Sound Transit announcement.
The editors of Engineering News Record (ENR) have named Sound Transit as 2022 Owner of the Year for ENR Northwest. ENR is a leading news publication for the engineering and construction industries across the country. Each year ENR identifies and recognizes project owners for excellence in planning, design, construction and project management of large-scale construction projects.
“We’re honored that ENR recognized the Sound Transit’s incredible work on the largest transit expansion project in the nation,” said Sound Transit Board Chair and University Place Board Member Kent Keel. “Thanks to the commitment of the region’s taxpayers and the Federal Transit Administration, the agency and its construction partners have continued to make progress toward building a new and greener way to get around our region.”
“Our region is making history through the scale and ambitiousness of our work to expand transportation options that will help carry our riders, environmental sustainability and economy into the future,” said Sound Transit CEO Julie Timm. “We’re deeply dedicated to our region and our industry and proud to receive this honor. 2023 will be a year of continued focus on quality.”
Over the next several years, Sound Transit is on track to more than double the Link light rail system, from 26 miles to 62 miles. The agency is also preparing to launch a new Stride bus rapid transit service that will connect communities north, east and south of Lake Washington. Further light rail extensions are planned to Tacoma, Everett, West Seattle, Ballard, South Kirkland, Issaquah and Tacoma Community College.
Milestones in 2023 include opening the Hilltop Tacoma Link Extension, doubling service on the T Line, and opening parking garages at the Puyallup Sounder Station and the Lynnwood Transit Center.
So let me get this straight. Sound Transit is years behind their original schedule (before all the “resets”), billions of dollars over budget, cheating taxpayers out of their hard-earned money by illegally inflating the value of the taxpayers’ vehicles, leading to inflated vehicle licensing fees, and many other egregious and blatant raping of the taxpayers. And Sound Transit was awarded “Owner of the Year”? If my business was as mismanaged as Sound Transit, I wouldn’t be in business very long. And I read in the news that the federal government recently awarded Sound Transit over 500 million dollars in grants to waste as they see fit. Where’s my federal grant for my company? Since it’s well-managed, I’ll never see it.
I live in Spanaway. We will never see a light rail line here, at least not in my lifetime. As such, I and most of Pierce County voted “no” on the last Sound Transit levy. My vehicle tabs were $360 on my most recent renewal, with almost $300 of that total going to Sound Transit. Why are we in Pierce County paying for something we will get no benefit from? Thank you voters in Seattle/King County!
Sound Transit should be shut down and cut the taxpayers’ losses. It makes a lot more sense to expand already-existing transit bus service, whose routes can be adjusted as needs arise, than to build a system from scratch that runs on a fixed line with no adjustability in routes. But then the fat cats at Sound Transit, and all their rich contractors, would be out of jobs. By the time Sound Transit’s system is finished, if it ever is, (highly doubtful) it will outdated. and archaic