Timm, 53, said she will "return to the East Coast to take care of family matters," noting the needs of her father, according to a statement issued by the agency and by the staff of King County Executive Dow Constantine, who chairs the Sound Transit governing board.
Timm's contract, which pays her $375,000 this year, wasn't set to expire until the end of 2025. She will exit Jan. 12.
Timm arrived in September 2022 from the Greater Richmond Transit Company, a small bus agency in Richmond, Va., where she made bus fare free during the pandemic.
"Julie has overseen a renewed emphasis on the rider experience as Sound Transit approaches the opening of several new extensions, starting with East Link next spring," the Tuesday statement said.
The agency recently completed the Tacoma Hilltop streetcar extension, and its next major opening is a local Eastside segment in Redmond and Bellevue, during spring 2024, followed by the four-station Northgate-Lynnwood line next fall.
Timm's departure leaves Sound Transit's 18-member board to begin a CEO search for the second time in two years, a potential source of instability for the $148 billion financial plan to build and operate service from 2017-46.
The board will choose an interim CEO and form a transition team, the announcement said.
Timm's annual performance evaluation was underway this month, to consider a merit raise of $3,750 to $18,750, on top of a base increase of 3.5% for successful performance. But members of the board's executive committee did not issue a decision about her pay or performance following a closed-door session Thursday.
During her brief tenure in Seattle, she paid particular attention to everyday rider experience, through improved cleaning and minor repairs in downtown stations, more security guards, and buskers playing music this holiday season. Contractors have maintained the aging escalators and elevators so they work 88% of the time, an improvement from near 50% reliability in early 2021, when Sound Transit took them over from King County. Timm publicly praised the team who revived a flood-damaged escalator at International District/Chinatown Station. (A focus on more escalator maintenance, and replacements starting in 2024, began under former CEO Peter Rogoff and retired deputy CEO Kimberly Farley.)
However, schedules continue to slip for projects in Sound Transit 3, approved by voters in 2016. Some destinations, including Ballard and downtown Everett, might not get train stations until the 2040s. Bus-rapid transit lines promised by 2024 are taking until 2028 or 2029.
Last week, a technical-advisory group aired its frustrations, in public session, over the agency's slowness in cutting red tape, to save time and money on construction projects.
In particular, the task of hiring a world-class megaproject expert to oversee future rail projects — something the group described as an emergency need March 2 — is stretching a full year into spring 2024, said expert panelist Ken Johnsen, whose project resume includes Climate Pledge Arena and several U.S. streetcar lines. One or two such executives are expected to earn more pay than the CEO and reorganize the project delivery team.
"It's taking a really long time, longer than it should have," commented board member Claudia Balducci of Bellevue, who serves on the Metropolitan King County Council. She said based on her personal scorecard, most of the expert group's suggestions aren't resolved yet, including a goal of "rebuilding trust" between the board and staff.
Johnsen warned the agency isn't ready yet to manage upward of $4 billion in some of the next few years on expansions. "The wave is coming and the sense of urgency on our recommendations is very, very real," he said.
Despite those strains, Kent Keel, the board's vice chair, said Tuesday: "I think with an 18-member board, we're all over the map. I don't think the board was going to send her away. I think we needed to have her eval, like we do every year."
Timm said Tuesday she's working out an agreement to provide paid consulting services on-call to Sound Transit, as her time allows.
The board enthusiastically hired Timm last year, from a field of 48 candidates, based on what supporters described as her superior communication skills and passion for serving transit customers.
Keel praised Timm's attention and communication to riders. "The community in general wasn't feeling loved, and she came in and cleaned that up for us," he said. Keel said Timm struggled with "the cultural transition to the Pacific Northwest, where we can smile and say ABC but really it's a grimace saying XYZ," in other words her own communication style is more direct than what she often finds among staff or the public.
As an example of rider service, Timm said Tuesday she's proud of how Sound Transit bundled seven downtown-tunnel repairs at the same time crews raised sunken tracks in Sodo this August — fixing multiple problems instead of subjecting people to months of chronic slowdowns.
She spoke for an hour Monday night at the Renton City Council, about upcoming projects such as the Stride bus-rapid transit route, to stop in Renton along I-405.
"I appreciated her transparency and I appreciated her willingness to engage in conversations where the first thing that's being said is not 'no' or 'we can't do this,'" Renton Councilmember and Sound Transit Board member Ed Prince said Tuesday, about Timm's overall performance.
A prime example is the East Link Starter Line, to open this spring from the Redmond Technology Station, near Microsoft, to the South Bellevue Station. Timm moved rapidly to plan that segment, including recruitment of transit operators, after a suggestion by Balducci. Though ridership forecasts are for only 6,000 daily passengers, Eastside travelers will get some return on their taxes, while the agency rebuilds and tests its delayed crossing of Lake Washington to Seattle by 2025.
Timm said she had hoped to remain CEO through the grand openings of Lynnwood, Redmond and Federal Way extensions between now and the World Cup soccer tournament in 2026. She calls the next couple years a "pressure cooker" but a period that staff can handle, with or without her.
"They need stability. They need a CEO who can really focus and be here," Timm said in the interview. "This is heartbreaking but it's the right decision."
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