Pact Signed for Airport, Port and Railraod Swap

Feb. 28, 2007
Three-way deal involving Boeing Field now valued at $169 million.

King County and the Port of Seattle now know the cost of the 33-mile trail and airport they want to swap: $169 million.

Executives of those jurisdictions and BNSF Railway signed a preliminary deal Monday under which the Port would buy the underused Renton-to-Snohomish rail line, then give it to the county in exchange for county-owned Boeing Field.

After buying the 40-mile corridor from the railroad for $103 million, the Port would give King County $66 million to remove some rail tracks and build a trail on the King County portion of the corridor. The corridor could also accommodate a high-capacity passenger-rail line sometime in the future, said one of the architects of the deal, County Executive Ron Sims.

Freight trains would continue to run between Woodinville and Snohomish.

It could take months to complete the three-way deal, which would require approval of the County Council and the Port Commission. "This starts the tough negotiations," said the Port's CEO, Mic Dinsmore, who welcomes his replacement, former Oakland port director Tay Yoshitani, on Thursday.

"It allows a region that cares deeply about competing in a global society to do things that have been unparalleled," Dinsmore said.

News of the agreement drew mixed reaction from local decision-makers concerned with mass transit, air traffic, urban sprawl and freight lines.

"I have a two-word response: Start over," said King County Councilman Larry Phillips. He predicted a Port takeover of the county airport south of downtown Seattle would eventually lead to commercial airliners flying in and out of the airport even though the Port fought Southwest Airlines' failed 2005 effort to move its operations from Sea-Tac Airport to Boeing Field, officially known as King County International Airport.

Two dozen members of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce executive board unanimously endorsed the land swap Friday. "We thought this was a textbook case of good-government coordination and out-of-the-box thinking to advance a lot of goals that are regional and Chamber goals," said attorney and board member Tayloe Washburn.

The Cascadia Center for Regional Development, affiliated with the free-market think-tank Discovery Institute, wrote to the Port Commission on Monday that tearing out BNSF's existing rails to make way for a hiking and biking trail "is a luxury we believe this region ... cannot afford" on the traffic-congested Eastside. It suggested putting "diesel multiple unit" trains on the existing track.

Port Commissioner Patricia Davis said the proposed deal "seems to be a truly favorable swap all the way around," while her colleague Alec Fisken said it "seems like an awful lot of taxpayer money to tear up a railroad."

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, who watched Sims, Dinsmore and BNSF CEO Matt Rose sign the tentative deal, praised them for their "great creativity" in keeping the rail corridor intact. "We're not just going to sit back and watch while part of an important corridor is sold off piecemeal," Murray said.

If King County and the Port hadn't come up with a proposal to buy the little-used Eastside rail line, Rose said, BNSF would have sold the corridor to developers and "you would have seen high-rise condos and expensive houses."

"Let's get 'er done now," Rose said after inking the preliminary deal.

A second agreement calls for projects intended to move more cargo by rail from Puget Sound ports to markets in the Midwest.

The county, the railroad and the Port agreed to support expansion of the Stampede Pass rail tunnel to handle higher-volume freight trains and to find a site for a large freight yard where cargo could be moved between trucks and trains. After a site is acquired, King County would sell a 13-acre Harbor Island property it owns to the Port.

If the region doesn't improve its capacity to move freight quickly, Seattle and Tacoma are at risk of losing much of their Pacific Rim trade to Canada, Rose said.

"This project is crucial to the economic vibrancy of our region," Sims said.

Al Runte of the pro-rail group All Aboard Washington called the plan "a colossal mistake. It's the dumbest idea this region has had."

Runte said he had walked the entire length of the proposed trail and found, "It's not a dilapidated rail line. It's a beautiful track."

Dinsmore said turning the 116-plus-year-old rail line into a trail is "the right thing. ... But we can never, ever, ever forget the fact that it's a rail system first and a trail system second."

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