As people work from home, Sound Transit bets $350 million on 3 new parking garages

As people work from home, Sound Transit bets $350 million on 3 new parking garages

Fifteen years after Puget Sound voters agreed to fund new parking garages near Sounder stations, the project is finally moving forward.
June 8, 2023

By David Kroman | Seattle Times

SEATTLE — In 2008, Puget Sound voters agreed to build new parking garages near Sounder train stations south of Seattle, one part of the Sound Transit 2 ballot measure. Fifteen years later, after a variety of delays and false starts, the push for more parking is finally moving forward.

But fulfilling this long-delayed promise comes as fewer people head into the office and existing parking spaces sit empty. As the future of commuting remains uncertain, the investment is a $350 million bet that riders will return in droves and, when they do, will need more parking.

"While ridership is still down some, we don't build for current, we build for future," said Nancy Backus, mayor of Auburn and Sound Transit board member.

Agency board members are scheduled to approve three design-build contracts this year for garages in Sumner, Kent and Auburn, set to open in 2026 and 2027. Sumner's was passed in January; Auburn's will get its first committee vote Thursday; and Kent will receive a vote later this year.

The total $359 million budget for all three is triple the upper estimates of what they would cost in 2007 dollars and roughly $200 million more expensive than their combined original budgets when adjusted for inflation.

When the new structures are completed, they will add somewhere around 1,500 new parking spaces, penciling out to more than $200,000 each.

But where parking near the Sounder once filled each morning, it's a different world today than it was in 2007, or even 2019. Ridership on the heavy rail line is still just 30% of what it was pre-pandemic. While Sumner's minimal parking is hitting capacity, the current garage in Auburn was 58% full in April and in Kent, where the top floor of the five-story structure is currently roped off, it was just 43% full.

The momentum for the new garages is a microcosm of a challenge facing all transit agencies today: looking toward the future, when the present is still uncertain.

Nevertheless, the contracts have already been or soon will be approved, making good on a promise to voters and avoiding the sticky politics of second-guessing long-simmering projects. The federal government is providing $154 million in low-interest loans.

Roger Millar, secretary of the Washington State Department of Transportation and a Sound Transit board member, cast doubt on the wisdom of building new parking so near the stations.

"I just think that, as policymakers, we have to acknowledge that times change and we have to be thinking about more than building parking stalls at hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece," he said in a 2020 board meeting.

Predictions and reality

Sounder was once predicted to carry 30,000 riders a day by 2025 and more than 6 million by 2042. Voters approved $1 billion in 2016 to increase capacity with longer cars and stations to accommodate that flush.

But so far this year, the best month, April, saw just over 6,000 riders a day.

Sounder's anemia is connected to its essential use as a commuter line. Riders on the 13 round trips between Lakewood and Seattle must head out before lunchtime in the morning and go back before happy hour in the evening.

Whether that use could be expanded is an open question; the Sound Transit board recently signed off on a new contract agreement to explore ways the Sounder might grow or change.

"This is a question that transit agencies across the country that have commuter services are looking at," said Sound Transit CEO Julie Timm. "Do they lean into trying to attract drivers back? Do they change their service model altogether?"

Timm has been in communication with BNSF, which owns the tracks, about meeting and discussing expanding service on Sounder. But whether BNSF is open to that idea and how much it would cost is unclear.

Even without a crystallized view of the train's future, Timm is bullish. She says the line offers a true alternative to driving in traffic that residents will use, if not now, then soon. And when that ridership returns, parking will be needed, despite her misgivings about the cost.

"When you start doing those bottom lines, you pencil it out, it's always going to be expensive," she said. "But the cost of maintaining our roads, widening our roads, building that infrastructure is way more expensive than a parking garage."

For Backus, it's about delivering on a promise made to her constituents before she even joined the Sound Transit board. The garages were delayed following the Great Recession, and progress again slowed due to COVID. Meanwhile, Auburn is growing rapidly — soon to hit 100,000 residents — and Sounder, along with its parking, are key to connecting people to jobs and activity to the north, Backus said.

"I do believe that all the need for both garages will come to fruition," she said. "There will be more ridership when there's more opportunity."

Karie Adair agrees. She moved to Kent from West Seattle a year ago, a change she felt comfortable making in large part because of Sounder. Walking from her car to the train on a recent Friday, she thought more parking would increase capacity on the train.

"I feel like adding more capacity could only be a good idea," she said.

Unused existing spaces

Other riders were less sure. Brenda Pham takes the train from Kent every day. A business major at the University of Washington, she transfers to light rail on her way to campus. It frustrates her that the last train leaves Seattle at 6:30 p.m., meaning she often skips out on clubs and meetups after school.

For her, building more parking doesn't make sense.

"This one's never full," she said, as she descended the stairs to catch the 11 a.m. to Seattle. Indeed, by midday, the lot still had hundreds of spots available.

Parking near transit has always been contentious. Urbanist and environmental groups dislike that it takes up space that might be used for housing or other amenities while also siphoning dollars away from building out more transit connections.

"We feel that if comparisons were made between how much money Sound Transit spends to help a single person drive to the station versus walk or bike there, we would expect to see underinvestment in the greener and more scalable modes of transportation," said Jon Cracolici, board president of Seattle Subway, which advocates for a larger transit network.

In 2015, the American Public Transportation Association recommended better management of existing parking — by charging for its use, for example — over new construction to avoid eating up "valuable land near transit areas."

"For $215,000 you could subsidize an affordable housing unit or two or 500 on that site," Millar said, referring to the estimated per stall cost of the Auburn garage.

Claudia Balducci, a member of the King County Council and Sound Transit board, this year voted in favor of moving forward with the new garages. She did so with some reluctance. As the former mayor of Bellevue, she sympathizes with Backus and the other Sound elected officials on the south end who've been telling their residents for years that more parking is on its way. She's also taken their word that the demand will return and the space will be used.

But it may also be the last time she votes this way.

"There's lots of different ways that we can provide access without devoting some of the best development land we have, right within walking distance of a station, to something that is so low utilization," she said. "Really, from a big-picture perspective, a parking garage is just not the greatest land use."

The last three years have spurred a reevaluation of park and rides. King County Metro is in the early stages of surveying its portfolio of parking and whether those spaces might be put to different use, said Pierce Canser, head of the agency's Parking & Mobility Hubs Program.

Sound Transit, meanwhile, has pushed the parking spaces within Sound Transit 3 to the back of its agenda.

Millar offered one proposal: Build the garages in a way that they could be converted to housing later.

Timm liked the idea, but doubted its practicality: "When it's time to convert that into housing or retail, taking it down and putting it back up, as much as that hurts my heart sustainably, it's more cost effective."

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