Have you been talking to my family?

There is undoubtedly political risk. The risk you fear is not unreasonable. A risk I think a lot about is that this becomes the CHS Rail of local transit and used nationally as an example for anti transit folks.

The thing about risk. It is everywhere. The key is to understand the risk, the likelihood it materializes, the impact if it does, and how to mitigate the risk. We have seen some of the 1st. But not much else.

I would argue that platform connections across all lines is a vastly superior rider experience than limited transfer points from stations that will require multi-minute walks between platforms.

And the “resilience” is much more limited than advertised.

I don’t think it’s a cut. I think it is a defer

There are lots of ways that Madrid is able to pull this off. And it isn’t labor cost.

I think one can do a deep dive into ST design and engineering standards / decisions and see that we could get more and better transit today.

Another ironic twist. A big reason costs are so high is we are building super deep stations (bad rider experience) and very few of them.

All so we don’t inconvenience drivers in the short term.

To me that is a scarcity mindset.

I would rather spend my time asking HOW everywhere else in the world can build transit for 1/2 to 1/3 the cost.

Do that.

And get way more transit.

@typewriteralley.bsky.social an engage board member might ask, how many of the DSTT resilience projects are baked into the state of good repair budget. My suspicion is at least some. So that may be a bit of a double count in the report from last week

The lack of rigor in the analysis of DSTT resilience and the 2nd tunnel is pretty stunning. The resilience report is almost entirely qualitative and to the extent there are number, they are descriptive statistics of the past not a projection into the future

I think your “why” is a part of my “how”. The point of “how” is to force the agency to offer solutions to the shortfall that going beyond cutting critical scope

If you want to get really provocative. Ask why there is no transit in the tunnel. Could run express in from Alaska Junction to Aurora and Harrison tomorrow

~15% of the overall shortfall and ~25% of the cap ex shortfall

Not the 10% somers mentioned.

Also. Based on a number from a staff that is clearly sandbagging an approach they don’t want to pursue