The West Seattle Transportation Coalition formed in September 2013, in response to the looming 27% cuts to King County Metro to West Seattle. From that moment we started the process of building the WSTC so that there would be a unified voice for transportation issues in West Seattle, to drive our elected officials and agencies to stop — finally — overlooking West Seattle.
The first six months
How it began:
A huge crowd discussed this at our first meeting, which was recorded by the West Seattle Blog. You can watch it here:
West Seattle was getting a double hit: in addition to the 17% cuts the entire county was facing to King County Metro, we were also facing another 10% in cuts because of the “Viaduct mitigation money” from the WSDOT running out. This was a special fund for us, due to the massive disruption to our commutes from the Deep Bore Tunnel and Bertha digging. Unfortunately, the State only funded that through June 2014! At the end of that first meeting, with nearly all of the leaders of nearly all of the West Seattle neighborhood and community groups present, we unanimously formed the WSTC, and started working on our problems…