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Last week, Crosscut hosted its annual Courage Awards (Seattle Magazine was also a media sponsor) that recognize civic contributions by ordinary individuals who do extraordinary things. Each year, a lifetime recipient is one of the winners, and this year it was Joni Earl who led Sound Transit out of a budget morass and disorganization and shaped it into the transformative—and popular—regional transit system it was designed to be.

Whether you have been a light rail supporter from the beginning or not, it has won at the polls and will shortly be asking voters for the fund to take it to the next phase with Sound Transit 3, which will expand the system. Already underway, we’ll be getting rail from downtown to the University of Washington next year, then beyond to Northgate. The system is also going to be stretching across Lake Washington to Redmond, and south from Sea-Tac. Like it or not, we’re all in.

One of rail’s major impacts is how it transforms life on the ground. In Seattle, zones around light rail stations are going to be up-zoned for denser development. If you listen to family, friends and colleagues, you’ll likely hear that people are making housing decisions based on rail stops, giving a boost to areas like Beacon Hill and Columbia City. I know folks who have moved specifically because they want to be within a short walk of light rail, which often beats the bus commute. It’s not just a ride to the airport anymore.

On the Eastside, the entire Bel-Red corridor that links Bellevue east of I-90 with Redmond near 520 was re-planned specifically to accommodate light-rail and related growth, such as the ambitious urban business and residential Spring District and a new university graduate school made possible by a partnership of the University of Washington, Tsinghua University of Beijing (reputed to be the “MIT of China”) with major funding from Microsoft. The Seattle side is also feeling the effects. I’ve heard rumors of a quiet real estate boom in the Central Area’s Judkins Park neighborhood where developers are snapping up properties in anticipation of eventual proximity to the coming light rail station near I-90.

All this is happening by design, and if you doubt the power and resiliency of the impact of rail-related development, you only have to realize that many of Seattle’s business districts are a legacy of our original trolley and streetcar systems that took the sprawling city and knitted it into a whole, bringing once far-flung communities—Ballard, West Seattle, Columbia City—into the urban fold.

An article in Crosscut surveying Earl’s work at Sound Transit shared some of the philosophy she had in bringing Sound Transit back from the brink after the agency’s found itself mired in a financial and organizational crisis at the turn of the 2000s. “Optimism is not our friend,” she is reputed to have said, which became a slogan around the office. I had a chance to ask her about this, which seemed like the kind of hard-headed common sense Seattle needs more of when it comes to mega-projects that regularly bust budgets, blow deadlines, and suffer from unrealistic expectations from boosters. Earl, explaining the context, acknowledged that optimism can be a good thing, in doses, but that ultimately numbers don’t lie. You have to deal with reality, and no one is helped by failing to face it.

Sound Transit will have to remember that advice as it moves into the future (Earl retires next year), but it’s also top of mind because the seawall is behind schedule and over budget, and so is the 520 bridge expansion. So, too, is the Alaskan Way Viaduct Replacement project’s deep bore tunnel, which is now years late. Its boosters defend it by saying hey, “It’s no Big Dig,” yet it was undertaken in haste and with an excess of engineer hubris and over-optimistic expectations. There’s still no assurance that the soon-to-be-drilling-again Bertha won’t be further delayed, or won’t hit future bumps in the underground road, nor any guarantee that a completed, tolled tunnel with deliver as promised.

I asked Joni Earl, given her performance at Sound Transit, if we could put her in charge of Bertha. She declined with a “no thanks.”

So did the rest of the Courage Award winners.

There’s a potential future Courage Award-type job there for someone, if anyone wants to apply.

Don’t all raise your hands at once!