“We’re working on putting together a balanced long-range financial plan that requires us to use really every tool at our disposal to be able to build the system that the voters have mandated.”
“This is not just about the total amount of money. This is about those moments over the course of the next couple of decades and particularly in the early 2040s when we bump up against our credit limit.”
Sound Transit CEO Dow Constantine says the agency is shifting into a mature operating organization while confronting a $34.5 billion shortfall in its long-range financial plan through 2046.
He says Sound Transit’s “enterprise initiative” is designed to reckon with capital, operations and maintenance costs together, and he pledged a balanced plan by the end of May.
“It will not be pretty. Everybody will have pain.”
Constantine is pressing lawmakers for two cost-and-delivery tools: authority to use 75-year federal loans for tunnels and bridges, and permitting flexibility so phases can run in parallel because “time is money.”