News from former Councilmember Randy Corman, your Renton City Hall insider. (All views expressed in journal entries are Randy Corman's personal views, and not the official position of the City of Renton or other city employees. Views expressed in reader comments are those of the commenter)

Posts in category Sound Transit

Pierce County expressing concern about Sound Transit delays; Renton should do the same

Mar07
2023 Written by Randy Corman

This Sound Transit bus has just made one of its Renton stops at our downtown transit center between South Second and South Third. This transit center is scheduled to be replaced by a new transit center at Main and Grady to support Sound Transit’s Stride express (BRT) service.  There is no parking planned at the new transit center until 2034 due to Sound Transit budget realignment.

 

My recent posts about Sound Transit delays in Renton here and here are timely, as Pierce County is now pressing Sound Transit to remedy delays to our south.  We should be partnered with Pierce County, not in competition with them, and I don’t mean to make it sound as if we are.  But as Sound Transit works to mitigate Pierce County impacts, Renton needs to insist the funding does not come from our already disproportionately small share of Sound Transit resources.

Furthermore, we should be in the front of the line, demanding that Sound Transit restore our parking for opening day of the BRT service, something that would only cost four months of Renton’s Sound Transit taxes.  It’s the most modest of requests after Renton has already spent about a billion dollars for very little service.

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Sound Transit’s “Projected Ridership” criteria puts Renton behind and widens equity disparities

Mar04
2023 Written by Randy Corman

Sound Transit delayed Renton’s Bus Rapid Transit by 2 years and delayed parking facilities by a decade. These decisions were based in part on this ridership projection, which is ironically an outcome of disparate Sound Transit spending and planning to date.  Width of blue lines indicates predicted Sound Transit ridership.

 

Sound Transit, faced with financial problems, is choosing to focus their reduced resources on areas where they’ve already spent the most.  This is putting Renton even further behind.

As I discussed in my  previous blog entry on this topic, Sound Transit has delayed Renton’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) service by two years and delayed its parking by 10 years.  This decision was made following a review of every Sound Transit project against specific criteria.

Sound Transit’s first criteria for determining which projects to keep on schedule is “ridership potential,” as shown in the map above. Ridership potential is largely a function of where past money was spent.

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Renton gives Sound Transit $50 Million per year for five shared bus stops

Mar02
2023 Written by Randy Corman

One of five shared Renton bus stops used by Sound Transit busses

 

I’m going to begin a series of blog entries covering an important topic for Renton transit riders and taxpayers.  Renton taxpayers have so far given Sound Transit over a BILLION dollars toward the Sound Transit System, a lot of money from a city that has had a population between 60,000 and 100,000 during Sound Transit’s life. To date the only Sound Transit infrastructure  you can find in Renton is five shared bus stops.  Even worse, Metro transit (a different agency we also fund) paid for the bus shelters; Sound Transit just put up the shared signage.  The 560 and 566 ST bus lines go through our city and stop five places in downtown Renton on their trips between Bellevue and Seatac (560), and Auburn (566).

Renton taxpayers are currently being taxed over $50 Million a year for this bus service.

Five bus stops in Renton are shared by Metro Buses (listed on the left) and Sound Transit Buses (listed on the right). No other Sound Transit branded infrastructure appears in Renton.

 

In the mid 2000’s Sound Transit did give Renton about $19 million toward widening Rainier Avenue, but it was only about 20% of the money promised to Renton under ST 1, and it only happened because former Renton Mayor Jesse Tanner sued to get the money.

Many of Renton’s leaders, me included, have toiled to get Renton a more fair share of Sound Transit service, and have struggled against organizational obstacles that favored certain cities above others for light rail service and capital improvements.  Sound Transit is its own agency, chartered by the legislature, and is not subordinate to every city leader. As Seattle is looking at adding more Light Rail Stations, and Bellevue is adding several of their own, Cities as far flung as Everett, Redmond, Issaquah, Federal Way and Tacoma are all designing their light rail stations. Renton taxpayers will be subsidizing these stations.

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King County Metro needs to lease more parking downtown; City losing too much money on parking garage

Nov19
2008 Written by Randy Corman

Numerous citizens have emailed us recently about how the increased enforcement at the downtown parking garage has made it extremely difficult to find parking to catch a bus. I promise you the city is working hard with Metro to resolve this.

Unlike many recent park and rides and transit center projects, Metro did not provide any parking when they built the Renton Transit Center. They intended it to be a place to transfer between buses, not a place to catch the bus.

But rider patterns have been different than Metro anticipated, so Metro has been negotiating with Renton to provide parking. Metro has been leasing 100 parking spots in our Renton taxpayer-funded garage at very low rates. They pay us $40,000 annually for this. Lately, the 100 spots have not been sufficient, but Metro has so far not agreed to lease any additional spots.

The garage cost Renton taxpayers 11 million dollars six years ago, and it was put in to make it convenient for shoppers to park downtown; it also costs us $70,000 annually just to maintain it. We give Metro over $20,000,000 (twenty million dollars!) per year to provide bus service to Renton, a staggering amount, so we do not understand why they can not either provide parking the way they do in other communities (they have build their own garages in other cities), or pay a little more than $40,000 to lease an adequate number of spaces from us.

I understand our Mayor will be meeting with folks from Metro on Monday to see if we can reach an understanding of some sort to resolve this.

If this interests you and you want to read more, read some of the emails on this topic by clicking “read more” below.

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Renton must insist on our fair share of transit dollars; service must improve

Nov09
2008 Written by Randy Corman

Sound Transit Phase 2 won by a wide margin on Tuesday night, showing once-again our region’s commitment to environmental responsibility and world-class transportation infrastructure. The new light rail will undoubtedly be a valuable system when it is complete.

Now, the pressure will be on to make sure Renton does not get left out in the cold by the new system improvements.

Most Renton residents do not realize that prior to last Tuesday’s vote, City of Renton residents were paying a combined total of 30 MILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR for transit service to our city. This money was being collected as sales tax and property tax, to be used for Metro and Sound Transit service. With 85 thousand residents in about 30,000 households, this equates to roughly ONE-THOUSAND DOLLARS PER HOUSEHOLD PER YEAR for transit service to Renton. I don’t know about you, but I question whether we have been getting an appropriate level of service back for these dollars.

Specifically, I think of the downtown transit center. To Metro’s credit, they did find three million dollars to build this center, and the city was grateful for that. But note that the three million was about 10 % of our ANNUAL payment for transit.

And since the construction of the transit center, Metro has done very little to help us keep it feeling safe and convenient for our residents. For example, Renton taxpayers ended up paying for a parking garage for which we lease stalls to King County Metro when it was apparent that parking was going to be a problem. In addition, we paid for a new police substation to be installed near the transit center, to discourage loitering and mischief, again at an additional cost to Renton taxpayers. And most expensively, we now pay for extra police patrols, and some private security, to improve the conditions at the transit center. Considering we send Metro 20 million dollars a year, and Sound Transit 10 million dollars a year, you would hope that these agencies could pay for some Metro Police to help us with some of this work.

Sound Transit has let us down in another key area. While they committed in Phase 1 to put in two new HOV direct access freeway access point, to help buses swiftly get on and off I-405 near the center of town, they were unable to deliver on either of these. The 100 Million dollars (of Renton taxpayer’s money) which was budgeted for this has not been spent to help our local transit system. The only consolation we have since received is that Sound Transit is, to their credit, helping us with $19 million for improvements to the Rainier Avenue corridor to give buses and HOV lane. This is good, and I support it, but it is still only 19 cents on the dollar of what we were promised in Phase 1.

NOW WITH PHASE TWO TAXES, Renton households will be paying another $69 per year, and some people say several times that depending on inflation modeling assumptions, ridership, cost overruns, or other factors.

I WANT YOU TO KNOW that I remain a huge fan of transit. I have been to many cities in the US, Asia and Europe that have extraordinary transit systems that do the lion’s share of moving people around within the urban areas. And these systems are fun and convenient to ride.

But we need to make sure our 85,000 Renton residents are not left out in the rain while everyone else manages to hop a ride. This means we need to remind Sound Transit of their promises on new express bus service, make sure Metro is using large enough coaches on their Renton routes, and make sure that they keep their transit center clean and safe. We also need to ask Sound Transit to make promised capital improvement investments in our city. With 85,000 residents, Renton is twice the size of Redmond, four times larger than Mercer Island, and as big as Federal Way…all cities that have been assured good access to the new light rail extensions. While we will not have good rail access, we need to be included in bus system improvements, and see good return for our existing thousand-dollars per year, plus our new half-cent on the dollar in Sales Tax for Sound Transit Phase 2.

Click here for the Seattle Times story on Sound Transit Phase Two.

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About the author

Hi, I’m Randy Corman. Welcome to my blog!  I served on Renton City Council for 28 years, 1994-2021, with six years as Renton Council President.  I’m also a mechanical engineer and manager, and worked for the Boeing Company for 33 years, from 1984- 2017.  My wife and I have five kids and five grandkids, and we all live in Renton.  I’ve kept this blog for 17 years, and get thousands of readers each month. Please share your feedback, ideas, and opinions in the comments.

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