A Sound Transit do-over?
Light rail could be back on the ballot in less than a year
Snohomish County and other Puget Sound area voters resoundingly rejected spending billions of dollars on light rail and road projects on Election Day.
But according to Sound Transit, a new poll suggests voters like light rail and want more.
Nearly three-quarters of south Snohomish County voters surveyed want to see light rail expanded, according to Moore Information of Portland and EMC Research of Seattle, the two consulting firms that conducted the survey.
They interviewed more than 200 voters from Everett to the King County line, all who said they cast ballots in the Nov. 6 election. Additional voters were interviewed in King and Pierce counties.
Voters in the region thought Proposition 1, the so-called Roads and Transit tax package, was too expensive, took too long to deliver and was confusing, the pollsters found.
A full 75 percent of the region's voters also said they didn't trust government to spend their tax dollars well.
"I think there was some concern in Snohomish County that it was a costly package that took too long to build out," Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon said Wednesday. He serves on the Sound Transit board.
Sound Transit board members are expected to review the survey's findings in a meeting today and then begin to discuss what to do next, said Ric Ilgenfritz, the transit agency's director of policy and public affairs.
One option being considered is putting the measure back in front of voters in some form, perhaps in time for next fall's presidential election.
Polling conducted before the Nov. 6 election suggested the tax package would pass.
Instead, the measure tanked in Snohomish County, as it did throughout the region.
An analysis of final election returns shows the measure passed in only a handful of neighborhoods in the county. The greatest support was found in Edmonds, Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood and Brier in the county's south end, but the measure overall failed to carry a single city. In Marysville, Lake Stevens and Arlington, six of 10 voters shot down the idea.
The pollsters suggested Wednesday that one reason they misread voters this fall was that they did not realize an attitude shift had occurred. In April, most of those surveyed reported they were optimistic about life in the Puget Sound region. Interviewed after the election, the majority were pessimistic, and suggested the region is "pretty seriously off on the wrong track," according to the survey's results.
Ilgenfritz said the concern appears fueled by national worries over the economy, particularly home mortgage finances, Boeing's delays in delivering new planes and even poor performances of local sports teams.
Even so, 70 percent of Snohomish County voters who were polled said they would pay up to $10 billion to extend light rail as far north as Lynnwood and as far south as Tacoma. That was even higher than the region, where 65 percent of voters polled in support of spending money on light rail.
Continue reading this article from the Everett Herald:
A Sound Transit do-over?
