A couple points on an op-ed encapsulating much of the establishment push-back against Dino Rossi's transportation plan.
1) The 520 complaint is a fair one, to a degree. An eight-lane 520 looks more like a starting point for negotiations with a hostile Legislature than a likely outcome. Yet, since campaign plans often serve as such starting points, the current outrage of the status quo is difficult to take seriously.
2) The ongoing insistence that Rossi's should have been heavy on transit is really quite bizarre. When has the state ever been in the mass transit business? Why then is it Dino Rossi's responsibility to shift that paradigm so dramatically?
Sure, you can argue about the proposed financing that shifts Sound Transit surpluses in East King County to other uses (beyond banking it for use in possible Sound Transit Phase 2 projects). Such a move is indeed politically improbable based on the composition of the Legislature.
That said, Dino Rossi's plan takes a laissez-faire approach to transit. If Puget Sound area voters want transit, which they have often voted for, then let them have it. In the meantime, the state has an obligation to have a functioning highway system; an obligation that has been neglected for far too long by the powers that be in Olympia.
This transit supporter would much prefer the state handling highways and the locals - through a simplified and consolidated governance structure - handling transit. It's not as if the state's past performance with roads and ferries lends much confidence toward handling buses and trains too.
Critic Aubrey Davis also says:
After years of neglect, our region and state are making progress in chipping away at the long backlog of road and transit projects. There is no doubt that much more work remains.
That begs a serious question:
The "Roads" portion of last year's doomed Prop 1 was the necessary local match to complete a number of key projects envisioned in the most recent gas tax hike (in which state government refused to pay for the full cost of roads in the Puget Sound area). What plans are currently emanating from the capital to fill that roads gap in the wake of Prop 1's defeat, let alone the broader backlog of overdue highway projects?
UPDATE: headline fixed.
Posted by Eric Earling at April 29, 2008 10:13 PM | Email ThisDino's plan is laissez-faire?
More like laissez-brain.
The whole thing was concocted like a patchwork quilt, with each of Rossi's advisors getting a little piece of the pie.
Sorry, that doesn't equate to anything close to vision or leadership in my book.
Posted by: Brian on April 29, 2008 11:06 PMDino's plan may not be magnificent or complete, but at least he has presented a plan. This plan can be debated and perhaps molded into a much better plan. That is what is great about a nation. Do you honestly believe that everything you use on a daily basis was created from just one plan? I can pretty much guarantee you that it was not. Instead someone came up with an idea and over time that idea was improved by people working together to create something better.
This is what can happen to Dino's plan. It can be debated openly and honestly and we can have a plan in the end that not only meets the needs of our state, but a plan to pay for it.
With the current Governor all we have been given is blue ribbon committee after blue ribbon committe that spend millions and tell us that yet another committee is needed to study the issue.
In my book that is not much of a plan.
Posted by: TrueSoldier on April 29, 2008 11:19 PMFor starters, lets cut:
The 6600 new state employees and their benefits Gregoire has recently added
The $47,000 free college tuition benefits to all 2.0 gpa highschool students whose families make less then 50 K - Give them a student loan! Not a hand out
Cut all non-citizen health care benefits being handed out in this state
Half of the Sound Transit board!
That plan is coming up for Hell No # 2, is she behind that heist also!
Posted by: GS on April 29, 2008 11:26 PMWe are already paying in the form of one of the highest gas taxes in the nation. Have you read the Rossi plan? The financing is clear and practical, if only we can prevent some squishy Democrats legislators from bowing down to the small, but loud anti-free mobility religious wackos.
Posted by: AP on April 29, 2008 11:41 PMFor that matter, I wish I had the free lunch. But every time I send in a quarterly tax deposit to the federal government, I all too painfully realize that I'm paying for my lunch AND yours. So don't even start. It's all too likely you pay nowhere near in taxes what we are paying. maybe you ought to start paying your fair share instead of making everyone else pay it for you.
Posted by: Michele on April 30, 2008 12:36 AMToo bad their followers (Lowery,Locke,Gregoire) especially Brian doesn't want to pay for transit. Let me guess the magic Democratic money tree (The taxpayers, the working poor, one parent families, the elderly and minorities) Am I close? Hell yes I am close. Who do you think doles out the gravy train to people like Brian these days?
Gregoires Plan is Laissez-Faire?
More like Laissez-Missing for the last 3 1/2 years.
The whole thing is concocted like a patch work quilt, with each of Gregoires Unions getting a little piece of the pie.
Sorry, that doesn't equate to anything close to vision or leadership to anyone who walks upright and can read a balance sheet. Fire Gregoire in 08.
That being said, can anyone explain to me how adopting Mayor's Nichol's fantasy of a tunnel to replace the Viaduct fits into the State's responsibility. This is where CG does have it right. The state should only provide the funds to replace the viaduct with the same kind of structure. If the city wants a tunnel, then its citizen's need to pony up the money for the additional costs. Additionally, the state has set a precident with the Narrows bridge, where it was fully paid for by the tolls.
Posted by: tc on April 30, 2008 07:37 AMA shift in emphasis to exurbian needs from megalomania of "Seattle". More roads in the exurbs. More road widening. More busways. In a perfect world: the cancellation of Light Rail.
Here's what I got from the Rossi Plan:
A gigantic budget busting public works plan mostly slanted towards assuaging "Seattle voters".
What's the point of getting a Republican elected if he's going to be a Democrat?
As David does, I also decry the "mass transit-only" mindset that we see a lot here, just as I decry the "highways-only" mindset. It has to be both, and the state *will* have a role in that whether hard-liners at either end like it or not.
After all, if people have mass transit options, and choose to use them, that does free up highway lanes so that the trucks can roll. For that reason, we need more mass transit options, and not fewer.
As for that total imbecile GS @ 4, if you cut out all the non-citizen health benefits in this state, then you have infectious non-citizens running around making the rest of us sick. Moron.
No. You deport them.
Moron.
Can you really be this stupid? Plenty of noncitizens are in this country legally. That includes people who work and pay taxes, and tourists who spend money here and pay sales taxes, you train wreck of conservative knuckle-dragging numbskullery.
But has a health care person. That problem is already here.
Hep A/B/C is going crazy in the US. along with other peroblems we had under control.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on April 30, 2008 10:10 AMThey tell the little working people how they should change their lives so as to fit the perfect world that the good little Socialists have deemed they will impose on Washington state citizens.
We have seen the results of the good little Socialists have done in the last 4 years:
-non-legals get instate tuition
-non-legals get free health care
-adding over 6,000 employees to the state workforce, and force them to join the Union and be subject to mandatory dues payment
-raising the gas tax by scaring us that the Alaskan Way Viaduct will crash down and kill people, take the money but put off any decision for years what to do about the "emergency"
- instead of adding lanes to freeways to handle the TRIPLING OF POPULATION from 1980, yet not adding any signifigant freeway capacity, except for a HOV lane around Lake Washington to handle the 300% increase in population.
Note to the good little Socialists:
quit forcing us into transportation solutions that do not work and make no sense, while bankrupting our future.
Sound Transit's results to date have tripled the budget we voter for in the late 90's while decreasing what we voted for.
Your latest idea is to toll the freeways during the day so fewer people will use it.
Do you think we go driving in the rush hour for fun? You people don't have the sense God gave a goose.
Just wait until the property tax revolt of 2009 hits. Your shorts will turn brown.
Posted by: zdawg on April 30, 2008 11:37 AMLa-la-la-La-la-la-La-la-la-La-la-la
I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!
Oh and more light rail!!!!
Posted by: FreedomLover on April 30, 2008 12:56 PMI already know the answer because one the state eng's was on the news years ago and told us all it was the STATE gov who wanted this mess.
Posted by: Army Medic/Vet on April 30, 2008 12:56 PMArmy Medic/Vet @26:
I don't know who allowed I-5 to be designed the way it is through downtown, let alone build the convention center over it, so we can't stack the road. They made a real big mistake.
Any fool will know you can't take 5 plus lanes of traffic down to two? What did they think? Did they think all this traffic would magically dump into downtown? Like downtown could handle the volume. Add to this (from the South), Michigan on-ramp feeding into Spokane/WS Freeway off-ramp, Buses in HOV lanes having to cross four lanes to get off at Spokane, WS Freeway feeding into the exit for I-90/Madison/James, you wonder why there are backups?
This mess is alot more important to fix than some gold-plated tunnel on the waterfront. If Rossi really wanted to lead, this is what he would address instead of handing Seattle a gold-plated tunnel.
Posted by: tc on April 30, 2008 02:06 PMFear of success.
If these two ideologues truly believed light rail was going to be a big bust, they would not be so obsessed with killing it off.
Another clue to understanding just how desperate and disengenous top dog rail opponents have become: these small government conservatives are now promoting the creation of a whole new layer of regional government, featuring some of the most highly paid politicians' in the state.
And the 'solution' Freeman and Stanton have come up with?
Buses. Lots more of them... Designed to clog our roads even more than they are now.
The fact neither of these two anti-rail zealots would ever be caught dead on a bus speaks volumes.
Posted by: Swan Song on May 2, 2008 01:17 AMSure, FreedomLover and brother Rossi have a 'plan' in mind
Only one problem: they don't want to pay for it.
Too bad these clowns can't use George W's magic giant credit card (interest payments made out to Chinese Dictators R Us) to finance Dino Rossi's crackpot 'plan'.
Where did all the smart conservatives go? Did Dori Monson turn them into proudly ignorant zombies? Maybe they are all high on Rush Limbaugh's new signature brand Oxycontin?
Enquiring minds want to know.
Posted by: Swan Song on May 2, 2008 01:42 AM