King County DOT Director Harold Taniguchi:

"The pool of projects that we started with, were those that were on the RTID list. So there were a lot of (projects), nine-billion dollar plus projects, so we looked at them. Then we had some additional information from the Washington State Department of Transportation, that segmented out some of the mega-corridor work, A, B and C level, so we worked that into the analysis. So we went through that review, we scored them, we looked at the scores, we elevated the ones we thought had merit to continue and we quietly, carefully assembled a package with the directive of trying to get down below a smaller package, something in the six to six-and-a-half billion dollar range.

"We know that people will have strong, or not so strong opinions and reactions based on what they see this package evolving to. I think the benefit of this is we’re getting additional information out not only to you folks but also to the general public about what the elements of these projects can do and are like. And starting this discussion about if you had to go smaller, it’s anguishing, but what would that discussion feel like."

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