Progress At Last?
Puget Sound Regional Council Pledges
Support For State Legislation To Plan
for Second Regional Airport

Meeting on Wednesday, December 8, the Executive Board of the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) called on the State government to take the lead role in planning for a second major airport to serve the Central Puget Sound.

The Board pledged its support for new State legislation to produce a State-wide plan for long-term air-transportation capacity. Sen. Karen Keiser (D., 33) introduced such legislation at the 2003 legislative session & intends to introduce similar legislation in the regular session that begins in January.

The Board's resolution recognizes the need to “supplement” Sea-Tac Airport & also recognizes that transportation plans for the next 25 years do not contemplate any additional runway “beyond the third runway”.

All of this is a rather bureaucratic way of saying, once again, that a second major airport is needed to serve the needs of the Central Puget Sound, and the State as a whole.

High-Speed Rail Enters the Picture

At the strong urging of Newcastle City Councilmember Sonny Putter (representing smaller cities in King County), the Board added language to the resolution to recognize the need for high-speed inter-regional “ground transportation” (rail). Mr Putter made the point, & Board members agreed, that to be successful a new major airport would need high-speed rail connections to the major population centers.

In the past, the PSRC has given lip service to the idea of a high-speed rail system on the route Eugene, Oregon, to Vancouver, B.C. However, there has been very little thought given to accomplishing such a system. The State Department of Transportation has a program for making incremental changes in existing rail service, which it calls high-speed rail. But the DOT does not contemplate true, European-style high-speed rail (110 m.p.h. and up). A DOT representative at the PSRC meeting said that the aim of the program is to relieve freeway congestion (though this is not the aim as stated in the official plan).

The Regional Commission on Airport Affairs and others have long proposed that the State develop a true high-speed rail system, competitive with air travel in terms of speed & convenience.

It is true that a good, modern rail system would certainly relieve pressure on I-5, as DOT hopes. More importantly switching even a few hundred regional trips per day from air to rail would relieve congestion at Sea-Tac (& at Portland International & the Vancouver airport).

High-speed rail links to one or more new airports should be considered as part of a region-wide system that would connect the major urban centers to one another. For the first time, the PSRC resolution raises this whole discussion to the State and multi-State/Provincial level, no longer treating the air-capacity / regional-travel issue as a local concern of the four counties in the PSRC.

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