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Out of a pool of about 90 applicants, Julie Tim was named the new CEO of Sound Transit last summer.

With all the exciting construction visible all up and down the I-5 corridor, it was a job that probably looked attractive on paper.

But it's also signing up to be the lightning rod for every problem that comes down the tracks.

As Western Washington tries to work its way out of a decades in the making hole when it comes to mass transit, Sound Transit CEO Julie Timm is next on Northwest.

Now.

The $54 billion Sound Transit three package was approved by voters in 2016, the most recent in a series of voter approved investments.

You can see the new stations and new construction.

And over the course of the past 25 years or so, a lot has been accomplished.

But budget shortfalls caused a so called realignment, meaning most projects have been delayed by anywhere from 2 to 10 years.

COVID was part of it throwing a monkey wrench into the 83 portion of Sound Transit's timeline and inflation is thrown another one into budget planning as yesterday's dollar only buys a portion of the materials and work it would have when it was approved.

Takoma is excited to extend the link light rail from the Dome District and Pacific Avenue up and around MLK Boulevard to 19th Street.

But as Northwest now contributor Steve Higgins tells us, like many other projects in the system, there have been snags that have neighbors wondering when it will all just end.

Folks in Hilltop have been waiting for this light rail extension for years, so transit originally planned to open this line in 2022.

Instead, neighbors and business owners have endured even more delays in construction.

We wanted to stay in Hilltop because it was cheap and it was centrally located and there's a community in need.

No structures.

Second Cycle Community Bicycle Shop has been a fixture in the Commons hilltop community since 2014 is now speaking.

What's up?

It's not just a business, Struthers says.

It's a nonprofit helping neighbors with affordable rides.

But getting around hasn't been easy lately.

It's been kind of a bit of a hassle, too, for everybody in the neighborhood to deal with the construction.

The Hilltop Tacoma Lake Extension adds six new stations and doubles the length of light rail service in the city that runs along Martin Luther King Jr. Way from South 19th to Division Avenue and all the way through the stadium district before connecting service to downtown Wake the first light post opening to the first quarter of 2023.

But during final testing, Sound Transit says it found issues with track geometry, pushing the new deadline into the unknown.

Are we paying again to have these redone or is this something that, you know, we messed up and we're going to cover the cost?

Neighbor Kelly-Anne of Hagan worries about parking and other issues, plus continued construction.

She says she feels left in the dark.

What are you going to do to make us better informed so that we are part of this process instead of getting surprises?

I didn't know if it was coming up or coming down.

Commuter Sheila Porter is new to Hilltop and looks forward to light rail expanding towards Tacoma Community College in the later years.

I'm definitely new to Tacoma and the whole area, so I'm hoping to, you know, find transportation that's going to get me work faster.

Just been a shifting landscape.

So it's been difficult to get a sense of like regularity over the last three years.

But first Hilltop has to come online, says Struthers.

He's overlooking the delays and believes that patience ends with rewards.

Hopefully, hopefully, we'll have a bit of a renaissance here in Hilltop and we'll see some growth and we'll see more people moving into the neighborhood and we will see businesses flourish.

Northwest now I'm Steve Keegan's So here comes a new CEO, Julie Timm, fresh from mass transit planning and administrative jobs at the Greater Richmond, Virginia Transit Company.

And before that, the development officer for the mass transit system in Nashville, Tennessee, which is also in the process of planning a huge expansion of public transportation to accommodate Middle Tennessee's explosive growth.

Julie, thanks so much for coming in Northwest now.

My first question for you.

Didn't anybody warn you about transportation planning when you were looking for a career?

Talk to you?

No, they didn't.

It was never on my radar.

Growing up, to be a transportation planner actually wasn't on my radar to be a planner or a leader in any way.

When I was growing up, I wanted to study the lions and I want to do the sharks.

I'm gonna be a biologist.

I got my degree in science.

I'm a biologist by education.

Well, you probably get the feeling of being chased by a lion here on this project, after all, I would tell you.

So I had the capability to confirm or deny.

But it is a challenging.

A little bit about your background and bio.

You you come out of the transportation industry.

Where have you been and what brought you here?

So originally before this, I was the CEO of Greater Richmond Transit Company, which is in Richmond, Virginia.

I was there for three years and I, I went to that job with a lot of aspiration for making the world a better place.

And then COVID hit.

So that was when I think transit CEOs across the country just hunkered down.

And how do we support our staff, how do we support our riders and how do we get through this pandemic, which was going to last for two weeks?

Right.

And with that experience, I learned a lot about equity.

I learned a lot about the needs of the essential workforce and really pivoted my direction as a leader to serve that market, that segment of our population that really needs transit and needs that connectivity.

I learned that we can put money into education and we can put money into health care and we can put money into all sorts of resources.

But when people don't actually have physical access to those things because they don't have a car and they don't have transit, they don't have the things, transit creates that bridge when upon coming here and taking this job.

Were you a little or in any way stunned at how big we are here in western Washington and yet how little we have when it comes to transportation infrastructure?

What was your internal dialog when you looked around the system and said, this is the year 2022?

I am astounded by the amount of transit we do have here.

Yes.

I've come from a smaller system because our transit systems in Atlanta, just so you know, I understand that there are some of the other cities.

You have the L.A. and you have the New York Metro and you have the Washington, D.C. You have those.

And they do have very robust transit.

The transit agencies have come from our bus operating companies, and they're smaller.

When I came here to see the amount of transit and interconnectivity of our transit systems stunned me, impressed me, inspired me.

Okay.

I'm surprised to hear that because I would think somebody out of the industry would come here and say, my gosh, this is the 12th largest market in the country.

I can't believe they don't have this wasn't done in the seventies.

You know, I can't believe we're not adding to a big system.

Forget about trying to get one up off the ground.

I've come from systems where they have been trying to get these systems going and have not been able to.

The impressiveness of this system is that there have been three ballot measures.

They all passed and we are making an impressive growth of that system today and going on for the next couple of decades.

It is the largest system growth in the country.

That's inspiring.

So here's a philosophical or I guess the gotcha on that is are we building this big, robust system just in time for remote work?

Gestion was down 38%.

You know, it's the numbers are down and I it's neat.

I look at the pictures of sound transit, I think, gosh, that'll be so cool someday.

But then I'm saying to myself, but nobody's going to be doing this.

They're going to be working at home.

Oh, I disagree.

Okay.

I do disagree.

I believe that there will be a call back to work.

Now, it might not look like what it was five years ago.

It might not be five days a week, 12 hours a day in the office.

There are always going to be need.

People need to go to work.

There are nurses, there are paralegals, there are janitors, there are store clerks, there are cooks and restaurants and waiters.

There are people who will always have to go to work.

They can't do that job from home.

And as long as that's there, there will be a need for transportation to get there.

And back.

I also do believe that there will be a callback now, again, not five days a week, but there will be a call back to work.

And this region is growing.

So even if we don't get back to where we were immediately by the very fact that this nature, this region is growing, that return will come.

It just might come a little bit slower.

The need for transit is as strong as it's ever been, if not stronger.

And it's not the peak hour, it's the middle, the evening and the weekend.

I don't speak for everybody, of course, but I think there's been a broad sense here in western Washington that sound transit to some degree need to get back on track, to use an analogy.

Did you sense that coming in and what what are your impressions against that sense that you may or may not have had now that you've spent some time here?

I absolutely think that there is room for improvement with sound transit.

There is inspirational work being done.

I need to start with that.

There's so much that we do every day that goes unnoticed.

If you look at the infrastructure we're building, so much of it is impressive, magnificent, inspiring.

I use those words over and over again because I truly, sincerely believe them.

At the same time, what is also true is that we do need to pivot some.

It's not all about the construction.

It's also about the operations of the service.

We have 26 miles of light rail.

Pretty soon we'll have over 60 miles as we do these openings over the next couple of years.

46 miles of BRT, 83, we'll have 116 miles.

We have to make sure that what we are building, we can operate sustainably.

We have some improvements to do there.

Fairbanks recovery always comes up when you're talking about that expanded system.

Talk a little bit about that.

Critics saying we're not recovering anything close to what we're going to need to at the Fairbanks subsidies.

You have this discussion all the time with one of the of the millions of transportation experts that here reside in this market, just so you know, many of them.

Right.

Blogs.

So I really fed that conversation.

Talk a little bit about the revenue piece and the sustainability piece of this financially.

The revenue piece with fares is actually a national conversation.

The transit industry, whether or not we need to have a higher fare box recovery, what's the fare share that riders should pay?

How much comes from the taxpayers?

Should it be free?

Should it be a service that is equitable and free for everyone?

And there is no such thing as a free ride?

That's why I always call it zero fares.

We did it in Richmond and it sustained there.

There's a revenue source to replace it.

It's more complex here.

There are in the system that we have, our fare box is integrated with King County Metro, with Pierce Transit, with community Transit, with START with the ferries.

It's not as simple as saying, well, what's your fare box recovery and how does that come back, especially when we're looking at Orca Lyft, which is the $1 fare for low income.

We're looking at zero fares for anyone under 18.

We're looking at discount rates for seniors.

There's a lot there that we're leaning into.

When we look at the equity affairs before we had that conversation about what should our fare box recovery be, the first we need to figure out is how do we make sure that we're equal, equitable and sustainable in the service we provide?

And then how are we fiscally responsible?

And what part do fares play in that?

It's a larger conversation after the bonding and the big that the voter approved pieces worked through the system.

And that happens.

Do you think that there's another source of revenue that's going to have to come along for sustainability?

Some in some of the out years is what are the what are your charts tell you?

There's some beauty and some elegance, a lot of beauty and elegance in the referendums, the ballot measures that were passed, and that they create what some in the industry call the Holy Grail for transit.

It's a sustainable, long standing source of revenue to maintain the operations of the system.

Regions across the country struggle with that.

I believe that the ballot measures here help protect against that so that we can have sustainable.

So they hold up in your projections.

When you look at inflation, you look at added costs and a lot of those things that they do with that Holy Grail exists.

They do help.

However, that doesn't mean that we need to take the pressure off of looking for new revenue sources, working with our business partners.

Looking at advertising marketing.

Transit oriented development.

Joint development.

There are other sources of revenue we should be leaning into to be more responsible for what the taxpayers provide and balance that.

Like I mentioned, you know, now that everybody in Western Washington is a transportation planner and expert, but there's also a piece of this in Seattle.

We're very married to process.

In fact, it's even got a nickname.

It's called the Seattle Process when it comes to dealing with with pressure groups and all the varied interests who want their piece built by Seattle first before these guys get theirs.

You've been right in the middle of some of that.

It seems like everybody wants everything except sometimes for a completed system of how how are you dealing with that?

Have you sensed have you sat in a room and sensed this a little bit internecine warfare that's starting to emerge between cities, counties, South Sound, Tacoma once their piece while federal aid once their piece and why Seattle needs theirs and Lynnwood needs theirs.

I mean, they're all legitimate.

And what do you mean?

We're not going to Everett until the year 2035 or whatever it is Now, is is the process getting in the way of that?

Can you deal with that?

Do you think we'll have peace in the Valley?

Yes.

The process is getting away with getting in the way of it.

And yes, I can deal with it because I believe in that process.

People want to be heard.

They want to be involved.

And we are making billion dollar generational investments.

We need to take the time for people to be heard.

We also need to understand that comes with a trade off.

It means there will be delays.

There will be differences in costs at the expense of making sure that we get it right now.

So, yes, it causes a problem.

Yes, it's a necessary problem because we need to make sure we get these right.

Yeah.

You know, two deliveries until the late 2030s.

Now it's been kicked out a little bit.

But the big ones that we're talking about here, West Seattle, the Ballard links that have had a lot of challenges with Seattle ites wanting those sooner rather than later.

While Snohomish and Pierce wait.

The weird thing about this, I think the good thing, the good news and the bad news, both are that it's a local regional project.

Does has.

Do you think overall that helps or hurts?

Are there too many hands in the pie or no?

The fact that it's got this regional piece to it is a strength.

How do you view it?

Yes, it is a challenge.

I truly believe that this is a regional system and it is something that will benefit us for generations.

However, there are very specific local needs that also need to be addressed, and that's why our board is made up of people from across the region with local interests so that they can represent those at the table while also moving towards that regional system.

So the answer is yes.

Both.

I want to talk to you a little bit about inflation.

Lynnwood is looking good.

It's it's in process and you know, on track.

To use that weird analogy, the feds put some money in the pot to counter inflation.

And I think it's it's hard for people to understand that the dollar that I voted to approve to buy a dollar's worth of tracker dollars worth of train.

Now I need a buck 50 for it so my track doesn't go as far.

Talk a little bit about the impact of inflation and.

Has there been some federal help power?

How bad is that?

How bad is that hurting the project?

We have a new CFO that will be hiring.

He's going to come in.

He's nationally known.

He was the CFO at after the American Public Transportation Association.

Name is John Henry.

I'm very excited.

He'll be here at the end of February.

Part of those questions will be his responsibility to really investigate and solve.

I am concerned that we need to relook at some of the finances and projections, how much it cost to operate.

The effects of inflation, the effects of fare box recovery, and what that means to our ability to deliver on the scope, schedule and budget that was at the ballot.

So there are some questions there.

I did talk publicly about that when I was in the interview process and after.

So I don't have an answer for that today.

We will have to look at that.

I think there are ways that we can recover some of that, but it is going to be one of those issues that we have and we talk about the transit industry that expenses grow faster than revenues and we need to find ways to fill those gaps.

We'll look for it.

Do you think some enthusiasm will have to be curbed?

Do you think some of our expectations about what how this is going to be are going to have to be adjusted a little bit as a result of that?

I do think that might be some discussions about level setting expectations.

I hope that we don't have to go there, but I am working with my team to look through strategies.

How do we resolve it?

How do we get back more on course with what was expected, what was planned, but with COVID, with concrete strikes, with a labor shortage, with the supply chain issues.

There's never going to ever be a time, I believe, that will completely get back to what it was three years ago.

Yeah, we have done some level setting.

We have a few more steps to get through.

It will be challenging hard conversations.

My commitment is to transparency in those conversations.

What would you say to people who tend to criticize the system for, you know, there's a bumper sticker that I'll just paraphrase that says stuff happens.

But I mean, you've had slipping soil bad concrete in some spots covered shortages.

You mentioned labor, labor issues.

Is it foolish to expect just beautiful, smooth sailing in a project this large and ambitious with so many stakeholders and so many cooks in the kitchen?

I sometimes wonder what people's expectations are when it comes to criticizing the system so harshly when really kind of things happen.

Have you experienced that?

And when you're in a public meeting and people are, why can't you people do this right?

The summit should have been done right the first time.

Of course it should have been.

Yeah, but things happen.

What's your how do you explain that or what's your discussion?

My first is to acknowledge it that some of the things that have happened to the system and in the past were out of our control and some were not denying that just erodes our credibility.

So the first thing is to acknowledge that not everything that happened was perfect and there are lessons learned.

Now that happens on mega-projects, we're talking about billions and billions of dollars worth of infrastructure, and the majority of it is done perfectly.

So focusing in on what we did wrong or how the things that happened to us caused us challenge, we need to address those.

We need to acknowledge it.

When you do it transparently, learn the lessons so we can maintain the credibility of moving forward.

We just have to accept that there are going to be challenges, but we can recover from them.

On your list, what are what are some of the things that you're keeping an eye on?

Things some of the things that went sideways?

What are one or two that you're saying?

You know something?

I'm keeping an eye on this one.

So what I've learned since I've been here is that we put a lot of our resources on those highest risk areas, and we succeeded in delivering those.

But that meant that we didn't look at some of the areas that we thought were lower risk and we didn't pay as much attention maybe as we should have because they were low risk.

We can't afford to do that.

We have to keep our attention focused across everything.

So every every every mile is the same every moment, attention and perspective.

Yeah.

And I think that when you're looking at limited resources and you're going through COVID and people are staying home, there are a lot of challenges and choices that had to be made.

So I don't I don't want to second guess what was done, but I need to acknowledge that that was part of a contributing part to the issue and how can we prevent that from happening again?

What's on your radar right now about pieces that you really want to get completed, stations you really want to complete?

This line is is is a priority for me.

I know everybody wants to be the priority, but there has to be.

You're only one, only one brain.

What is kind of the thing that you're looking at right now?

What's important right now in the system?

I have very smart people, very intelligent people working on construction.

I need to focus on operations.

I'm giving a lot of attention to construction.

I'm on the construction sites and working with the teams.

But when we open that amount of light rail the next few years, we have to get our stations clean.

We have to have our vertical conveyances, our escalators and elevators.

We have to have them working.

We have to make sure that we're able to maintain our frequencies in light of slowing down for the safety of our system.

That's where I need to make sure that we really hit home in 2023.

That's where my focus is.

But actually I probably focus too much on everything as so my team members would think, cause it's 8 hours a day on ops and 8 hours day on construction.

One of the things I like that I've read you talking about in terms of your ops plan is route and fair simplification.

I just think that is crucial.

And I know you did it in another system and are going to bring that here.

Talk a little bit about why that helps everybody.

I think it's so important to access.

Talk a little bit about that.

So I have my orca card and I love it.

I use my orca card every day.

I use King County Metro.

I use community transit.

I use Pierce Transit.

I use light rail.

I use the train.

I don't have to think about it.

It's a benefit that I get from my employer and it's very easy to use.

I don't have to think about it, but because I get it from my employer, I don't have to think about it.

Right.

Anyone else who doesn't have that benefit and they have the card, they have to think about where they tap and how they tap, How much is it draining from their account?

If you need to hire a guy to figure it out, you do it very, very complex.

And there there is a way to simplify it.

There can be some tradeoffs and there can be some hard conversations about what that means, but it'll make it easier for people to to be able to make the choice to ride trains to the hospital or to get to school or to get food or to go to the ballpark.

Yeah.

And I think you can be a little more and get an idea and go as opposed to requiring an audit first or a higher education math degree.

Exactly.

You talked about the cleanliness of the stations.

And I know people are watching this conversation right now and yelling at the television, saying, what about crime and vandalism?

You know, we've spent billions on this thing and I'm not going to let my wife write on that or husband or whatever.

I'm not going to let my significant other ride on that dang thing at £110.

Talk a little bit about your the importance of safety.

Is that a priority of yours?

Can people expect on train safety?

What does that look like?

And also in the stations as well, where we've had a lot of video being spread virally, virally around Twitter of homeless people and and drug taking and everything else.

Address that, if you would, for the people yelling at the TV.

Absolutely.

The first thing I need for us all to recognize as a society and as a community that the elements of our society that we're struggling with are represented on transit.

Transit's not the problem.

I hate to call it a problem, but those elements that we struggle with, when you get on transit, you see them.

It's a representation of our entire society.

So we need to work in partnership with our cities and our counties to address these issues.

At the same time, we do have a responsibility for safety in our system.

We are going in the process right now, this month, very shortly, of hiring additional security contracts to be able to have a higher visibility on our stations.

We're looking at station attendants.

We're looking at partnerships to have people to assist with crisis management, additional fare ambassadors, even asking our own staff to write more, to have that physical presence, to give that sense of security, because sometimes the security is very real and sometimes it's a perception and we need to address both.

Having that person there to see that they're wearing that uniform, to give that sense of safety, encourage people to come back is something we can lean into very, very quickly while we work with our partners to address these other issues in our society.

There's a there's a vocal minority in this in this area that that, you know, let's be honest, isn't too into enforcement.

Is it too into accountability?

Isn't.

And and kind of has a very, I want to say, open minded, but just very permissive attitude toward misbehavior.

Where are you on that specifically if it comes to not just social issues, but criminality, threats, those kinds of things?

I think people need to hear.

Do you take that seriously?

Absolutely.

I mean, the culture at sound transit is safety first.

We want to have compassion.

We want to have empathy.

We want to meet people where there are.

But there comes a point where it crosses a line and we have to take action.

And there is no tolerance for that.

We need to get better about enforcing some of those rules and finding ways with our partners to do it again without it coming to force.

It's a challenge where transit experts, we're not security experts, so we need our partners to help us with this.

But we have to have a place where people feel safe and we have to have a place where people can recover when they're in crisis.

You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time.

But you can't please all of the people all of the time.

Abe Lincoln might come to mind, but poet John Lydgate words are perhaps the truest statement a person can ever make when it comes to transportation in Western Washington.

The bottom line, we wish Julie Timm and the Sound Transit Board the best of luck.

I hope this program got you thinking and talking to watch this program again or to share it with others.

Northwest now can be found on the web at kbtc dot org and be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter at Northwest.

Now a streamable podcast of this program is available under the northwest now tab at kbtc dot org and on Apple Podcasts by searching northwest now.

That is going to do it for this edition of Northwest.

Now until next time.

I'm Tom Layson thanks for watching.