Dear West Seattle Community,

Sound Transit’s 1000-page Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) issued September 12, 2024, is overwhelming to most of us.  In the short 30 days we have to make a comment, Regional Transit Colleagues and experts from West Seattle’s Rethink the Link will soon provide a much shorter and more accessible FEIS to address the questions that Sound Transit did not answer in its final DEIS.  At present we can say:

The Ballard-West Seattle Link Extension plan presented to voters in 2016 promised to:

(1) improve public transit, 

(2) encourage economic development, equity, community-building and social justice, and

(3) protect the environment. 

Sound Transit’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) released in 2022, in our opinion, did not satisfy the above criteria because:

(1) Building light rail between West Seattle and downtown will not improve transit service.  Buses now deliver riders on a one-seat ride. Light rail will require 2-3 transfers to go the same distance.

(2) WSLE will displace or close 70 West Seattle businesses causing at least 500 people to lose their jobs.

                  a.  Light rail tracks will eliminate 13 neighborhood food stores, cafes and restaurants creating ‘food deserts’ from Delridge to the Junction.

                  b.   Walkable neighborhood services will disappear; swim lessons for 1300 kids, music lessons for more than 1000, and child daycare for more than 300 parents.

                  c. Neither light rail nor re-routed buses will get residents to the new locations of those businesses. It will require cars to reach them, so people without cars will suffer disproportionately.

(3) The West Duwamish Greenbelt, Duwamish River, Pigeon Point, Longfellow Creek will all be negatively impacted. 

                  a. Wildlife habitats (great blue heron, beaver, and salmon) will be “permanently” and “irreparably damaged.

                  b. Carving off Pigeon Point and cutting down 2-3 acres of trees will increase ‘heat islands’ in West Seattle leaving Delridge to suffer more than more leafy, wealthier neighborhoods. Our urban tree canopy will be permanently reduced at a time when Seattle is trying to increase tree canopy.

This plan needs to be reconsidered.

To do that the Sound Transit board must choose the NO BUILD OPTION. 

NO BUILD is the legally required option that appears in every DEIS, including Sound Transit 2022 FEIS. 

The light rail cost is now nearing $1.5 billion per mile.  No light rail bridge as tall and long as Sound Transit proposes to cross the Duwamish has ever been built.  ST now wants to eliminate two of the original three West Seattle stations.   And the impacts- as we noted above - are too significant to proceed.  Thus, NO BUILD is the best option to choose.

A new public vote is NOT required.  According to Section 2 of the Sound Transit 3 package, plans can be changed if an element is unaffordable, infeasible and/or unbuildable.

The WSLE light rail is all three. 

No Build does not mean build nothing. 

 Most other ST3 projects will proceed.  Only the Ballard-West Seattle portion will be reconsidered. For a fraction of the new WSLE estimate of $5.6 billion dollars (5,000 x $1,000,000 dollars), Metro could electrify most of its bus fleet, redeploy buses to provide better connection across Seattle and across King County, rebuild bridge areas to favor bus transit, and install new exclusive bus lanes.  Improving our existing bus system and service can be done easily, incrementally, and economically – and start almost immediately.

We need to ask the King County Council if King County Metro could use $5.6 billion better than building four miles of track and one station. One example: $5.6 billion could buy 5000 electric buses.

We do not need to destroy West Seattle to better serve our transit needs. Under NO BUILD, we could have fast reliable transportation now, instead of worse transportation after 6-8 years of destruction and disruption.

Please join our email list at  contact@rethinkthelink.org.  

Read and sign the Smarter Transit petition at https://smartertransit.org

Sincerely,

Rethinkthlink.org