By Katie Nelson
HIGHLINE TIMES

Approximately 30 community members congregated at Parkside Elementary School in Des Moines on June 26 to give their input on the extension of light rail service from the Federal Way Transit Center to the new Angle Lake station, which is currently under construction.

The light rail route passes by Kent-Des Moines Road, where Sound Transit is hoping to erect a new station by 2023.

The public meeting is part of an environmental impact statement scoping survey, which is the second step on the project’s continuum. The purpose of scoping is to gain public opinion on the location of potential building areas.

“Our goal is to determine the range of alternatives to study for the draft of the environmental impact statement,” said Kimberly Reason, Sound Transit spokesperson. “What we want to do is explain to the constituents in the corridor what the Federal Way Transit Center project is, where we are right now in terms of what kinds of alignments we’re studying … what the cost parameters are, and what we’re looking at down the road here.”

The building process has been hindered largely due to the onset of the recession in 2008, according to Reason. Because 90 percent of Sound Transit’s funds are obtained through sales tax, the economic downturn resulted in the loss of $4.1 billion, which would have gone toward the ballot measure supporting the light rail extension. This means that the original building timeline developed in November 2008, which predicted the entire extension’s completion by 2023, will be pushed back. Sound Transit’s new timeframe includes building the Kent-Des Moines Road station by 2023.

While the funds for building to Kent-Des Moines Road are nearly cemented, the exact location for the light rail’s route is not. Part of the meeting included images portraying optional locations for both stations and tracks, known as alignments.

“Right now we’re looking at a total of 10 stations in the study area … and five different alignments,” Reason said. “We’re looking at alignments on Highway 99, as well as I-5.”

As far as which options are considered the best, Reason said it is too early to tell, and that all options are being weighed equally.

“That’s what this whole [scoping] process is about, to thoroughly look at the impact, how much right of way are we going to need to acquire, how much transit-oriented development, how much ridership, travel time, what elements might impede, delay or make more expensive each of those alignments,” she said.

Pati Guenther, a Des Moines resident who lives on the north side of Highline Community College, was present at the June 26 meeting and had attended several other events pertinent to the construction over the past few years. The future location of the Kent-Des Moines Road station is near the college, ensuring an alignment will run somewhere alongside it.

While Guenther remarked that she will definitely use the service and is excited for it to be built, she also expressed uncertainty.

“I’m just curious as to how it’s going to affect my home and where I live and my neighborhood,” Guenther said. “I have the concern that probably most of the homeowners have, and that is, ‘How is this going to affect the worth of my property?’”

The project’s next step is to evaluate community responses and to create an environmental impact statement, which will help determine the best locations for the stations and alignments. The EIS will be drafted in late 2013 and early 2014.