Planning Update on the T Line Extension to TCC

4

April 25, 2024 by seradt

This post is part of a series covering Sound Transit’s TCC extension project. Please see additional posts about the project by clicking here (for corridor analysis), by clicking here (for population data), and by clicking here (for employment data).

The voter-approved expansion of the T Line to Tacoma Community College will fundamentally reorder the transit system of the City of Tacoma. As the City is the heart of the subarea transit network, there will be a similar effect on the broader Pierce County system too. This single megaproject, with costs that could soar over $500 million, will have profound impacts on every aspect of Tacoma urban planning: population density, transit, land-use, traffic violence mitigation, affordable housing, racial and social equity, parking, economic development, sustainability, transport mode shift, active transportation, ADA access, urban design, permitting, operations, interagency coordination, community engagement, and more. Sound Transit will begin intensive planning ahead of the next mandatory periodic Comprehensive Plan update in 2034. The railway will open within the 25-year analysis period of the 2024 update. For these reasons, it is safe to assume that the project is a key consideration of the forthcoming update. You would be wrong. Despite the magnitude of the investment, there is barely a whisper of the TCC extension at the City. It is at the behest of a modest but growing coalition of citizens that officials are even mentioning the project or the merit of corridors beyond its representative 19th Street alignment. This alone is progress, but public awareness of the T Line expansion must increase moving forward.

The representative 6th Avenue alignment to TCC, showing a three-point T Line railway system ahead of a potential future expansion of the system to the Tacoma Mall under ST4.

Just this month (April), I presented to the 6th Avenue Business District about the 6th Avenue extension concept. I urged their consideration of it. While there were concerns expressed about the impacts of construction, they were told that disruptive transit improvements must one day occur on the avenue — regardless of the mode — considering the vital importance of the corridor. Furthermore, 6th Avenue is not presently a factor in either T Line or BRT planning whatsoever. Consequently, there stands to be no impacts as there is no 6th Avenue option, meaning there will also be no transformative public investment into the District. The Business District was told that any T Line construction on the avenue would start in roughly a decade, allowing for the creation of strategies that streamline the construction phase and maximize the benefit of the project. During this period of time the Hilltop Extension would mature, providing a local template for how 6th Avenue businesses could be also served by rail. I shared that there will come a moment for negotiating project specifics and construction impact mitigation techniques, but the focus for 2024 is to secure a 6th Avenue alignment that reflects the vision and values of an urbanizing Tacoma.

The response was both receptive and positive. There was a noted interest in 6th Avenue being a serious contender for the TCC alignment. Paired with that was a request to prioritize stress reduction on businesses during the construction phase. Of course, this is an essential priority for any corridor to TCC, not just 6th Avenue and Mildred Street. The meeting with the 6th Avenue Business District follows on the heels of last year’s February 8 presentation to the West End Neighborhood Council. That meeting also tapped into community enthusiasm for the concept. Now based on conversations and meetings with several dozen local political figures, business owners, their employees, project area residents, public transit riders, and ordinary Tacoma citizens, there appears to exist broad public support for a 6th Avenue and Mildred Street railway to Tacoma Community College. This support should be captured by the City’s plans and land-use policies within an updated 2024 Comprehensive Plan.

Unfortunately, there are distressing signs to suggest that this will not occur.

City of Tacoma and TCC Railway Planning

The City of Tacoma is sleepwalking toward this unprecedented transportation investment on its most critical arterials and transit lines. Per recent staff communications, the hypothetical alignment of the 2016 Sound Transit 3 ballot measure is sufficiently litigated that they preempt any programmatic evaluation of alternatives. For example, within the draft environmental impact statement of the Home in Tacoma zoning reforms, which will likely be the bulk of the comp plan update, staff assert without a hint of doubt that the T Line will run on 19th Street. The alignment features prominently in the report’s travel demand modeling assumptions. At the April 3, 2024, meeting of the Tacoma Planning Commission, the City’s principal planner noted that while 19th Street is technically “not guaranteed to be the light rail extension location, I would say it is pretty darn likely” (listen here from 2:40:15 to 2:43:00). This characterization about the megaproject was made without any system planning having been conducted, to say nothing of choosing 19th Street or 6th Avenue.

The City of Tacoma’s Home in Tacoma zoning reform DEIS assumes a 19th Street railway to TCC, despite the likely $500 million project never having undergone a rigorous public planning process or a corridor alternatives analysis.

Consequently, the City of Tacoma has no formal understanding of the impacts or benefits of either corridor on the transportation system, on equity, on construction impacts, on costs, on the environment, or on the relative strength of either corridor for competitive federal grants and loans. There has not been a single mention of the need to construct a major bridge over State Route 16 in order to use the 19th Street alignment, nor of the need to site a new operations and maintenance facility. There has been no outreach to the public to gauge their opinion on the matter. There has been no council resolution declaring 19th Street as the preferred alignment. In the absence of such materials, pretty darn likely is a strong affirmation to convey to the Planning Commission, particularly as they consider land use policy that that is directly tied to transit planning. In fact, there is now ongoing debate about whether 6th Avenue and Mildred Street are deserving transit corridors that warrant the removal of parking minimums in their walkshed. This would be achieved through a Planning Commission-proposed enlargement of the existing Reduced Parking Area, which confusingly does not reduce parking minimums and instead eliminates them (click here for more information). Given the housing supply and affordability crisis that has galvanized the Home in Tacoma effort, this debate is inconceivable. There should be zero parking minimums on any major transit corridor in Tacoma, especially 6th Avenue and Mildred Street.

Staff’s apparent commitment to 19th Street is unshaken in the face of ST3’s clear rejection by Pierce County voters. Nor are they swayed by the fact that 6th Avenue was the representative alignment to TCC under the Sound Transit long range plan that shaped ST2-era projects (click here to read a history). Even the 2013 city council that selected the MLK alignment for Hilltop Link was neutral on using 6th Avenue or 19th Street for a TCC extension. As long as Hilltop was served, placing the largest extant redlined area of the city into the walkshed of the railway, the council had no stated opinion on future corridors. Furthermore, past Tacoma Link expansion reports discussed 19th Street only in the context of serving TCC or Hilltop. There was never a framing that the corridor itself brought some strategic value. Per the Tacoma Link Expansion Stakeholder Group Final Report of 2011, without TCC or Hilltop the 19th Street corridor “falls far short” of serving the objectives of neighborhood connectivity, regional connection, and ridership goals (see page 13). A 6th Avenue extension, in contrast, was found to succeed on each of these metrics and be a powerful instrument of local connection. Finally, a fuller Pre-Alternatives Analysis Final Report evaluated a 19th Street corridor with an 80-foot deep cut-and-cover tunnel to Hilltop and which obliterated UWT’s central staircase, a blatantly infeasible route (search the report for “19th”). In other words, 19th Street was never a serious factor in T Line system planning. The Pre-Alternatives report even states that the Hilltop and 19th Street railway to TCC “results in a considerably longer alignment alternative and its benefits need to be evaluated against its costs“. This has not yet been done.

19th Street was a means-to-an-end for serving Downtown, Hilltop and TC—and now the Four Corners. 6th Avenue also does this and does it far better. Curiously, unlike the 2005 Sound Transit proposal, the Pre-Alternatives report does not show or detail a 6th Avenue railway connecting to TCC. The report is peculiar for this reason. Also worthy of note is the striking underestimation of probable cost for the Hilltop Extension. Adjusted for construction inflation to April 2024, the estimate is about $110 million below actual costs.

The identified corridors of the 2011 Pre-Alternatives Analysis, showing routes of wildly varying lengths, complexity, and their estimated costs. Actual construction costs for the now completed Hilltop Link project, labeled here as segments D & E, were far higher than their estimates.

The 19th Street alignment was only a means to-an-end, the goal being a constructible connection from Downtown to TCC via Hilltop. 6th Avenue also accomplishes this goal. Some studies showed a 19th Street railway climbing directly uphill from Pacific Avenue, which defies reality.

The 6th Avenue extension performed very well in all evaluation metrics despite not serving TCC. Why 19th Street is provided that connection but omitted for 6th Avenue is unclear. Perhaps the intent was to create a singular railway line and avoid a multi-point operation. However, a potential ST4 expansion of the T Line to Tacoma Mall now complicates this scenario. 6th Avenue better accommodates multiple prospective railway expansions than 19th Street.

In this State-mandated period of urban visioning, where is the City of Tacoma’s analysis of this project as it relates to the Comprehensive Plan? Only on this blog will you find a review of the railway’s history, viable corridors, population data, bus network impacts, prospective new railway services, and visionary linkages between a productive T Line system and Tacoma’s most dynamic centers and corridors. This is not how it should be. Instead of the work of an individual, Tacoma itself should have civic aspirations for this momentous project. It should have ideas of how the railway might support the Missing Middle objectives of Home in Tacoma. If not, the City should be using this time to generate those ideas.

It is not too early to conduct valuable conceptual planning. Already, the design of major capital projects are overlapping with the scope of the TCC railway, including the Puyallup Avenue Complete Streets project and the Tacoma Dome Link Extension. Regarding policy, Tacoma Dome Link was also approved by ST3 in 2016 and it has received substantial resources to guide its development, to include an entire advisory group. Such attention has not been afforded to the TCC project despite its potential to have an enormous influence on local urban development. Perhaps the City has no position to take on this once-in-a-century transportation project located entirely within its boundary. Passively accepting railways in any form is certainly a strategy, one now familiar to Tacoma. That is why it is getting a $5 billion light railway that won’t actually connect its center to the airport and Seattle—unlike every other regional metropolitan city. Passivity is an avoidance of thoughtful decision-making. It is also a shirking of leadership by officials who should be strategizing about how to maximize the benefit of a $500 million investment funneled directly into Tacoma’s neighborhoods. If the City does not wish to engage on these things, it will cede the ground to others who will. 

The TCC project is funded and coming our way. There is an alignment decision to make. Will Tacoma build a railway along the best available route for such urban transit, which is 6th Avenue and Mildred Street? Or will it snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and build it on the 19th Street Auto Priority Corridor next to the manicured grasses of the Allenmore Golf Course? Time will tell, but government inertia presently favors 19th.

First published in 2015, the Future Vision of the City of Tacoma Transportation Plan identifies 19th Street as an Auto Priority Corridor, further evidence that the street was never programmed as the City’s preferred T Line corridor. 19th Street is highlighted in yellow. 12th Street is also listed, whereas 6th Avenue is not for obvious (pedestrian-oriented) reasons.

In order to plan a viable T Line railway, the 6th Avenue option must be included in Tacoma’s 2024 Comprehensive Plan update. The public will apparently need to make its voice heard to secure this addition. There otherwise may be limited staff interest to consider alternatives. Project specifics are not needed at this time, but the alignment must be identified by the plan as an equal—or superior!—to 19th Street for the TCC project. At a minimum, this pumps the brakes and makes space for a responsible transit corridor analysis. Perhaps with more understanding of its limited benefit and real complications, the 19th Street corridor will not be so darn likely after all.

* * * * * * * * * *