SDOT releases details of $930 million Move Seattle plan

What the City of Seattle plans to do with $930 million if a transportation levy passes is no longer a mystery.

Apparently, the city became fed up with requests for a more detailed list of how money from the Move Seattle levy would be used.

“Several of you have asked for more detail on specific projects, funding levels and timelines in the Move Seattle levy proposal,” Seattle Department of Transportation Director Scott Kubly wrote in an email.

The city released a spending plan for the levy on Wednesday.

Related: Why one person doesn’t trust the city with the levy to Move Seattle

The city plans to spend $206.7 million on safe routes. That includes $70.9 million towards Vision Zero &#8212 a goal of eliminating traffic-related injury and deaths. Another $109.6 million will be spent on pedestrian and bike safety.

Maintenance and repair would get the biggest bump, including $420 million for maintaining streets ($250 million) and bridge repair and design ($140 million).

Finally, the city would spend $303.2 million on congestion relief. The largest chunk of that money will be used for corridor mobility around the city.

“The plan’s allocations are consistent with levy legislation and its specific funding categories,” Kubly wrote. “If the levy is approved, oversight for spending and deliverables will be provided by a levy oversight committee and the [Seattle] City Council, and information on large projects will be available through SDOT’s new online capital projects dashboard.”

The breakdown of Move Seattle comes after months of speculation of what will actually be accomplished with the money. Several people have argued that the $930 million will not come close to what is actually needed for the city to catch up on its backlog of work. The campaign for the levy also got caught up in a recent Twitter controversy.

The nine-year Move Seattle spending plan helps better understand the city’s objective a little better. However, some specifics are still up in the air and exactly where all improvements will be made remain to be seen.

The release of the spending plan improves transparency, but will it be enough to convince skeptics to vote on the levy during the upcoming election? Still weighing on the minds of Seattle residents is the announcement that the Elliott Bay seawall project is over budget and one year behind schedule. And don’t forget the recent report that of 33 fire houses that were to be upgraded, 32 of those projects were over budget.

Finally, the spending break down is “illustrative only and shall not be mandatory,” according to the language in the ordinance for the levy.