The Seattle Times recently reported that the Board selected 5 candidates for consideration from 60 applicants. After Julie Timm left, Goran Sparrman stepped in as Interim CEO, but he plans to retire on May 15th. A year ago, Sound Transit hired Terri Mestas to lead its construction projects. What would be expected from the next CEO?
Now that Sound Transit is both building new lines and operating a sizeable rail and bus network, it needs to focus a lot more on operational aspects such as maintenance, security, reliability, and communicating effectively with the public when there are problems. Recently there have been several occasions where riders felt left out.
Due to the pandemic, some of the assumptions which led to the ST3 plans may need to be adjusted. Now that a new rhythm with some work-from-home has been established, new traffic patterns have emerged. While a lot of jobs used to be concentrated downtown, activities have spread across Seattle and even to the Eastside. New technology such as automated trains, electric buses, people movers, and urban gondola lifts are becoming mainstream. While the ST3 measure provides a solid income stream, construction costs have escalated, Sound Transit’s ability to raise funds is limited by its debt ceiling, and the new federal government has indicated that it may limit spending for transit projects. Sound Transit may need to rethink how to serve our region best and not just blindly execute the ideas it put in front of voters a decade ago. I feel that it will be important to find a very experienced transit expert who has led another transit organization with similar challenges.
Sound Transit did not disclose the applicants though it mentioned that Dow Constantine is one of them. While as a King County Executive he is in charge of King County Metro and has been Sound Transit Board president, he has not been directly responsible for Sound Transit’s operations. Seattle Subway also reminded the Sound Transit Executive Board about their concern, which we share, that Dow’s election may constitute a conflict of interest as he had assigned all the King County board members who now select the CEO.
While some applicants may not want to disclose that they applied for the Sound Transit position, we would hope the Board would find a way to engage the public in the discussion about what their priorities are and who gets considered for this pivotal role.
It’s interesting that Dow’s name was leaked, and only his name was leaked. I suspect that is a bad sign for him.
Supposedly the other 4 candidates are all solid. And more technically oriented. Which is what the agency needs.
Expect the drip, drip, drip of news to continue. I suspect we will hear more soon.
Dow announced he is recusing himself from deliberations because of his candidacy, which is how we know he’s running for the position. Not a leak.
Dow announced his recusal after word leaked out. It’s a purely defensive move on his part.
That’s not how the Seattle Times or the Urbanist reported the events, but if that’s true, then that’s an even more significant breach of ethics. Dow Constantine should have announced his recusal from the CEO selection process before submitting his application to the position.
@Nathan Dickey,
There is no legal or ethical requirement to “announce” a recusal. There is only an ethical requirement to recuse yourself.
We don’t know when Dow actually recused himself, we only know when he announced his recusal.
But Dow is an ethical guy. I’m sure he did everything appropriately here. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.
There is certainly an ethical expectation for transparency with these processes.
It is understandable for the outside applicants to maintain confidentiality, but could you imagine if it came out that one of the applicants had somehow influenced the careers of a majority of the Sound Transit Board of Directors? The same standard of ethics applies to Constantine. It is not excusable for him to hide his interest in the position when he personally selected or re-affirmed 10 of the 18 members of the Sound Transit Board who will decide whether or not to hire him.
Don’t be naïve, Nathan. It was leaked. Dow’s response that he recused himself is a useful tactic to conceal that fact and make it look like he’s doing the right thing. I’ve heard through the grapevine that he was ;lobbying for a direct appointment in order to forego a formal selection process. To it’s credit the board said no. Again, rumors…
@Nathan,
New to politics? It can be a brutal sport.
But I know nothing about any unethical behavior by any of the parties involved. This is all just politics.
But my big question about all this has nothing to do directly with the ST CEO position. I’m beginning to wonder if some of this isn’t just a distraction from the upcoming KC Exec race and the Dems’ efforts to ensure Balducci moves into that position.
For the Democratic Party, the KC Exec position is much more important than who runs ST.
And why did Harrell’s 1996 arrest finally get leaked? After all these years? Really? How does that fit into the puzzle of Democratic musical chairs?
I don’t think it’s naive to hold politicians and public agencies to a basic ethical standard. Of course, this ethical standard is violated all the time, but that doesn’t mean the public should just take it on the chin.
Beyond the ethical issues, there are many reasons why Dow Constantine should not be Sound Transit CEO. The CEO needs to be someone whose professional experience has built a deep understanding of the technical complexities of running a large transit agency with multiple modes of service and an enormous, 30-year capital program. The CEO need to be someone who can push back on the political priorities of an 18-member Board built of electeds who only meet to direct the agency for a few hours a month at best because they’re busy fulfilling their primary duties. The CEO needs to be able to make decisions on how to implement the policies and expectations set by the Board without bias toward any sort of individual “legacy” projects.
Dow Constantine fulfills none of these.
Dow oversaw a transit agency that wasted a lot of money on unproductive bus service, could not keep its elevators running, and had too much violence on board. Did I miss anything, Lazarus?
So Dow shouldn’t have applied? The agency should have instantly rejected the application?
Any reasonable screening process, which most all public agencies have, would have screened him out as unqualified.
He is a career politician. He has a JD, and a masters in planning, but he has only barely utilized the former, and never had any sort of planning experience at all, as far as I’m aware.
To be clear, urban planning, not transportation planning. Transportation planning doesn’t really exist in the US anyway, to be honest. More car-throughput maximization.
He was an eagle scout, according to his wiki, so there is that.
Or course not. Anyone can apply. But, it could easily be argued he does not meet minimum qualifications.
>> He was an eagle scout, according to his wiki, so there is that.
Ha!
Have you forgotten that Rogoff was hired for his administrative experience at the FTA, thus presumably able to get more grants? Timm had some operations experience but was from the administrative rather than the engineering side. So each time the board changes what it’s primarily looking for. So far none of its criteria has been operations-first or engineering-first, much as that would be valuable. This time the board is probably looking for something else, but hasn’t told us what.
The Urbanist wrote yesterday:
And I wholeheartedly agree. It’s ridiculous that Dow’s candidacy has gotten this far. He would never be considered for CEO of any other transit agency. His only advantage at Sound Transit is political, and we all know the last thing ST needs is more politically-motivated decisions instead of decisions made to deliver the highest-quality transit service to the most riders possible with the projects approved by ballot measures.
It appears to me to also have the appearance of conflict of interest on several fronts. It’s more than just choosing Board members.
Consider how many campaign donations Dow has received from ST contractors for example. Who is to say that he won’t reward companies who have donated to past campaigns?
There are so many things wrong with a career politician like Dow Constantine being considered to be head an agency overseeing one of the largest transit capital project portfolios in the nation.
I also think there are some latent ethical issues with Goran Sparrman’s appointment as Interim CEO given his direct connections to HNTB (One of ST’s major engineering consultants), but they’re somewhat mitigated by his interim CEO status.
Ethically, I see nothing wrong with Constantine applying for the job, so long as the hiring criteria were developed without his involvement.
If he gets a golden parachute from one of the firms that make/made lots of money off of ST contracts, I would have a problem with that. Same for Sparrman.
Hiring a certain previous CEO who helped steer money to ST seemed kinda golden-parachutey.
I think Constantine’s presence in the CEO position would be a huge distraction at the FTA under the DOGE regime. It might also be a huge distraction at the Legislature.
If he has to step down early from the KC Executive position, that could mess with the open-seat race, allowing the county council to pick an incumbent. I was really annoyed when my previous county council member was chosen for me by the county council.
Most of all, Constantine’s presence as CEO would be a lighting rod for criticism of ST3, from the public at large. The CEO ought not become the perpetual news story.
Sparrman was also a longtime public agency administrator and an engineer bound by a code of ethics — and not an elected politician.
Do we know if Sparrman might be one of the candidates for the permanent position?
It’s been reported that he’s officially retiring from his career at the end of his interim appointment in May, hence the more-energetic search for a real replacement.
I agree Nathan. It would be a terrible choice for so many reasons. We need someone from outside to take a look at the situation here.
Why the heck won’t ST hire someone who knows how to literally “run a railroad”?
It’s silly to keep hiring CEOs who don’t have enough experience and skills to know what to do with typical daily operational problems. Sure ST has a big budget for expansion, but the majority of its 2050 Link system stations and the majority of its track will be serving riders (and ST’s own projections also showing how much little additional ridership will happening due to future expansion) in just another 18 months. That means that people will be affected and will speak up when service is disrupted as we as lose confidence in the system.
Service disruptions today seem to be treated more like a PR problem. It’s not first treated as a failure to maintaining its promised service which frustrates its riders.
Let’s take a basic recent situation: how to handle replacing station tiles when they are broken. Does Link have to have reduced service or reduced hours or can it be done overnight? I was amazed by last year that the Board (publicly) accepted a two-week service reduction several times with single tracking for a task that appeared to be done with only with single shifts during the day. Systems lose riders with these kinds of long service reductions.
Or let’s take the miscalculation on the number of Link vehicles needed by 2027. ST underestimated its vehicle needs and that didn’t float to systems problem until the past two years. A seasoned CEO would have seen the problem years earlier.
Or let’s take the decision to be skimpy on providing reliable escalators and elevators, or decisions to build side platforms. These problems will only get more frequent as equipment ages. No ST CEO seem to understand vertical device reliability solutions; and instead allowed a consultant to recommend removal of some escalators instead!
Or let’s take the East Link construction mistakes that became apparent just 15 months from the planned intended opening date — yet the revised schedule was another 30 months of delay. A seasoned CEO would have not waited so long and would have pushed staff and contractors to address the problem much earlier than ST did.
ST needs to face its declining level of support due to these daily operational issues. That comes with having a CEO that knows the solutions to different problems because they’ve resolved them before.
There are plenty of multi-line rail systems in the US with big stations that have offered daily service for decades. There are candidates that are seasoned. And Dow is not one of them.
As a rider I beg ST to quit thinking of itself as a construction company that needs a PR CEO and more as daily public service, and to hire the next CEO to oversee the daily problems that they’ve done rather poorly on addressing in recent years.
@Al S,
“Why the heck won’t ST hire someone who knows how to literally “run a railroad”?”
That was supposedly the rationale behind the Timm hire, but that didn’t exactly work out all that well.
But the best thing ST can do to improve operations is to bring all their critical O&M staff in under the ST umbrella. Having most of your key staff belong to a different organization, and report up through a different organizational structure, is an organizational abomination.
ST would run much more efficiently if all their employees were actually ST employees.
Let’s get it done!
I agree that ST should no longer look to other agencies to operate its system. That should have been in the works since 2008 after ST2 passed. At that point, ST knew that they would someday have over 150K riders on Link alone — and that it would be the second highest ridership transit operator in the state.
Since Dow was central to that approach after 2008, it to me further disqualifies him by exposing another fundamental skill weakness — failure to see that ST should hire and manage its own operations staff. And it appears to me that Dow today still believes in this approach to running Link.
Ms. Timm was hardly a “how to run a railroad” hire. She oversaw Richmond Virginia’s transit system, which is not nothing, for sure, but it has no rail, a single, fairly short BRT line, and a small express service to and from Petersburg. It’s basically “POBS” all around.
She certainly had an openness to listen that was refreshing, but the job was, sadly I think, a bit over her skillset.
@Al S,
“ I agree that ST should no longer look to other agencies to operate its system. That should have been in the works since 2008 after ST2 passed.”
It was actually a Ron Sims decision that he made at the inception of ST. Sims basically caved to the union and to Metro and agreed to have ST be run and operated by Metro employees. It was a bad decision, but once made it is hard to reverse. And Dow had nothing to do with it.
But those are the old days. ST is now the largest operator of rail transit in the entire state. The largest operator of rail transit in the entire Pacific Northwest actually. It’s past due that they have their own dedicated staff, because the current situation is very inefficient.
Time to get er done….
@ Tom:
Her LinkedIn profile shows time in both Richmond and before that Nashville and before that Norfolk. She never stated at these prior places more than 4 years.
And note too that Nashville voted down light rail 2-to-1 during her time there. I don’t blame her for that — but I remember ST touting that experience as a good thing at the time.
@ Lazarus:
I think it made sense at the start of ST to use staff from elsewhere. It started out as an express bus system with Amtrak-run Sounder service after that.
But part of the 2008 vote should have included a phasing out of contracting with the other local agencies for service. That was the point when ST was set up to eventually get the keys to the DSTT and the time when the Link extensions showed a huge forecasted surge in riders.
Ideally, Link itself should have never been been operated by Metro. But with the opening of U-Link in 2016 the transition should have been well underway.
Regardless, it’s been 16 years since that vote.
ST should hire and manage its own operations staff.
It isn’t clear to me that it would make any difference. Most of the big problems with ST have to do with planning. The second biggest set of problems have to do with (third party) contractors (for building and maintaining the system). It is quite reasonable for the local bus agency to operate the buses. Light rail operations are essentially run by ST even if they are technically part of Metro. At worst you have another level of bureaucracy but one that historically has a very good record.
What would have made the most sense is to just have Metro design and run mass transit while ST would be a separate agency (maybe operated by the state) focused on inter-county bus service and commuter rail. This means that ST would have been much smaller and most likely would have contracted with the local agencies to run those buses (and Amtrak to run the trains). Too late now.
If anything ST should stop trying so hard to differentiate itself from the other agencies. I get it — they are loaded, the other agencies are broke. But even for something like bus routes they have their own planners, their own livery, their own bus depots. Does that actually save money? I don’t think so. ST should be better integrated with the various transit agencies (especially Metro, the biggest one in the state) not less.
Politically, it would have made no sense to tick off the union, have it come out against the bond package, and then lose the vote.
I’m still agnostic whether it is better to allow operators to go back and forth between the light rail and buses, or to have those be two completely separate workforces.
Expecting the light rail to be operated by non-represented employees is a political non-starter.
Having operators at all in the lead cabin is the first line of security for the passengers. Eschewing the value of having them there is DOGE-think.
“That was supposedly the rationale behind the Timm hire, but that didn’t exactly work out all that well.”
Timm’s resume was remarkably light when it comes to daily transit management of a rail system. A few years of running the Virginia Beach/ Norfolk light rail (a low volume surface running line with under 3K daily riders) is not the same as 5-10 years minimum of running a busier multi-line light rail system like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, San Diego, Sacramento or St Louis. And many years managing high demand heavy rail systems would also have been more relevant.
Al S.
Was Julie Timm actually qualified to run Sound Transit? She had zero experience with light rail at her hiring date, correct? She also bailed on the Sound Transit circus 16 months in. Why?
There is a small select group of people in the world qualified to run Sound Transit. Not one of them will take the job. Not that the job will even be offered to a qualified candidate, it won’t be. But even it was, anybody smart enough to run Sound Transit is also, well, smart enough to not take the job.
Well written, Al. The issues you outlined start at the top.
I don’t really see a new ceo improving the operational indifference. It seems baked into the culture at this point.
Questions that need answering about the future of Sound Transit.
What happens when the Federal money is gone?
Has Sound Transit ever had qualified leadership? Was Julie Timm qualified?
Is Dow Constantine now the head of Sound Transit?
Is the current CEO search just a dog and pony show?
Is there any questions about the second tunnel project morphing into an “urban renewal” project with both the City and County selling worn out office buildings to Sound Transit at highly inflated prices?
If the current Sound Transit board rubber stamps Constantine into the CEO, does anybody doubt he would be a position to grant them political favors in the future?
Does anybody think the ST board gives a crap about what Seattle Subway or the Urbanist write about Sound Transit?
Does anybody think the general public cares about any of this?
I’m interested the gang’s answers to this questionnaire …….
leading questions go nowhere.
Nathan Dickey,
Leading questions?
All those questions demand an answer. So what’s your answer?
@tacommee you can just offer your own statement or opinion lol. We’re not ask jeeves
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_question
Nathan Dickey and WL,
It’s nothing personal, OK? I laid out how it’s going down. If you have some sort of rebuttal, bring it on. But you heard it here first kids, Dow is the next Sound Transit CEO. Over cocktails, Balducci promised Dow her vote for his support in her running for King County executive. Done deal.
Dow isn’t stupid. He lined up the votes waaaay before he ever put his hat in the ring. I mean, who wouldn’t? If the rest of the board said “Hell no!” in private conversations, he would have ran for K.C executive again.
Jesus, can’t anybody over at The Urbanist smell political horseshit?
You laid out a series of rhetorical questions while pretending it’s genuine inquiry, and still have the gall to expect a genuine response. Incredible.
> can’t anybody over at The Urbanist smell political horseshit?
Did you even read their article?
tacomee, how about saying “I think this”, “I believe this” rather than casting it as rhetorical questions and indirect statements?
“Was Julie Timm actually qualified to run Sound Transit?”
She’s run other transit agencies before, so yes.
“She had zero experience with light rail at her hiring date, correct?”
The previous agency she worked for had light rail (The Tide in Norfolk, VA), so she has experience and seemed willing to
“She also bailed on the Sound Transit circus 16 months in. Why?”
She left because for personal family reasons. Her family is across the country back on the East Coast, so dealing with a family issue is difficult when you don’t live in the same time zone. From what she said, she likely would’ve stayed had the personal family situation not come up. Stuff happens, unfortunately and she left on good terms from the sound of it.
“There is a small select group of people in the world qualified to run Sound Transit. Not one of them will take the job. Not that the job will even be offered to a qualified candidate, it won’t be. ”
You’re making a hasty generalization fallacy here.
“But even it was, anybody smart enough to run Sound Transit is also, well, smart enough to not take the job.”
Another hasty generalization fallacy.
I remembered “Norfolk” and “The Tide”, too, but the ST page about her appointment says “Greater Richmond Transit Company”. Was she at Norfolk before Richmond?
Timm got a $375,000 severance package (!) when she left the job after 16 months. Is it typical to get a severance package, particularly one of that magnitude, when voluntarily leaving a job for “family reasons” after a little more than a year?
It was a ridiculous “bonus” payout for such a short tenure.
It suggests to me that they wanted her gone. I wonder what dirt she had on certain Board members.
“It suggests to me that they wanted her gone. I wonder what dirt she had on certain Board members.”
I’d recommend not getting conspiratorial here, the early termination severance pay was probably part of her employment contract with ST (which is standard practice for higher level positions in the mid to high six figures for a variety of practical HR reasons). She likely left for the reasons stated above and not because of personal drama behind the scenes. Taking care of a ailing family member cross country is very difficult (my dad did it with his own mom who lived in Florida) and can be stressful when you’re working any kind of job. She also mentioned that the winters here were getting to her as well, which tbh I totally get as well. Our winters suck if you aren’t used to them.
Two reasons I didn’t move to Chicago or Canada were, one, the hot/cold extremes and higher humidity in Chicago, and two, because I knew I’d eventually have to help my elderly disabled relative more and I didn’t want to do it long-distance.
Zach,
Severance packages are usually for when an employee is let go. They usually aren’t for when an employee quits.
In the end, people are honestly splitting hairs why and how she left. I get some people on here want to believe that ST board pushed her out or something like that. But realistically, people often leave positions for fairly boring reasons. I’ve known plenty of people who left positions because they felt ir was time to move onto something else with no drama behind the scenes or something. They did the work they needed to do, felt satisfied with the work they did, and walk out into the sunset onto the next job.
I spent the last few years taking care of aging, ailing parents, and the stress was miserable, even with my nurse sister flying up here from Hawaii every month to help out. Worse, both Mom and Dad died last year.
From that experience, I will never doubt someone when they use “family reasons” for stepping away from something. I know all too well that burden.
I think Claudia Balducci does. Roger Millar certainly did.
WSDOT under Millar was not stupid and “in the tank” for cars. Let’s hope that Ms. Meredith follows suit.
Is Balducci running for King County executive? Maybe that’s just a rumor? If Dow takes over as ST boss…. he’s certainly in a good position to help ST board members out politically. This is the reason he shouldn’t be running for CEO….
And Dow aint running to lose. He’s have a pretty damn good idea if he has the votes to win before he hatched his Sound Transit CEO escape plan. That alone tells other more qualified candidates not to even try.
Millar is a very smart guy… He might be a good candidate actually!… and that’s why I wouldn’t trust him. Opposing Dow Constantine? Maybe in private… but that stage of the game is past. As a guy who’s fallowed politics in Greater Seattle for 40 years… it smells like a closed door done deal to me.
> Is Balducci running for King County executive? Maybe that’s just a rumor?
Uhh it was in publicly announced.
“Three current King County officials, Claudia Balducci, Girmay Zahilay and John Wilson, announced campaigns to replace Dow Constantine ”
https://www.king5.com/article/news/politics/king-county-executive-candidates/281-52a57ec5-5ce4-4d3c-b405-f80e07352a22
I’ve never even met Claudia Balducci, but I am wildly enthusiastic about her campaign for KC Exec. She and Roger Millar have been by far the most creative members of the ST board. She is pretty much to credit for catalyzing the East Link Starter Line (ELSL) which I view as a big success. Her approach to it was not as a cheerleader but as an effective and open-minded leader and that is what I would expect from her as executive. I’ve listened to her speak about these issues as they were being evaluated and I am impressed by her thinking and the way she communicates. She has more of a rider’s perspective than anyone else I’ve ever heard on the board.
In contrast, the prospect of Dow Constantine as ST CEO, while he seems like a nice person and a fine public servant overall, fills me with dread. His vision to depart so greatly from what we voted on in favor of something that splits up the transit hub we spent all these years building, while costs skyrocket, seems misguided, as does his dictatorial approach when it comes to his ideas about that. The West Seattle Link debacle in the making is sort of partially his fault.
We will desperately need strong, creative, collaborative, effective leadership to get us out of the hole on ST3 and my instinct is Claudia Balducci is a great choice for transit. For ST CEO, please, someone other than Dow.
Jonathan Dubman,
I agree with your post 100%
The problem is, and always will be, you can never trust politicians to do the right thing. Claudia Balducci needs Dow to win an election. Dow needs Claudia to get his plum job running Sound Transit… These two have had lots of private conversations about this……
“I’ve never even met Claudia Balducci, but I am wildly enthusiastic about her campaign for KC Exec.”
I’ve followed Balducci since she was in the Bellevue city council and Bellevue’s mayor. My family is her constituent, and I would be too if I still lived where I grew up. We all think she’s one of the best local politicians around: well informed and clear thinking. So I’d vote for her for county executive or governor, and she and Millar are the two best voices on the ST board. She has a bit of a suburban mindset, but she has at least some sense of transit passengers’ needs, and how an area the size of the Eastside or King County needs a robust regional+local transit network.
Mike, yeah, I know people who work in Bellevue who’ve spoken highly of Balducci and the work she has done in Bellevue as Mayor and County Council Rep. Said folks are actually excited for when East Link is fully complete for the business it’ll bring to Bellevue and being able to ride it themselves.
As CEO, Dow would have no business endorsing or raising money for candidates. If you want him doing that kind of work, then you can’t really cheer on his CEO application.
I’m open-minded to Council Member Zahilay being promoted to County Executive, with his private sector leadership experience, and quite aware that the county runs more than just a transit system.
But I still hope we get to have an open contest for County Executive, without an incumbent seeking retention. We had such a contest when Dow was first elected, easily trouncing the then county council member who wanted to open up the transit lanes on 15th Ave W to SOVs.
To me the issue is who would be the best county executive, not whether they’re currently on the council or come from the private sector. I praised Balducci because I think she’d be good, not because of her current position. I don’t know much about her rivals yet so I can’t say whether they might have a chance for my vote.
Jonathan Dubman: it is true that Balducci is the best ST boardmember. But she joined Constantine in championing ST3 and it is a disaster.
Throwing this out to the horde, who do you want to become CEO of Sound Transit?
I want someone who has managed many service disruptions on a well-used multi-line rail system for at least 5 years. It would be good if they were a deputy assigned for rail operations and want to advance their career by bringing a CEO. I don’t have a name because I don’t live in a place where that’s happening.
The next CEO needs to be skilled at leading the agency through these day-to-day problems as their primary qualification. The big expansion decisions are political and get years of public discourse and Board feedback so the role of the CEO is not as authoritative. But when things go wrong, I think that the CEO needs to have direct crisis management and other service disruption skills based on training and experiences gained elsewhere.
To illustrate, let’s use some examples from other modes: A highway bridge collapse or a plane crash. A CEO needs to jump into action to manage those situations — and not be so concerned about generating Board consensus.
We don’t need a consensus builder. We instead need someone who can strongly manage through all types of service disruptions so that the Board doesn’t end up with a black eye over having so many of them. There are multiple planned and unplanned disruptions every month with both trains and vertical devices.
I’d poach either Stephanie Wiggins or Sharon Gookin from LA Metro. But it can be hard to convince career Californians to stick around through the Long Dark of Seattle. Both worked with Terri Mestas on the LAX People Mover, and are familiar with a long-term massive capital program in the form of Measure M.
It’s hard to think of a better crucible for a transit CEO worth $675k.
The agency doesn’t need a consummate, parochial politician that Dow represents, but rather some fresh thinking with experiences outside of the public sector and even this region. If they find and hire such a person, they might question the cost escalation of the extension to West Seattle, which so happens to be where Dow is from. They might also question the enormous cost per rider of the Sounder North extension and repurpose those dollars to extending Link on a faster timetable in some or all of the extensions.