It looks like the Prop. 1 Roads and Transit package has stalled like a 1974 Vega on I-5 during rush hour. Voters in specially selected parts of the three counties are rejecting both portions of the package with prejudice.
Once again, the results are hardly surprising. A majority of the electorate was never going to vote for a one-size-fits-all project with a price tag of $17-18 billion; imposing the largest tax increase in the history of the country on themselves and their children and grandchildren.
Not when the tax doesn't even pay to complete the new 520 floating bridge project. Not when it increases congestion on I-90 by placing a light rail line down the span's center bridge, displacing traffic onto the outer general purpose lanes. Not when completion of the $10 billion light rail project is two decades away. Not when the original Sound Transit 1 proposal is $4-5 billion (and counting) over budget and years behind schedule.
Not when... well, you get the point.
Prop. 1 is getting thumped despite having been gerrymandered to exclude King, Pierce and Snohomish voters living in outlying precincts. Of historical note, the Sound Transit 1 proposal, which was initially shot down by voters, was rigged in the same manner to pass in 1996.
In the days and weeks to come you'll read the perfunctory "How-do-we-solve-our-transportation-problems-now-that-Prop 1-failed?" sob pieces with the proper amount of handwringing by people who make a damn good living at wringing their hands.
The short answer is whichever gubernatorial candidate in 2008, Dino Rossi or Christine Gregoire, who puts together the best laundry list of transportation items for the voters to mull over will be the one solving, or not solving the state's transportation crisis. That's what elected officials are paid the big bucks to do, right?
Rossi already tipped his hand during his kickoff speech saying congestion relief and eliminating transportation chokepoints will be priorities. While Gregoire has had three years of overseeing WSDOT... with...excellent...results?
The larger issue is weighing the benefits of light rail against bus/mass transit against road and infrastructure improvements while settling upon which two-out-of-three options should receive first priority. You'll be hearing from the Sierra Club, politicians like Ron Sims, The Stranger and local blogs about how Prop. 1 failed because Sound Transit/light rail was shackled to a roads package. The exact opposite is the reality.
When the Cross-base Highway Project (SR 704) in Pierce County was about to be cut even supporters like Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg went ape-feces. If 704 and other roads were cut, then there would have been literally no reason for any Pierce County voter to approve the measure. The same goes for the paucity of road projects in Snohomish County and Eastern King County that voters were offered in exchange for a light rail project that, though it would enrich contractors and developers, no one would ride.
Of note, voters living outside the ST and RTID boundaries, who are paying gas taxes and Motor Vehicle Excise Taxes, but had their vote taken away this November will be weighing in on the governor and state legislature races next year. These voters are pro-roads and anti-light rail.
Politicians ignore them at their peril.
Extra: Of course there's no need to read my thoughts about transportation when there is a far wiser, and funnier, man like Vern Fonk whose views are far more succinct...
Posted by DonWard at November 07, 2007 08:10 AM | Email ThisThis is Dino's to lose now ... Gregoire lost a lot last night and the public is tired of her and the stanglehold the 'progressives' have had for the past 30 years. They had their chance to get the roads straightened up; they had many, many decades.
It's time for all of them to be booted out.
Posted by: Lauri on November 7, 2007 09:50 AMFailing that, I would have a hard time being surprised by something like the last tax the voters rejected: We rejected the 5 cent gas tax only to have the legislature passed a 9 cent gas tax with an "emergency".
Posted by: bfr on November 7, 2007 09:50 AMThis is Dino's to lose now ... Gregoire lost a lot last night and the public is tired of her and the stanglehold the 'progressives' have had for the past 30 years. They had their chance to get the roads straightened up; they had many, many decades.
It's time for all of them to be booted out.
Posted by: Lauri on November 7, 2007 09:50 AMThis was a rejection of the idea that all of use want to live in Condos built downtown or around train tracks. If we wanted to live that way, we would have stayed in New York, Chicago, or one of the other east coast cities we grew up in.
(I've actually lived here 14 years now, but to some in this state that still makes me an outsider.)
Posted by: Johnny on November 7, 2007 10:01 AMWhy, you'd rush through a quickie bond sale.
ST would have to ignore what Sound Move says about rolling back the sales tax, but hey - there are a bunch of liars on the Supreme Court who might give ST another pass.
Give yourself another half-a-billion in cash - yeah, that'll take away the sting. There'd be no better way to display consummate arrogance in the face of defeat.
Wouldn't surprise me a bit if ST tries to pull a fast one like that.
Posted by: Interesting Times on November 7, 2007 10:02 AMNow that it is defeated someone, anyone is going to have to explain how a fixed rail rapid transit option is going to work better than a bus system.
Buses are more mobile.
It is the best message the voters could send to our cynical politicians who refuse to give voters a real choice on what they want their transportation taxes spent for.
Choices must extend beyond whom we share our gonads with. And the painfully obvious choice which the voters are being denied is: roads OR light rail? Not some committee-designed monstrosity consisting of an entangled combination of both. All such a monstrosity guarantees is prosperous contractors and consultants, a bigger bureaucracy, and more traffic congestion.
Give us that vote, and see where the chips fall. Give us our choice: our own vehicles on our own road network, with our own choice of routing and scheduling - OR some top-down planner's choice of skinny little lines on a map with great bloated dollar-guzzling mini-trains occasionally running on them, squashing autos at grade crossings and not stopping where you need to get off.
All the socially conscious Sierra Clubbers, bless 'em, already are walking instead of riding or flying on any sort of mechanical conveyances - or at most, leading donkeys with their grocery bags carefully strapped on with color-coordinated REI-designed panniers. But those of us who must contribute to the economy by producing goods and services (ie working for a living) need to get around Pugetopolis efficiently, and that means automobiles, like it or not.
Roads for traveller-controlled trips, not light rail for commissars, planners, consultants, socialists and fantasists.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on November 7, 2007 10:19 AMIt perplexes me to no end how little has been done in this state with the vast amount of wealth here. We spend over 53% of the state's taxes on education and we're #42 in the nation? How can that be? (rhetorical question; I fully know the WEA is a union beast that can never be satisfied with enough money)
But you are correct, the majority of us would not live in condos near rail road tracks. Most of us didnt grow up that way and do NOT want that for our kids. I hope Prop 1's sound defeat will give Olympia pause.. but that is doubtful. They havent listened to the public for years.
Posted by: Lauri on November 7, 2007 10:33 AMFor a place that think they are so "progressive", they provide no progress whatsoever. This "either/or" thinking will lead to more gridlock and more "discussions".
Will it ever change? Will the tree huggers ever be convinced that getting cars to a destination faster is better than cars idling on the freeway all afternoon? Will mass transit actually be built to take us where we want to go? This is crazy-town USA!
Utah's transportation system is probably one of the best in the nation. Before the Olympics, they had no lightrail and an aging freeway infrastructure. They took the lead and rebuilt freeways, installed lightrail (and folks use it!). They did it all, suffered for a few years while it happened and now have a world-class transportation system. While we have more geographic challenges, the fact is they made good decisions and created something to be proud of.
When will folks here wake up? Global Schmarming? Are you kidding me? Millions of folks are starving and people here are worried about an idea based on theoretical models? So it must be better for the environment for cars to idle in traffic than move them along. Social engineering-type policy will never work.
Bottom Line: as was said above, we need real leadership, real options, real planning and less nanny-state policy making.
Posted by: Orson Buggy on November 7, 2007 11:34 AMHilarious slogan, but the two concepts are are in deadly conflict. You can't have less nanny-state policy making if you have 'real planning'.
Unless by real planning you mean that an individual's American dream is NOT to be crushed into insignificance by top-down central planning. Somehow I don't gather that that's your concept.
Or by 'real planning' is it inferred that some super-duper genius planner, yet to be proposed, will gather up all the political and economic reins and make life perfect for the rest of us peasants?
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on November 7, 2007 01:34 PMThe fact that every Mass Transit project that has been approved has come in over budget, behind schedule, and never with the ridership they have predicted has never discouraged these people, it never was about reality...simply their agenda of what was the "right" thing to do. And if you look at the actual cost of things like LINK, not merely the obscene capital cost, but the O&M costs as well...these people are nuts. The only currently functioning LINK is in Tacoma...a place that never needed it, where a SINGLE BUS (and a free one at that, the Downtown Commuter) that once ran from the Tacoma Dome Parking lot to four other stops on the way to the County-City building was replaced by a $50 million LIGHT RAIL that stops at the same stops and takes the same time but had capital costs a hundred times what it replaced, and operations and maintenance costs that continue far higher....and always will. http://www.subwaynut.com/tacomalink/index.html
Basically, there are no problems that Light Rail solves that buses don't solve cheaper and better, and pretending that the basic problem that precludes mass transit from being effective in King County, THAT WE SIMPLY DON'T HAVE THE POPULATION DENSITY TO SUPPORT IT, will be solved by "Transit oriented development" With all due respect, that's bullshit people...and always will be.
The thing is, it's too late now to undue the damage that these zealots have done to Seattle and King County in my lifetime, so as long as I'm going to be taxed for something I'll never live to get anyway I can afford to be selective.....very selective.
I WILL NEVER VOTE ANOTHER DIME FOR TRANSPORTATION IF IT HAS MASS TRANSIT IN IT. I don't give a damn about political correctness. When the politicians decide to give the people what they want.....a straight up and down vote ON FIXING THE ROADS THAT WE ALL DEPEND UPON, you can count on my support. But in the interim, if the "package" has so much as one lousy foot of bike lane on it, or even a replacement bus stop, my vote will be "no."
The Transit advocates started a 'scorched earth' policy toward the projects that I use four decades ago. For the NEXT four decades, I plan on returning the favor....
Posted by: george hanshaw on November 7, 2007 02:21 PMI used to drive in the "Mercer Mess" everyday and decided to contact local officials about paving it to speed up traffic approaching the I-5 onramp (dodging potholes is not my idea of "flow"). They said they were working on it would probably do it when the entire Eastlake Union corridor would be completed. Does anyone know when that will happen? Could be another decade or so. Just to pave ten blocks of a downtown street? Instead, you get millions of dollars to enhance bike lanes and such (and I'm a cyclist).
My point is that the political process in Seattle isn't working. Trust is gone and representative democracy is failing. There's no political will. If I vote for someone, and they don't do the job, out they go. I don't want to vote for elected officals and then have them throw it all back at the public to decide. That's what elections are for. They need to do SOMETHING!
There are others that believe that we should elect folks and vote on every last piece of legislation they produce, by law or initiative. It's a form that's legit, but produces what we have today.
Obviously, there is a process to decision making, but we're long past the "research" step in this case - it's time to take the next steps and make some decisions. Decisions are difficult and elected "leaders" are fearful, but now is the time. It won't get less expensive, easier or better until some of the folks we put in office make some decisions and follow through. That's not the "Seattle Way", but that "way" hasn't worked, imo.
Posted by: Orson Buggy on November 7, 2007 02:26 PM