Sound Transit, which normally chugs at choo-choo speed, is ripping along like a bullet train at the moment.

When the agency's executive board met this morning, the staff passed around a two-page draft list of projects to be funded if – if – the board decides to put a new package on the November ballot.

This would be a downsized, cheaper, transit-only successor to the Roads and Transit measure the region's voters drop-kicked into the Pacific Ocean last fall.

During today's meeting, it became clear that one of the projects occupying a hopeful place in the draft – a $149.4 million extension of the Sounder line from Lakewood to Dupont – was already dead.

Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, a board member and former chairman, said too many of the commuters now catching Sound Transit's express buses from DuPont are from Olympia. Until Thurston County joins the Sound Transit district, Ladenburg and other South Sound board members don't want to spend a fortune providing Olympians with train service they aren't helping subsidize.

That's part of a larger shift in priorities that's occurred this week.

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At least some of that DuPont money will instead be used to purchase right-of-way real estate for the long-planned extension of light rail from Sea-Tac Airport to the Tacoma Dome Station.

Roads and Transit would have delivered that airport connection in full – rails, trains and all – but not until 2027. Voters wanted to see something for their money sooner than that, ideally while they were still alive.

The new package the board is looking at won't raise nearly as much money, so it won't be able to get actual rail service to Tacoma. Worse, the original plan – right up until last week – didn't reflect much urgency about delivering that service at all, even in a later package.

It did offer more express buses and Sounder trains (which run through the Kent Valley), but the only new light rail it offered this end of the Sound was an extension of the little line in Tacoma from Pacific Avenue up the hill to Tacoma General Hospital.

Last week, the draft proposed $167 million for that project. On Thursday's list, the $167 million had been cut to $83.3 million; the rest was supposed to come from local sources. After the meeting, Ladenburg said the $83.3 million was gone, too. The South Sound delegation have decided the trip to Tacoma General just wasn't a regional priority to be funded by regional funds, he said.

More money for light rail real estate.

Sound Transit planners expect the South Sound right-of-way to cost about $260 million. It's a surprisingly small figure, chiefly because the light rail will follow existing public right-of-way along Highway 99 and Interstate 5. Add some of the former Tacoma General and Dupont money to $100 million the agency has been contemplating spending on land purchases along the route, and $260 million becomes a doable number.

As of today, a plan that once looked like a step away from light rail to Pierce County has become a serious step toward it. That's especially true if the board decides to ask voters for a .5 percent instead of a .4 percent addition to the regional sales tax. The higher number would bring actual tracks and trains from the airport down to Highline Community College on 240th Street South, roughly a fifth of the distance to Tacoma.

That sunk cost, plus the real estate, would strongly argue – years down the road – for finishing the job with a third ballot measure.

Light rail is crucial to the South Sound for several reasons. Unlike Sounder, it would run due north, giving hundreds of thousands of people in Federal Way, Des Moines, Tacoma and adjacent communities their only alternative to jammed highways. It would pull many cars off I-5. And its potential capacity is far higher than Sounder's.

Light rail has always been the centerpiece of the mass transit plans for the Puget Sound region. The South Sound shouldn't be left at the station while the system knits together the big cities to the north.

The draft plan is still evolving. The biggest unanswered question is whether it should be put to the voters at all this year. The board has until July to make that decision.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Wednesday that she was "highly skeptical" about a 2008 vote.

"All the (supporters) are not ready to fund and all the opponents are ready to fund. I think it's too early. And we're in tough economic times."
Ladenburg also wonders about the timing, with the region's economy stumbling.

Like Gregoire, he noted that the people who helped kill Roads and Transit are already gunning for the next one. One group sent out a press release Wednesday that said the new proposal was too expensive.

"I just laughed," Ladenburg said.

"We don't even know if we're going to the ballot and we don't know what our plan. They already know what the plan is and they know it costs too much.
"Maybe we should ask them what the plan is."