Sound Transiit official joins Good Day Seattle to discuss progress on West Seattle Link Extension

All right. Welcome back to Good Day Seattle. New light rail lines in Seattle have been years in the making with the newest plan for West Seattle construction scheduled to start next year. And I'm joined now by Brad Owen, the acting chief capital delivery officer for Sound Transit. Brad, thanks for joining us here. Thank you for having me. It's good to have you. Now, so give us an idea of where we stand on that project. What needs to happen before groundbreaking? Well, so on West Seattle, we've cleared all the environmental requirements. We have a federal record of decisions, so that's a big moment for the project. The board in May actually voted to fully fund the project all the way from the Soto area to Alaska Junction. So that's exciting. We're moving into design and construction phase for the project now. So there's going to be a lot of design work happening. Okay, and so getting access to the property, you buying it, or a security right-of-way has been controversial. So how does Sound Transit balance all the factors to decide how to proceed? Well, I think for starters, we want to proceed with the homeowners, business owners, and the tenants, open communication, be really transparent, respectful about the process. We understand the process is, it's not an easy process for some people, but we're really dedicated to communicating with them, giving them those wraparound services that they need as they go through the relocation process. Making sure that we Transparent about the negotiation process and the fair market value for the property that we that we need to acquire. So it's a long process, but we provide a lot of support to those individuals as they go. And, you know, and as you mentioned, you know, there are concerns about communication with the people displacing businesses, potentially protecting the environment as well. So a lot on your plate as you deal with an expansion to West Seattle. How are you dealing with all that? Yeah, it is a lot. It's a huge project. A lot of touch points. We have a really good community engagement team that is out in the community talking to them. You know, you can visit us at farmers markets fairs. We send a lot of mailers out. But I would say right now, pretty much everyone that's going to be impacted on the West Seattle project has a specialist that has been assigned to that individual or that business. Really just about giving them the avenues to get to us, to ask us questions, to ask us what's coming next. Okay, so from our understanding, $500 million, that is the property acquisition fund, as it were, and that's a little less than half of the total budget for the project. Is that pretty standard for a huge infrastructure project like this? Thank It is standard for a big infrastructure project in an urban core. I would say that that budget includes a lot. There's a lot of cost in there for relocation services. It's not just the acquisition of the parcel, but also the services we provide as they need to move into a new business, into a new home. you. And so there's about 70 parcels. I would say one of the cool things that we've done is reduce the amount of parcels we need to take. We look first to mitigate if we can. Through a lot of work over the last 18 months, we've been able to reduce the amount of parcels we needed to take by almost 100. Thank you. So how is it in this high inflation environment, how do you deal with projects like this because cost overruns are almost inevitable? Yes. Well, so I would say the first thing we do is we try to have a really good plan. Yeah. Our schedule and our cost includes contingency that is kind of baked into that. We sort of know and can predict where some of the markets are going to go, but these projects are complex. There's a lot of the volatile pricing that we're seeing just as people that live here. These projects have a lot of that built in, a lot of oil, depending on a lot of oil, steel pricing, a lot of markets. And so we just really try to have enough contingency that we can anticipate. And prepare for the unexpected. Right. Okay, so we have to ask about Ballard. And we understand that there's no funding to get that promised line right now. But in community meetings last week, agency CEO Dow Constantine sounded committed to making that happen. So what is the deal with Ballard? Yeah, so the deal with Ballard is that we are in the draft environmental impact statement. We're in the process right now. We just are going to release that document very soon for the public to comment on. That's a huge milestone for the project. The project is funded from downtown, from the CID all the way to the Seattle Center and we are committed to getting all the way to market. We have a plan in place. We don't need all the money right now. We need the money a little bit later in order to get there. So we have a plan to find that money to work through some of the design complications we have. We're committed to getting to market. It's got to be exciting, though, to see so many people riding now, and we have service up and down, north and south, and now east. I mean, it's got to be exciting to see this actually coming to fruition in so many places. Yes, it is. And I think our recent success with the World Cup, You know, we're celebrating now. Incredible growth in our transit system over the last 20 years. You know, our first light rail line opened in 2009. And the success of the program is really tremendous. We're very excited. I'm proud to be a part of it. I'm proud to be building here in Seattle. It's really exciting for transit. It's exciting for folks to be able to get where they need to go and not sit in traffic. Brad, thank you. Thank you. Brad Owens with Sound Transit. Thanks.