Forward, Together:
Our Message to Sound Transit Leaders

Sound Transit is navigating a critical moment. In August, the agency announced new cost estimates for its Sound Transit 3 projects. Now, it is reassessing how to deliver the transit system voters approved while facing real financial constraints.

As Sound Transit board members make decisions in the coming months and years, this is what we want them to remember:

Don’t cancel projects. Deliver the system our region voted for.

While it may seem like a “quick fix” to slice off one or two projects, every project is essential. Cutting one part of the system weakens the whole network.

Voters approved Sound Transit 3 knowing it would be big, complex, and transformational. We’re investing in a system designed to serve generations and link three counties.

Cities have spent years planning for Sound Transit 3 projects: updating their Comprehensive Plans, investing in affordable housing, and improving streets, trails, and transit near future station sites. Canceling projects would waste decades of planning and investment, jeopardize future local transit projects, strand communities still waiting for transit access, and break voter trust.

The Sound Transit board must keep the system whole. We can and we must build these projects smarter, but we must also build them all. A connected network is what voters approved and what our entire region deserves. We must finish what we started and build the damn trains.

Keep projects moving. Delays cost us more.

The longer we wait, the more it costs, not just in dollars, but in lost opportunities for our communities. Construction inflation in the Puget Sound region averages 5-6% per year, meaning that even a one-year delay on a major project can add hundreds of millions in costs without delivering any new service.

Every year of delay keeps riders stuck with long, unreliable commutes. It keeps neighborhoods in King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties without access to the fast, frequent transit system that they’re already paying for.

While cost challenges are real, delaying projects isn’t the answer. Moving projects through design and planning and into construction is the most responsible and cost-effective path forward, and it puts people to work now.

The best time to build light rail was yesterday. The second-best time is today. And every year we wait, our region pays the higher price.

We’re in this together as one region.

Sound Transit 3 was a regional vote. Every community pays in, and every community benefits. Nothing else has brought together Snohomish, King, and Pierce counties like Sound Transit has. Light rail connects us all: workers, families, students, and businesses across the Puget Sound.

The projects in Seattle, like the downtown tunnel, are complex and expensive, but they will help the entire region access new neighborhoods, connecting Tacoma, Everett, Redmond, West Seattle, and Ballard. Voters in Pierce, Snohomish, and East King are waiting for their projects, too. Keeping the region united and delivering the full system is how we’ll make good on the promise of fast, reliable transit for everyone.