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Recent Progress
WSDOT, BNSF Railway and Sound Transit have been working for some time on a preferred track design that works for all users of King Street Station. However, Sound Transit needs the improvements completed to fulfill their contractual commitments to BNSF and begin operating nine daily round trips between Tacoma and Seattle, which they have scheduled for January 2008.
To construct the “preferred” design, the unused I-90 on-ramp from 4th Ave needs to be removed and BNSF needs to purchase two properties. The ramp removal is scheduled to go to construction in July 2006. The ramp removal and property purchases are scheduled to be complete by November 2006, if the funds are available. WSDOT has only $3 million available in for this stage of the project, but the costs for this stage are anticipated to exceed $5 million. Once the ramp removal and property acquisition is completed, the track construction is estimated to take about 20 months, which would mean Sound Transit might not expand their service until at least July 2008 without a change in their agreement with BNSF.
The delay of the “Chehalis Jct. to Blakeslee Jct.” project, the deletion of the “Mukilteo Temporary Sounder Station” project and through adjustment to the budget from “Swift Customs Facility Capacity Improvements” project, $4 million in expenditure authority is available in the current 2005-2007 biennium. The department has proposed to advance $4 million for this project from the 2009-2011 biennium to make the total 2005-2007 biennium budget $7 million. This will allow completion of Pre-construction Engineering, Property Acquisition, and the start of construction in the current biennium.
These actions have been approved by the Office of Financial Management.
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