By: Jeanette Knutson
Woodinville Weekly
August 6, 2007
King County perspective
As readers probably know, King County — at Executive Ron Sims’ direction — is in the midst of some creative, complicated land swap deal that would result in county ownership of a stretch of Eastside rail corridor from the City of Renton to the City of Snohomish. The reason for acquiring the line, according to Sims, is to create “the granddaddy of regional trails.” The plan is to rip out the tracks from Renton to Woodinville and build a recreational trail, which would serve as a “placeholder” for future rail use.
The proposed land switch was supposed to work like this: The Port of Seattle would buy the rail corridor, and turn it over to the county with funds to create a recreational trail on it. King County would give the Port its Boeing Field, along with a piece of waterfront property, Fisher Flour Mills on Harbor Island. In the deal, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad would get several million in state money to improve its line at Stampede Pass.
But there was a wrinkle in the plan. The new CEO for the Port of Seattle Tay Yoshitani announced at a recent Rotary Club of Seattle meeting, according to a July 27 Seattle Times article by Bob Young, that it didn’t make sense for the Port to own Boeing Field.
Despite the Yoshitani pronouncement, “modified” three-way discussions to secure ownership of the Eastside rail corridor are ongoing, said Kurt Triplett, chief of staff to Executive Sims.
“We’re trying to figure out a way,” said Triplett, “to keep all the other elements of the original Memorandum of Understanding signed between (Mic) Dinsmore (former Port executive) and Sims (in play). My guess is we’ll probably have some sort of final deal by the end of August.”
The county’s modified proposal, not yet agreed upon by the Port or Burlington Northern, does contain portions of its original proposal: The Port buys the Eastside rail corridor for $103 million. The Port transfers ownership of the corridor to King County along with $44 million to build a trail. A trail would be built from Renton to Woodinville. Rails would come later.
King County would keep Boeing Field. Through an operating agreement with the Port, King County would ensure that Boeing Field would not compete with the Port of Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport.
Should the county want to sell Boeing Field, arrangements would be made to reimburse the Port for money it put toward the Eastside rail corridor. Or, should the Port decide to buy Boeing Field, compensation would be made for the Port’s contributions to the rail corridor less the fair market value of the Fisher Flour Mill property.
King County would give Fisher Flour Mill on Harbor Island to the Port. The Port would build an intermodal rail yard there, and the state would fund tunnel improvements to Stampede Pass.
“Bottom line,” said Triplett, “we need to get the rail corridor into public ownership. (Burlington Northern) will sell it if we don’t succeed. It’s been on the market since 2003. They’ll sell it off in chunks if we don’t buy it.”
He also said that Burlington Northern wants the salvage value of the tracks. That’s why King County wants to tear out the tracks.
“Why allow them to take up the tracks?” said Triplett. “Our premise, Ron Sims’ premise, is that it will not be a commuter corridor for several decades. It will become a rusting, decaying system with people encroaching on it (by then). In the meantime, we can have a magnificent trail that connects to 125 miles of trails. We would be creating a huge amenity. The region has chosen to go with the Sound Transit plan that would bring light rail to Northgate and light rail across Lake Washington to Bellevue. In a couple decades, things will change and (the Eastside corridor) will be a good rail corridor.”
Another perspective
Jim O’Farrell, senior vice president of global marketing for Talisma Corporation of Bellevue, sat in his office on the ninth floor of One Bellevue Center. “I’m counting one, two three, four … about nine cranes,” he said. “The building across the street is going up at a rate of about a floor a day. It will have 2,500 to 3,000 people. The new Expedia building over there will bring another 1,700 jobs. … We’re headed straight to a disaster. … It’s going to be very bad with another 15 to 20,000 commuters.”
Talisma Corporation, a provider of customer-interaction solutions; All Aboard Washington, a nonprofit rail-advocacy group; and the Cascadia Center, a policy institute with a focus on transportation, are striving to maintain the Eastside’s working rail corridor from Renton to the City of Snohomish.
O’Farrell said, “Taking 47 miles of usable track and turning it into a running trail smacks of lunacy.” He wrote in a booklet entitled Green Transportation Now, “… The future is NOW. The growth is NOW. The congestion is NOW. The strain is NOW. Any part of the solution is also NOW with immediate use of the Eastside Rail Corridor.”
“The absurdity of tearing up the tracks is so apparent,” said Chuck Mott, Chairman of All Aboard Washington. “The issue resonates well with the public if they look at the facts.”
Bruce Agnew, director of the Cascadia Center, said, “When the public is presented with facts about the 100-foot-wide rail corridor they say, ‘Well, of course it should be rails and trails. Why would public employees rush to rip up rails’?”
The three organizations hosted a bus tour of the corridor recently, a tour that, ironically, had to be shortened because traffic was so bad.
“The intent was to bring together business people, city leaders, neighborhood activists and professionals to show where the line went and how it related to emerging commercial centers,” said Mott. “The line, by the way, is in far better condition than King County would have people believe. We presented visual concepts of where potential stations could be all along the line (Bellevue, South Kirkland Park and Ride, Totem Lake, Woodinville, Maltby and Snohomish, for example). The message was well received. We had nothing but favorable comments.”
“Ours is a solution that doesn’t involve union jobs or votes,” said O’Farrell. “It’s a pragmatic solution for commuters and freight businesses that want to use the line now. We have a significant investor and an experienced operator, who has run a line similar to this one and has been successful at it.”
Agnew said their proposal would involve the use of DMUs, Diesel Multiple Units, “self-propelled commuter railcars with the capacity to pull coaches,” according to www.coloradorailcar.com.
The cars are low-impact, said Agnew. They run on biodiesel and can be maintained by diesel mechanics at community colleges, he said. They carry 90 people per car and can be double stacked. They already operate in North America, Europe, Asia and India.
The development of an Eastside rails and trails plan as a community partnership, with buy-in from all the communities along the line, would not compete with Sound Transit’s light rail plan, said Agnew. The consortium believes they could have initial rush hour service up and running in 90 days for approximately $30 million. That projected cost is hundreds and hundreds of millions less than any Sound Transit alternative (with approximated costs of $150 to $250 million per mile, per O’Farrell) and would come to the Eastside at least two decades sooner than Sound Transit light rail.
“Once we started,” said Mott, “we could build from that base, build for the future.”
Agnew thought they could run a DMU from Snohomish to Bellevue as a demonstration project. They could run it for a couple years, maybe use leased equipment, and see how successful it was.
“I suspect it will be very popular,” said Agnew. “I-405 construction is going to be a nightmare. Having extra trains at this time makes sense.”
Woodinville City Councilman Chuck Price attended the recent corridor tour and is a strong proponent for keeping the rail line intact. “I think it’s a great idea,” said Price. “It gives us a transportation option for our area now, not 20 years from now. It’s a viable plan. Transportation is the most important quality-of-life issue we have. I love the idea of a publicly owned, privately operated rail line.”
Yoshitani’s comment about the Port not being interested in acquiring Boeing Field will affect King County’s complicated negotiations to obtain the rail corridor, the consortium believes.
“In my opinion,” said O’Farrell, “that put the bullet in the negotiations.”
“I believe the (railroad / Port / county) deal has changed dramatically,” said Mott. “Time will tell. The new Executive Director of the Port seems to be a very business-oriented, pragmatic and capable man. His view on things is quite different from (former Port CEO) Mic Dinsmore.”
Mott believes the essential elements of the original plan are no longer there. “That becomes the basis for not going forward,” said Mott. “In my opinion, (the deal’s) all but dead.”
Mott also wonders if the Port’s charter permits spending Port money for recreational trails. He also wonders what might happen if the rail line ceased to be a rail line. Would the basic rights to the land revert to the original owners, and, if they were dead, would existing landowners have a claim? If the line were purchased and the rails torn up, would these owners create a ruckus? Mott thinks so.
All Aboard Washington, believing the holes in the Swiss cheese lined up and there was room enough for them to crawl through, recently made an offer of its own to Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad to buy the corridor.
“Their first offer was declined,” said O’Farrell, “but this is a 15-Act play and we’re on the fourth or fifth Act.”
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