Roads, Transit and Many, Many Words

Here's Erica Barnett for Grist:

Well, let's look at what happens if this region does pass the joint roads and transit package. That will be our last chance to make a truly ambitious investment in transportation for a generation. It is, in other words, our last chance to do it right. As local Sierra Club chapter chairman Mike O'Brien told me, "It's not like we have pools of $18 billion just sitting around." If we pass this package, we'll have light rail, but we'll also be stuck paying for, and building, all those new roads -- roads that will just fill up, as roads do; roads that will contribute more to global warming than light rail takes away; roads that certainly won't be much help in easing congestion without a much larger investment in transit than the one in this package. And we'll send a message to transportation planners around the country: "It's OK to have transit, as long as you throw some new roads in there too."

A better message would be: "People want transit, so why do you keep giving us *$%! roads?"

And then in response to the Sim's piece, which has had a week to stew...

Horsesass:

There is an upside to this: I’m already thinking about who I want to support for King County Exec in ‘09, since Ron is pretty much making it clear that he isn’t running again. One of my only rules is that the candidate has to have a consistent position on light rail. They can’t be for it…

…and then against it.

Josh Feit for the Stranger:

And I’ll admit that I was excited by Sims’s decision to add his high-profile name to the iconoclast environmentalists who are opposing the measure. But if Sims isn’t willing to explicitly fight for a major extension of light rail in its own right—as an alternative to the $17.8 billion roads and light rail package— then his big announcement is actually pretty moronic.

Carless in Seattle:

From that, I infer an argument that we should scrap the existing RTID and ST2 plans, start over, and develop a new, dead-on-right plan that includes, not just rail and roads, but everything from overhauling our taxation system to imposing congestion pricing across the state's entire road network.

Don't get me wrong, this would be great. I'm all for it in theory. But it will take years to flesh out a measure of that breadth, let alone an entirely new roads and/or transit package. That package will go through the same sausage factory that ST2/RTID came out of--that Ron Sims was a part of and knows all too well. That package will need to get political backing, and politicians will continue to overrule the professional transportation planners at Sound Transit, no matter how many times we tell them not to. So when the new sausage comes out in, say, 2013 (with completion slated for, say, 2037 instead of 2027 and with a cost of, say, $27 billion instead of $17 billion), I wouldn't be surprised if the Sierra Club was again leading the anti-campaign, because the sausage wouldn't be the dead-on-right package it wanted.

Sound Politics:

Those are just three examples of why this region, which depends upon the state to be granted its taxing authority, just doesn't move fast enough to turn around and get something else on the ballot that quick. Love or hate Proposition 1, it's foolish to think an alternative will be coming down the pike next year.

Taken to its rational conclusion, that lends some truth to Feit's potential conclusion that Sims's current position is "actually pretty moronic." I'd call it illogical and counterproductive if given my own choice of words, but I won't argue with that phrase.

Image courtesy of brappy.