But the playbook is already open
Sound Move in 1996. ST2 in 2008. ST3 in 2016. The pattern holds every time. The promise is big. The cost grows. The plan gets reshaped. And the next ballot measure asks for more to finish what the last one started.
They will not call it ST4 yet. They will call it a supplemental measure, a completion package, or whatever the consultants settle on. But the structure is identical. A scaled-back plan in hand. A list of projects voters already approved and paid for but will not actually get under current funding. And the pitch: if Ballard matters, if Alaska Junction matters, if the Tacoma Dome matters, we just need a little more. Again.
The Long-Range Plan delay to 2028 sets the timing. The $34.5 billion shortfall sets the rationale. The board’s confidence that voters will say yes again sets the bet.
Sound Transit has never been told no. They have also never delivered a program on budget. Both of those things will be in the room at 1:30 p.m. this afternoon. And if history is any guide, they’ll be back in a few years asking for another yes. With a bigger number. And another set of promises they’ll reshape once the votes are counted.
Charlie Harger is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. You can read more of his stories and commentaries here. Follow Charlie on X and email him here.
