Sound Transit rejects Trump’s proposal for cuts to light rail funding

A $500 million federal grant application to help fund Sound Transit’s extension of light rail from Angle Lake in SeaTac to Federal Way could be in jeopardy under a Trump administration budget proposal.

Trump’s budget proposes major cuts of transit funding programs in several major cities.

Sound Transit plans to extend light rail from the Angle Lake Station in SeaTac at South 200th Street to near South 320th Street in Federal Way with stops at Kent/Des Moines along Pacific Highway South near a new South 236th Lane and at South 272nd Street in Kent. The cost of the 7.6-mile Federal Way extension project is about $1.5 billion. The Kent stations are scheduled to open in 2024.

The chief executive officers of Sound Transit and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority issued a joint press release on Thursday against the proposed cuts.

The agencies disagree with being named in the administration’s FY 2018 budget proposal, which asserted the agencies “realize waiting for grant funding is not the most efficient way to meet their local transportation needs.” In fact, that very federal grant funding acts as a keystone to the consensus necessary to raise local funds for transit. Without that federal encouragement, we cannot succeed alone locally.

Here’s what the Trump budget asserts:

“The budget proposes reduced funding for this program, which provides Federal funding for local transit projects that should be funded by state and localities that benefit from their use. Localities are better equipped to scale and design infrastructure investment needed for their communities. Several major metropolitan areas, including Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle, have already begun to move in this direction by asking residents to approve multi-billion dollar bond measures to speed the delivery of highway and transit investments.

“These regions realize waiting for Federal grant funding is not the most efficient way to meet their local transportation needs. Federal resources should be focused on making targeted investments that can leverage private sector investment and incentivize the creation of revenue streams where possible.”

Here’s the response from the agencies:

“The administration’s assertion that our regions can deliver transit solutions for our citizens without federal partnership is uninformed, misguided and unfair. The voters of our communities stepped up and voted to tax themselves to provide a path out of punishing congestion. For that bold action, they should be rewarded at the federal level, not punished.

“The ballot measures adopted by our voters assumed a reasonable level of federal matching funds to deliver our most challenging transit solutions through the continued funding of the Federal Transit Administration’s Capital Investment Grant program. But the administration’s budget proposes to terminate that federal partnership for challenging projects at a time when ever-worsening road congestion threatens to choke off our and other region’s economic growth. This wrong-headed budget proposal ignores the will of our local voters and the real-world challenges we are facing in our rapidly growing cities.”

Without congressional action, the most immediate impact of the budget proposal would be elimination of a $1.17 billion federal commitment to the Lynnwood Link light rail extension that was identified last February when the Federal Transit Administration authorized the project to enter into the engineering phase.

Following regional voters’ approval of a $54 billion ST3 ballot measure in November, over the next 25 years Sound Transit’s financial plans assume approximately $5 billion in New Starts funding for voter approved capital projects. Sound Transit’s next project in the pipeline is seeking $500 million in federal funding to reach the city of Federal Way.

“Continued strong federal partnership will be instrumental to extending our light rail service north to Lynnwood and south to Federal Way, giving our commuters the choice of getting out of the ever-worsening congestion on I-5. From there, we can extend onto Everett and Tacoma,” said Sound Transit CEO Peter Rogoff. “The voters of Puget Sound have already voted to tax themselves for the local share to make these projects happen. They now have the right to expect a reasonable return on their federal taxes to also address these critical regional needs.”