The West Seattle Transportation Coalition sent the following letter today to the Sound Transit Board, the King County Council, the Burien City Council, the Seattle City Council, and Seattle Mayor Ed Murray.
The West Seattle Transportation Coalition (WSTC) is a peninsula-wide organization representing Seattle’s largest constituency of 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 the peninsula’s transportation, mobility and commuting challenges.
The WSTC membership has some concerns about the “3+1” West Seattle ST3 options that have been presented to the Sound Transit Board (STB) for consideration. The proposed ST3 projects with at-grade or elevated tracks will directly conflict with the Move Seattle funded Fauntleroy Boulevard and Delridge Way SW Visioning / Complete Street projects. In addition, the decision by Sound Transit not to include comprehensive planning to West Seattle in ST2 funding puts us at a distinct disadvantage.
Therefore, we request that before the March draft of the ST3 plan is unveiled, a significant effort is made by Sound Transit, with the assistance of the City of Seattle and WSTC, to get constituent input on potential light rail routing. We propose meetings be held in each of the West Seattle Urban Villages (Alaska, Admiral, Morgan, Westwood/Highland Park and North Delridge) as well as in the City of Burien.
WSTC strongly believes that our region requires a fully connected light rail system. The system should accommodate our fast growing population and economy, and the reality in which we must live and commute from more affordable housing in our suburbs and outlying areas. We endorse all the projects presented to the STB on December 4, 2015, to form the Complete Regional System. Our hope is that the STB chooses to ask for the taxing authority in order to successfully implement the complete, regional light rail system.
We look forward to working with Sound Transit in order to Move the People.