The recently formed West Seattle Transportation Coalition, whose goals are to address transportation and mobility issues for this community has drafted a letter to City, County and State lawmakers. The letter addresses the issues facing West Seattle in light of recent and planned changes in transit and infrastructure.

They are now moving forward with the goal of creating a West Seattle centric Master Transportation Improvement Plan and will begin creating it in their next two meetings.

In a preamble to the draft letter the group outlined their plans:

"Our November 12th and December 10th meetings will be spent creating a plan tentatively called the West Seattle Master Transportation Improvement Plan (MTIP). We hope that you and any interested members of your groups will be there to help us create this historic document.

We also hope that you will see this letter as an invitation to the Agencies to open a dialogue with West Seattle. We all have some wonderful, productive and positive solutions to share. We have set a meeting date of January 14th to invite the Agencies to present their high level plans to us, and as an opportunity for us to present them with our MTIP."

The letter, to be sent to elected officials of Seattle, King County and Washington State:

The West Seattle Transportation Coalition is a Peninsula-wide organization working to address transportation and mobility issues for Seattle’s largest constituency.  Representing more than 100,000 people living and working in the 10 square mile area between the Duwamish River and Puget Sound, these community leaders, advocates, business owners, and residents are working to address transportation and commuting challenges caused by:

The reduction of mass transit services: The current insufficient level of service will be compounded by the proposed cuts in our already under served area.

Loss of infrastructure: The scheduled removal of the SR-99 Viaduct without sufficient replacement capacity on other routes to and from our Peninsula.

Density without transportation capacity:  The region’s commitment to increased density is not matched with equivalent increases in transportation capacity to serve the Peninsula’s steadily growing population.

Natural barriers: West Seattle has only limited routes connecting it to downtown and beyond for the vast majority of its commuters. Mass transit is the only option that can move us across these choke points to keep our transportation systems functioning.
The West Seattle Transportation Coalition calls upon our city, county and state elected officials to produce permanent solutions to these identified challenges affecting our Peninsula.

We call upon the City of Seattle to:

Implement immediate, short, and long term sustainable funding for transportation
Increase traffic capacity of surface streets
Match transportation services to increased density
Utilize SDOT Transit Master Plan funding options to mitigate impacts of transit orientated development (TOD)

We call upon King County to:

Implement immediate, short, and long term sustainable funding for transportation
Match transit services to increased population
Get permanent funding authority from the state for transit

We call upon the State of Washington to:

Implement immediate, short, and long term sustainable funding for transportation

Grant permanent regional funding authority increases for transit tied to population and tax revenue growth

The coalition looks forward to partnering with you directly on the matters stated above.

We request your transportation action plan for West Seattle, with milestones to us by December 9th via email. We respectfully invite you to RSVP and present at our January 14th public meeting.  

Sincerely,

The West Seattle Transportation Coalition
http://www.westseattletc. com
info@westseattletc.org

West Seattle Transportation Coalition
Survey Information (we want to know what matters to you)
Endorsement and Joining the Coalition