Seattlest: Prop. 1's Exercise in Brinksmanship

michaelmcginn

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 11:24:46 -0800

This is a perceptive analysis of the weaknesses in this ballot measure. Remember also that King County passed Transit Now last year which raised the sales tax for more bus service, and Seattle passed Bridging the Gap, which was local street and bridge maintenance with a real green emphasis on new transit, bicycle and walking improvements (including the complete streets policy which changed how we prioritize uses on our rights of way.) So the "all or nothing" framing is not accurate. The "small is beautiful" reference is on point as well. Transportation financing is often dominated by the big projects designed to aid long distance trips, while funding that helps short trips -- improving and restoring the local street grids, sidewalks, bike lanes and trails and more local transit is starved. Bridging the Gap was $365 million over ten years, I think Transit Now was around $600 million over a number of years. As a comparison, that's less than the cost of the 509 extension, which will mainline traffic from I-5 into the first avenue south bridge. And 509 is just a portion of billions of dollars in new highways in RTID. RTID is a symptom of the wrong priorities in spending. We need to root down deeper in this state's transportation financing, and really start supporting smart land uses and walkable transit-friendly communities. The backbone of that can be found in the many street grids around the region that grew up in the streetcar era. Reconnecting them with frequent reliable transit, investing in great streetscapes, and supporting well designed new housing, is a great recipe for getting people out of cars and reducing global warming pollution. Congestion pricing to make more efficient use of our freeways, and finance maintenance and transit is the other major piece of a successful strategy.

Jeremy M. Barker

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:45:15 -0800

Ditto. Personally, I've always had a problem with the idea that we should nickle and dime transportation investments; the single-minded focus on buses reminds me of a great headline in The Onion that read, "Report: 98 Percent Of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others." The reality is that while a streetcar seems expensive and quaint, Portland discovered that unlike with buses, and even more than lightrail, people enjoyed riding the streetcar. So while some of these may seem like "boutique" transit options, that interpretation ignores the fact that beyond providing a means of transit at all for people who need it because they can't afford to drive, we need to provide transit that attracts people who'd normally drive to using transit. That's the way to the future.

Michael van Baker

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:38:09 -0800

...when local leaders like Sims and Nickels throw their weight behind reasonably affordable projects (like light rail and S.L.U.T.), they can achieve a critical mass of business interests, environmentalists, and civic-minded voters to make things happen.Maybe I'm still under the spell of Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful, but as I look at how volatile the future seems around transportation modalities, it seems more prudent to invest in these smaller, quicker-to-implement options, and also diversify the financing and responsibility of ownership as well. It's always appealing to finance the single megaproject that will in theory solve everything, but in the past that's resulted in things like the original Viaduct and I-5 bifurcating the city.