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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.
The Sound Ford building at Main and Grady has been torn down behind this gateway art in anticipation of Renton’s new “Stride” service (Sound Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit). Stride service has been delayed until 2026, and the parking structure has been delayed until 2034.
Renton should do the same. Renton has paid over a billion dollars to get less than twenty million in infrastructure, and there’s no end in sight.
I can see it already; Sound Transit moves and people will park in the King County Metro parking and ride next door.
Yes, I’m sure this will happen. And metro riders will show up and have nowhere to park. The original proposal was a 2000 car parking garage for Sound Transit at Main and Grady, and then they cut it to 700 cars by the time the bond issue went to ballot. Now we won’t see that until 2034– and based on broken promises in the past, I don’t know if we’ll see it then. It’s time for Renton to fix this.