Sound Transit awards pedestrian crossing grant to city of Kent

Sound Transit awarded the city of Kent $273,683 for a pedestrian crossing on West James Street at Second Avenue North to help improve access to the Sounder train at Kent Station.

“We’re very happy with that,” Kent Mayor Dana Ralph said during a phone interview. “It will have a significant impact to the crossing.”

The project will include a rapid flash beacon that pedestrians can activate by pushing a button. People often cross illegally between the North Park neighborhood and Kent Station, according to city documents.

There have been two reported pedestrian-vehicle accidents and two bicyclist crashes in that area in the past five years, according to city staff. The work on the new crosswalk would start in 2020 and be finished in 2021.

The Sound Transit Board on Sept. 26 approved applications from 27 jurisdictions in the agency’s five subareas in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties, with funding totaling more than $40 million, to improve pedestrian and bicycle access to Link light rail and Sounder train stations.

The project awards range from $116,000 for new bike lanes in Puyallup, part of the Pierce County subarea, to $3.7 million for the design and construction of a nonmotorized bridge at 148th Street in Shoreline, part of the North King subarea, according to a Sound Transit news release. Twenty-six of the 30 projects will result in physical improvements, while the remaining projects will fund, either fully or in part, project design. Almost all of the projects will come on line in the next one to five years.

“These awards will fund projects that remove barriers for existing and potential transit riders and allow them to take advantage of the region’s growing, high-capacity transit system,” said John Marchione, Sound Transit board chair and Redmond mayor, in the news release. “Easy access is an important component for increasing ridership and creating better customer experiences.”

The 2016 voter-approved Sound Transit measure included a system access fund for projects such as safe sidewalks, protected bike lanes, shared-use paths, bus transfer facilities and new pickup and drop-off areas. The system access fund provides $100 million and is allocated equally among the agency’s five subareas for projects that make it easier and more convenient to get to transit. Up to $10 million was available for each subarea in the first round.

In addition to Kent, other projects in the south end include $2 million to the city of Tukwila for nonmotorized connectivity and safety for a pedestrian signal on State Route 181, improvements on Longacres Way and the Longacres Way/trail crossing. The changes will help people get to the Sounder station easier. Other awards included $1.9 million to the city of Des Moines, $1.6 million to the city of Auburn and $500,000 to the city of SeaTac.

Ralph understood the reasons other cities received more funds than Kent.

“The funds are to improve access and our walking paths to Kent Station are established,” Ralph said. “Tukwila at Longacres is not very walkable.”

Kent also applied for a grant of $800,000 for lighting and pedestrian improvements along West James Street and West Smith Street between the James Street Park & Ride lot and Sounder’s Kent Station to encourage more people to park and walk to the train.

Ralph said that project didn’t score as well on Sound Transit criteria as the West James Street pedestrian crossing, which received an exceptional rating.

The board action completes a process started earlier this year, when the agency opened a call for local governments and transit agencies to submit proposals. Sound Transit received 53 applications from 33 jurisdictions totaling more than $86 million in requests.

Sound Transit staff evaluated the proposals based on policy and technical factors, rating applications high, medium, or low for each factor, and assigning each project an overall rating of highly recommended, recommended, or not recommended. An online open house last summer that allowed the public to comment on applications received more than 2,600 project-specific survey responses.

Click here for a full list of the projects awarded by Sound Transit. Scroll down the document for the list by subareas.