Maybe the light rail system we've got is good enough

The good news is, after generations of crisis and struggle, the Seattle area finally has a pretty good light rail transit system up and running.

I say this because transit advocates held a satirical funeral for the project's future this past week, complete with a coffin carried through downtown streets. They were protesting a decision to effectively cut an expansion line to Ballard, because it's now catastrophically over budget.

The overall vibe of mourning was apt. It feels like Seattle's light rail arc is in its twilight years. Or possibly is mostly over, except for the gnashing and weeping.

What happened this past week is the agency that runs the trains, Sound Transit, took its first crack at closing a $35 billion budget gap. That is a massive, unprecedented overrun, given the total cost of the agency's "ST3" expansion was supposed to come in around $54 billion, and none of it has been built yet.

The budgets for building some of the lines have more than tripled. Laying track to Ballard, for example, went from an estimated $6.8 billion when voters said "yes" in 2016 to as much as $23 billion today.

There are concrete reasons for this, such as construction inflation soaring. It also happens with most megaprojects that politicians tend to undersell the costs and oversell the benefits. Here, though, the gap is so enormous it's threatening to derail the entire enterprise.

"I've lost trust in this agency, in many different ways," said Sound Transit board member Dan Strauss, also a Seattle City Council member, during a marathon budget-cutting exercise this past week.

"Those of us at the end of the lines, our communities are rightfully livid," echoed Cassie Franklin, the mayor of Everett.

"We've just heard this, from Tacoma and from Everett, that we can't continue to talk about expanding," Strauss continued. "We need to put construction equipment in Tacoma and in Everett as soon as feasibly possible."

That is said to be coming, as train service connecting to those cities is now estimated for the mid-to-late 2030s, or possibly 2041 into Everett. It would mean that Everett residents will have been paying Sound Transit taxes for about 45 years before the first trains roll into town.

Ballard is going to have to wait even longer - possibly forever. The Sound Transit board voted it can't afford to build the Ballard line any farther out of downtown Seattle than to Seattle Center. Readers astute in Seattle geography will note this is not anywhere near Ballard.

"We need to change the name, fumed Strauss, who represents Ballard. It's not the Ballard extension anymore."

How did it all get so off track?

One factor is Seattle has been shedding the "light" from light rail. When all this started way back in 1996 - an election I covered as a reporter - the premise for choosing a light option, a sort of combo subway train and streetcar, was that it could be installed relatively cheaply on city streets and in road medians.

Portland did it this way, with its MAX system. It isn't as fast - sometimes the trains snake on congested city streets, especially downtown - but it allowed Portland to blanket its city with five lines without breaking the taxpayer bank.

In Seattle, we now use tunneling or elevated guideways almost exclusively. Some of the stations are temples in the air, while some are bored more than a hundred feet below ground.

"It's the most complex transit project, probably in the world," Sound Transit's board chairperson, Dave Somers, said this past week.

That also makes it the most exorbitant.

It's funny, though not in a ha ha way, that in the runup to the vote in 2016 on ST3, Sound Transit was said to have learned its lesson about lowballing costs. After its first phase came in 86% over budget, the new cost projections for ST3 of $54 billion were seen as so pumped up that even opponents conceded overruns seemed unlikely.

"They've become much better at financial management and putting enough contingency to get things done," said longtime rail system critic John Niles, in a 2016 story. "You could argue, what we have in ST3 is it's larded. They will never be caught short again."

Yet here they are - caught short again, again.

"We keep ending up back here," said board member Claudia Balducci. She guessed this latest cost-cutting exercise was the "fourth realignment" they've done of the system, where rail routes have to be postponed due to runaway costs. (She's been on the board since 2010.)

Where this is all headed is simmering just beneath the surface: They're going to ask voters for more money. The agency already collects roughly $700 per resident per year.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson made it explicit, floating a resolution that calls on Sound Transit to craft what you might call "ST4" - "a future revenue package to fill remaining gaps to the ST3 program and fund additional expansion investments."

Various board members at least acted hacked off by this. "There they go again, government asking for more money," said Hunter George, a Fircrest (Pierce County) council member. Everett Mayor Franklin said curtly: "If Seattle wants to ask for more revenue, go for it. Everett is certainly not ready for that and won't be until we have trains in our community."

And yet - the board passed Wilson's resolution. They know that just slicing off Ballard isn't enough to balance the books, even for the projects they're now calling ready to go.

Side note: the new financial plan forecasts getting just 3.5% of total agency revenues from passengers paying fares. Sound Transit, you've got to start enforcing fare payment more vigorously, if for no other reason than you're in a money crisis.

I want to get back to the good news, though, because it's easy to lose sight of in all this bungling and bleakness. We have a good, arguably great, light rail system already. It averaged 122,000 riders a day in February, up 73% since 2019 - and that was before it could cross the lake to the Eastside.

Rapid trains on 59 miles of track now connect the Eastside tech campuses, Seattle, the sports stadiums, the airport, the University of Washington - pretty much all the biggest destinations are already on the map.

What an odyssey to get here. I haven't even mentioned the boondoggle monorail!

Seriously, at what point do we say "it's pretty good," and stop? When the activists start holding funerals, it sure feels like that point may be on the horizon.

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This story was originally published May 30, 2026 at 6:44 AM.