Sounder Dome District route design splits city

Sound Transit's design for a commuter rail line from Tacoma Dome Station to Lakewood is dividing city leaders and residents and creating an election-season stir, according to the Tacoma News Tribune. The debate is likely to erupt again when the Tacoma City Council holds a public hearing on the master development agreement between Sound Transit and the city. The council is expected to vote on the issue Oct. 13.

Opponents – including
business owners and neighborhood council leaders – dispute the transit agency’s
plans to use an earthen berm to elevate the Sounder train through the Dome
District, a move they believe will squelch potential in an area that’s ripe for
growth.

"The problem with the
dirt wall is it divides the city, it stops development," said Pierson Clair,
president and CEO of candymaker Brown & Haley. He fears the company’s
operations will be hemmed in by the embankment.

Berm opponents favor
elevating the line using a monorail-style riser – also known as post and beam –
through the neighborhood. Putting the tracks on an earth bank is an ugly
example of a city and a regional transit authority not listening to their
constituents, opponents say.

Not so, counter Sound
Transit officials. They point out that they’ve spent more time on the 1.4-mile,
$161-million segment of track from East D to South M streets than on any other
portion of the 8.2-mile route. Decisions to carry the rail on an overpass over
busy Pacific Avenue, bridge the East B Street ravine and create a pedestrian
avenue under the line on East A Street stemmed from extensive meetings with the
public, Sound Transit capital projects director Jim Edwards said.

Plans have been
considerably modified from original inceptions, which put the train on
grade-level tracks across Pacific Avenue, Downtown Tacoma’s main thoroughfare.
The city wanted a bridge over the road; Sound Transit agreed but then needed to
gradually elevate the track en route to the overpass. All of that will cost
millions more, they said.

The berm is the safest,
least costly, most efficient way to elevate the tracks through the Dome
District, Edwards said. Sound Transit officials also dispute whether the
post-and-beam design would work for hefty commuter trains.

No one, including City
Council members who want to move ahead with the long-promised line to Lakewood,
thinks putting a railroad through the heart of a city will be pretty. Leaders
must "put as much lipstick on the pig as we can and do it with the least amount
of disruption" to the city and its neighborhoods, said City Councilman Jake
Fey.

Commuter rail from
Lakewood to Everett was promised in the $4-billion multifaceted transit package
approved by South Sound voters in 1996. The $240-million route from
Freighthouse Square to Lakewood is the only commuter rail segment not
completed. Tacoma-to-Seattle rail service began in 2003.

In the City Council
audience at the hearing, and speaking on behalf of the post-and-beam elevated
railway, will be architect and mayoral candidate Jim Merritt. He’s made the
issue one of the stanchions of his platform.

On the dais will be his
opponent, Councilwoman Marilyn Strickland, who voted with a unanimous council
last January on project recommendations for Sound Transit. The ultimate
decision was left to the agency, but the city said it wanted the post-and-beam
design where it made sense in the corridor. Strickland sees this more as an
opportunity to make the best of the final product – whatever it is – rather than
a story of "heroes and villains."

The mayoral race and
Sound Transit’s push to complete design of the corridor are on somewhat
parallel tracks. The city will elect a new mayor Nov. 3; Sound Transit wants to
complete design and solicit bids on the Freighthouse Square-to-South M Street
portion of the corridor by the end of the year. That timetable is necessary to
get construction under way by spring so service can begin by summer 2012,
Edwards said.

The project is already
more than 75 percent designed. Any alterations now could cause Sound Transit to
lose an entire construction season, jeopardizing $24 million in time-contingent
grant funds and choking off chances for winning more, Edwards and others said.

Dome District proponents
of the beam-elevated track have engineers Tom Warren and Eric Stensrud rushing
to complete an alternative plan. And members of the Southwest Washington
Chapter of the American Institute of Architects are designing a
three-dimensional computer model they say will dramatically depict the
difference between post-and-beam and berm construction. The beam-elevated track
is more attractive, and because you can see beneath, there’s a greater feeling
of openness in the area, supporters say.