City Council supports Prop. 1

The Redmond City Council passed a resolution 5-2 in support of Proposition 1 — a $22 billion roads and transit package — at Tuesday’s meeting at City Hall.

The Redmond City Council passed a resolution 5-2 in support of Proposition 1 — a $22 billion roads and transit package — at Tuesday’s meeting at City Hall.

Proposition 1, which will be on the November ballot, asks voters to approve a 0.6 percent sales tax and a 0 .8 percent motor vehicle excise tax increase to fund a 20-year plan of road and transit improvements.

A similar proposition was defeated by voters last November, with surveys and polls indicating last year’s package was too big and costly and did not provide service improvements soon enough.

“I will support this resolution,” said Councilmember Kimberly Allen, who cited that San Francisco, Minneapolis and Boston all have light rail mass transit systems. “I think it’s critical to the future we’ve mapped out for our city. In a larger sense, it’s also critical to our survival as a region. They start with something like this … it doesn’t necessarily go to your neighborhood first, but once the plan is laid down, it blossoms into something that serves the entire community.”

Other councilmembers were uneasy about spending so much money towards a future project during a time of economic crisis.

“I think this is premature,” said Councilmember Hank Myers, who along with David Carson voted against the measure. “We’re talking about 22 billion dollars at a time when we have a 90 million dollar deficit in King County and a 2.2 billion deficit in the state. I just simply think this is not the time, nor is this the project.”

But in the eyes of longtime Redmond resident Bertha Eades, the regional transit system is in desperate need of improvement.

“My husband and I rode the bus into town for an event at 6 p.m., and we knew the buses were going to be crowded,” Eades told councilmembers. “We caught it at the Overlake Transit Center and there was no room to sit, even before they left the transit center. When we came back at 9 p.m. it filled up at Montlake. There was no more room to sit on that bus. We need a better transit system.”

The expansion plan detailed in Proposition 1, named ST2, will provide 100,000 hours of regional express bus service as early as 2009, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service on SR 520 and an expanded bus fleet to provide this additional Sound Transit service.

ST2 will also expand light rail service from downtown Seattle to the Overlake Transit Center, and also includes plans for expansion into downtown Redmond, in addition to examining potential future light rail corridors along SR 520 from UW to the Eastside and along I-90 from Bellevue to Issaquah.

The Eastside will receive the highest level of investment with $6.3 billion (year of expenditure dollars) and 36 percent of ST2 improvements. Half of the ST2 regional express bus service is on the Eastside, with 49,000 additional bus service hours and a new route for the Bel-Red corridor.

Higher levels of regional express bus service will improve connections between the urban centers of downtown Redmond, Overlake and downtown Bellevue, and will provide connections to light rail stations.

The expansion of light rail will connect the urban centers of downtown Bellevue and Overlake with downtown Seattle. Light rail expansion on the Eastside will serve the growing Eastside communities, and provide service to Mercer Island, downtown Bellevue, Overlake Hospital, the Bel-Red corridor, Redmond’s Overlake neighborhood and Overlake Transit Center.

ST2 builds on the Sound Move regional high capacity transit investments approved by voters in 1996, which provided 295,000 hours of regional express bus service, Tacoma-Seattle commuter rail service, HOV lane improvements, transit centers and numerous Eastside park-and-ride lots. It also provided the initial investments and planning for the light rail service opening next year between Sea-Tac Airport and downtown Seattle.

While there was some concern about Sound Transit’s track record by councilmembers, most on the Council shared the opinion that something must done to improve the region’s transit system.

“We absolutely have to move forward,” said Councilmember Richard Cole. “If we don’t build the second phase, which is this, there will never be a third phase and we’ll never get anywhere.”