If you haven’t, you should read Josh Feit’s good-but-too-snarky interview with Gov. Chris Gregoire. The part that jumped out at me was about light rail:
Gov. Gregoire:
I would do north before south. I’ve said to both the mayor and Joni [Earl, Sound Transit executive director]: Let me see what it is.
Josh Feit:
Wrong answer. The right answer: “I’m excited to see their plan, and I’m excited to promote light-rail expansion this year.” After all, she was gung ho about a light-rail plan that included 185 miles of new roads. Why so finicky about light rail only?
I think the Governor is focused on replacing the 520 bridge and pushing ahead with the Alaskan Way Corridor Project. Light rail is a local issue, and besides freeing up MVET for use by Sound Transit, the Governor should not be a major player on the issue.
The fact that Josh is asking Gregoire to do heavy lifting for a light rail package that doesn’t exist yet is goofy, especially considering The Stranger’s ignorant slagging-off of light rail between the airport and Tacoma. I mean, what happens when Sound Transit 2.1 comes out and they find that not enough of it is being built in Capitol Hill?
Will pimps Josh, Josh pimps Will, Goldy pimps Erica, and a whole new class of local pundits creates itself. Look at your future, Will. Soon you will be Joel Connelly or Joni Balter. You’re getting there faster than you think.
Isn’t this the same Stranger reporter/editor that said repeatedly that light rail was a scam and that monorail was the way to “rise above it all”? Oh, and doesn’t he work for Dan Savage who told us all to just shut up already about the war and support the invasion of Iraq? The Stranger only has credibility for those who’s attention span and memory is measured in seconds and minutes.
The fundamental truth about light rail is that roads are paid for by people who use them, but light rail is heavily subsidized by general taxes imposed on people who don’t use light rail (e.g., retirees on fixed incomes who can’t afford to pay for someone else’s commuting).
That’s why roads and light rail can’t be judged by the same standard.
I think Gregoire is dead-on right to ask for a plan instead of endorsing a pig-in-a-poke. The lady is too smart to sign a blank check that she knows will be very large.
Roger, would it change your thinking if you knew that the rails would not stick up and thus would not be hard for you to scamper across?
Josh is just dreading the shit eating party he is going to have to host with the Sierra Club for telling everyone to Vote No on Prop One and wait for the light rail only plan to come in 2008.
I’ll tape the video and title it: “Two ignorant ideologues and one cup.”
The total cost of roads, and the idiot “transportation system” based on individuals piloting their own 4,000-pound, petroleum-fueled metal boxes, goes far beyond the mere cost of building and maintaining the thoroughfares, and is borne by all of us, and by the credit of many generations to come.
@7 The alternative is what? Forcing folks to utilize public transportation?
When they eventually do put a “ST2 v2” out there it most likely will be shot down. Any “ST2 v2” plan would need to be made up of WAY too much spending on the eastside for Seattle voters, Pierce Co. voters, and Sno. Co. voters to accept. ST has f___d up a perfectly good light rail plans. The monorail debacle didn’t help either. The voters do not trust ST enough to begin with, and the next plan won’t appeal to Seattle voters. Looks to me like ST doesn’t stand much of a chance of ever getting any more approvals for new taxes. Don’t forget, Prop. 1 went down in flames, and there were votes for that thing just for the roads portions.
Gregoire is to leadership as Bush is to intlligence,
Her strong suit is admin. She has no diea about how ot lead others.
I just don’t get why they always have to go for the big money projects of more roads, new bridges and new trains. Why not bring them to the voters in smaller chunks?
And why do they always do the bait-and-switch? For example, in this last transportation initiative, they kept shouting rail! rail! but upon review of the thing, most of it was roads with the possibility of rail if additional funding was there for it.
How is it possible that we can build two sports arenas in Seattle with minimal if any input from voters but we can’t do the same thing with transportation? It makes no sense. How can we be dinged for $500mil on a baseball stadium many of us will never use, but they can’t just approve a transportation measure for trains and/or roads that will be used by nearly everyone?
The whole system is stupid.
All this rail stuff is nonsense. Give me a REAL German autobahn and my G30!
Why should I pay taxes for a smelly train that won’t get me where I need to go?
Look, we can build a big, huge vertical slum in Seattle for all those people who can not afford real cars. Then they don;t need a train or a freeway!
Besides, if we ever have to go to war with China, guess hwta they will blow up first? Rail LINES!!!! Highways ARE the American way!
8 If nobody comes up with anything else, the defaut is going to be shoe leather.
@3 Roads paid for by users? Really….
“Tolls, gasoline taxes, and other user fees cover about 70 percent of the direct cash costs of building and maintaining the nation’s road system. The rest–amounting to tens of billions of dollars per year–is financed by general revenues.
And this subsidy is only a tiny fraction of what drivers actually receive. Driving imposes other external costs on the American economy, from damage caused by air pollution to the cost of mending people injured in traffic accidents to the need for strategic involvement in oil-producing regions of the world. It’s impossible to do an exact accounting of these external costs, but even conservative estimates show them adding up to at least 22 cents for every mile Americans drive. As urban planner Reid Ewing notes, that number implies that a gas tax of $6.60 a gallon would be necessary to make drivers fully pay for the cost that car travel imposes on the economy”
from article by Phillip J Longman http://www.sbs.utexas.edu/reso.....27spra.htm
“Who pays for Sprawl”
Ivan @1,
Um… that’s kinda the goal. And wouldn’t you prefer a pundit class dominated by folks like me and Will than Joni and her buddies at the Mercer Island Times?
9 The “Sound-transit-is-messed-up” mantra is sounding more and more like the various other winger chants like “Patty-Murray-is-stupid” and “Dino-won-the-last-election”…or like “Deficits-don’t-matter” and “All-poor-people-are-lazy”.
@11 Yes, the whole thing is stupid. There is an abundance of politicians willing to claim credit for everything that gets accomplished around here, but nary a one who’s willing or capable of leading on issues of transportation planning and implementation. Some prime examples include supporting the elevated transit plan that specified the mode of transportation must be rubber tires on an elevated concrete guideway. This precluded the practical idea of salvaging the money spent on the monorail by changing it to elevated light rail, such as the the one in Vancouver. The cost of the system could have been dramatically reduced by sharing the downtown transit tunnel, eliminating at least three downtown stations, and sharing the ST maintenance facility in SODO rather than building a new one in Interbay. In the end the monorail zealots got their pure funding mechanism that could only be used for monorail. But when they failed, there was no plan B, and they wound up flushing millions of our tax dollars down the toilet.
12 Consider if you will, all the Germans who travel by train so a few of ’em can get their jollies on the Autobahn.
To resurrect a slogan from another time–if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Goldy @ 15:
Actually, one gaggle of self-reinforcing, self-referential know-it-alls is no different from another.
Oh I forgot. You say you’re “progressives.” I forgot that the “P” word eradicates mountains of bullshit with a single swipe.
Particle Man @ 5
Roger is deathly afraid of rails that stick up, especially if he has eaten too many of Stefan’s carrots, and doesn’t have the energy to jump very high. He might be trapped if he is being pursued by a house cat. Or the Animal Control officer may catch him, cage him, and want to “fix” him before he is sent to Rabbit Meadows Sanctuary.
@5 No. What would change my thinking is if people around here starting using some common sense. According to Wikipedia,
“The cost of light rail construction varies widely, largely depending on the amount of tunneling and elevated structures required. A survey of North American light rail projects shows that costs of most LRT systems range from $15 million per mile to over $100 million per mile.
“Seattle’s new light rail system is by far the most expensive in the U.S. at $179 million per mile, since it includes extensive tunneling in poor soil conditions, elevated sections, and stations as deep as 180 feet below ground level. …
“At the other end of the scale, four systems (Baltimore MD, Camden NJ, Sacramento CA, and Salt Lake City UT) incurred costs of less than $20 million per mile. Over the U.S. as a whole, excluding Seattle, new light rail construction costs average about $35 million per mile.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L....._the_world
Obviously, some places are better suited for light rail construction than others, and Seattle is one of the worst places in the world to build light rail. We are a city of hills on top of a vertical mile of glacial till consisting of clay and loose rocks. You couldn’t find a worse engineering scenario for light rail if you tried.
This ought to be raising red flags all over the place. People with common sense would be saying, “If our geography and geology are ill-suited for building light rail, what mode of mass transportation works better here?”
I’m not saying I know the answer to that. Off the top of my head, a bus system that can use streets built on top of that clay heap and can climb our hills makes more sense, but I’m not an expert and don’t claim that’s necessarily the right answer. However, you don’t have to be an engineer or finance expert to result that Seattle is not a viable location for light rail. All you have to do is look at the costs compared to those of other cities. Like I said, people should be seeing and hearing flashing red lights and blaring horns when they see the costs.
Gregoire should focus on rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct and the SR-520 bridge first. In 2005, we adopted taxes to fund both of those projects — nearly all the funding for Alaskan Way (at least for an elevated replacement) and some of the funding for SR-520. The voters approved those taxes (or at least rejected repealing them) by a healthy margin statewide in November 2005.
On the other hand, the light rail project was rejected by a healthy margin in November 2007. Moreover, the local Sound Transit district that rejected light rail happens to be the area of the state that would otherwise have the strongest political support for Gregoire. (The Sound Transit district also approved the 2005 road taxes by an even bigger margin than the state as a whole.)
So Will is totally on point. Gregoire needs to implement existing projects, before seeking new ones. Especially existing projects that were approved by an overwhelming majority in her core support areas, rather than potential future projects that have been rejected by a healthy majority in her core support areas.
to realize that Seattle
@22 I agree. Light rail is not a top priority. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be a priority at all (see #21), but Gregoire is a politician, and because some vocal interest groups are clamoring for light rail she has to address that issue somehow. It seems to me she addressed it in an intelligent way — let’s see a plan; let’s see figures; let’s get past pie-in-the-sky and talk specifics. Of course, that’s exactly what the light rail boosters don’t want to do. They want the community to commit to building light rail before seeing the details, especially the costs and who will get stuck with the costs. Because they instinctively, if not overtly, realize that light rail won’t be built unless they can slip through the political system under the public’s radar. Goldy has said he wants a public vote on light rail alone. I agree with him; so do I. I believe if the public knew the truth about light rail — what it really costs, and how its proponents are shifting those costs from the user group to non-users — we would get a clear-cut decision at the ballot box that would end the discussion of light rail for good.
“The fundamental truth about light rail is that roads are paid for by people who use them”
One good thing about roads: they kill off lame, cave-dwelling rabbits.
“Obviously, some places are better suited for light rail construction than others, and Seattle is one of the worst places in the world to build light rail.”
Hey, Roger: topography and geography have an even larger impact on the cost / engineering challenges of your trusty Republican freeways, because roads require much more right of way to move the same number of people compared to high capacity transit.
If mold wasn’t clogging your brain, I would suggest you take a look at what it would cost to add 2-4 lanes between I-90 and Northgate, for instance. Plus a new ship canal bridge. Plus, a new convention center.
Roger, if you want Seattle to return to “the good old (and I mean old) days”, where angry white men could enjoy the isoloation of their pathetic lives and polluting beater cars, I’m here to tell you it ain’t gonna happen.
Last fall, light rail boosters told us Phase 2 would cost $120 a year per household. If it did, I might support it. But I can’t make that number work. Let’s say 1.2 million households pay this tax for 30 years.
$120 x 1.2 million x 30 = $4.32 billion
That figure doesn’t even approach the intentionally lowball figures based on obsolete 2006 construction costs used by Sound Transit for campaign purposes. I think we can all agree Phase 2 would have cost north of $10 billion. You just don’t get anywhere near that number with $120 a year. The true figure is multiples of that. Last fall, when we argued this issue here, I calculated the required taxes at 10 times that amount.
“It seems to me she addressed it in an intelligent way — let’s see a plan; let’s see figures; let’s get past pie-in-the-sky and talk specifics. Of course, that’s exactly what the light rail boosters don’t want to do.”
They released volumes of that data for the ST2 plan last year, Roger. And you made a point of not reading a single page of it. The state mandated that a panel of national experts review those reams of data – they signed off on the methodology and results. Yet, Roger Rabbit still refused to examine a single aspect of that pile of statistics.
All facts and figures do is confuse fucking stupid old rabbits who are driven by ideology, grudges, and all sorts of different agendas which have nothing to do with the singular task at hand: moving people around in the fastest and most efficient mode of transportation.
You know, just like every other major metropolitan area in North America.
I would like to suggest Roger Rabbit try to re-convene his crusty Lesser Seattle crew to help him with his endless disinformation campaign. Even if he advertises the meeting using his equals over at Sound Politics, I’ll bet 5 old white guys would show up to the meeting.
Transportation planners and supporters around here have to give up their idea that they can fling vast sums of money at projects based on “need” arguments. If my family can’t afford something, we don’t buy it, no matter how much we “need it.” That principle applies to absolutely everyting — including food and health care. The argument that “it’ll cost you more if you wait” doesn’t wash. The #1 transportation priority in Washington state should be to bring the dreamers back to earth. We can’t afford a $4.4 billion floating bridge, so forget it and replace the 4 lanes we have. If people don’t like the commuting delays, then they should live on the same side of Lake Washington they work on. How hard is it to figure that out? Spending other people’s money on the luxury of living in Redmond and working in downtown Seattle, or vice versa, is wrong. If they want to spend their own money, that’s different. They can spend whatever they want on the bridge if they pay for it with tolls. But when the big spenders come to me demanding I hand over my food or medicine money for what THEY want they’re going to hit a brick wall of bad attitude.
@27 I don’t need to read it. I know extortion when I see it.
I repeat, the fundamental driving force between this super-expensive light rail scheme is SPENDING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY.
I repeat, light rail is fundamentally different from roads because it’s not paid for with user taxes; the user group is seeking to shift the costs to non-user groups.
Human nature being what it is, it’s easy to spend a lot of money when it isn’t yours. It’s easy to be heartless and callous about pushing something that’s going to cost strangers a lot of money they can’t afford to pay when you shut your eyes to the impact it has on them. This is kindergarten-level selfishness, and I won’t tolerate at it my expense. What people like you want to do is a threat to my vital interests, and I’ve reacted to it accordingly.
In case you didn’t catch that, I repeat: A threat to my vital interests, and I’m reacting accordingly.
“Last fall, light rail boosters told us Phase 2 would cost $120 a year per household. If it did, I might support it. But I can’t make that number work. Let’s say 1.2 million households pay this tax for 30 years.”
A couple of us explained that to you half a dozen times, Roger. You simply ignored the explanation, and purposefully (I hope) played stupid. You stuck your head in the sand because the thrice-checked revenue model and data didn’t comply with your Kemper Freeman “vision” of transportation.
For a supposedly intellectual-minded person, Roger’s ability to absorb and interpret even basic information reminds me of 700 Club members trying to wrap their minds around science.
Stuck in the mud ideology gives Roger something to complain about until his dying days. But his tendency to push bad information, and make stuff up as he goes along sure doesn’t do much to foster a healthy debate. Arguing with Roger/The Piper on transportation is like talking to a brick wall. The more info you give ’em (using accepted standards, I might add) the deeper the troglodyte buries his head in the sand.
“I repeat, the fundamental driving force between this super-expensive light rail scheme is SPENDING OTHER PEOPLE’S MONEY.”
Thanks for repeating the tired Dori Monson/Rush Limbaugh talking points, Roger.
Your GOP creds might carry more weight if you were actually a productive member of society yourself. It would also help if you actually used real data to inform this twisted opinion of yours.
Your car pays its own way the same way oil revenues paid for the re-building of Iraq.
And how’s about that public library in your neighborhood – or the community center – or the parks…those essential community assets all pay for themselves, too, right Roger?
@7 There is some cost shift, but all of the out-of-pocket costs are borne by drivers. If you drive a car, it fouls the air I breathe, but it doesn’t take cash out of my pocket.
You shouldn’t infer from this that I support the wasteful American lifestyle of urban sprawl and commuting vast distances, or even that I consider cars the preferred commuting option. This lifestyle isn’t sustainable, and if high gas prices don’t kill it off, then running out of oil will. Human population can’t grow infinitely. Extraction of resources and denuding of land can’t continue indefinitely. Either the human species will learn to live sustainably or it will experience the same thing deer overpopulations do.
Light rail works well in some places. In Seattle, it’s prohibitively expensive because of our geography and geology. So think of something else. Be intelligent, for chrissakes, instead of repeating the colossal mistakes of previous generations by being as dogmatic as they were. Use some imagination to solve the problem. That’s what the Great Mother Rabbit Spirit gave you a brain for. Instead of burning mountains of other people’s money, invent a solution that works.
@20 They haven’t built a rabbit concentration camp yet that I can’t chew my way out of.
@25 The roads are already there. They may have been a lousy idea, but that’s water over the dam. If you want to tear up all the roads and replace them with rails that’s fine with me if you do it with your own money. I’m not interested in attending that party. I can’t afford it.
@25 “I would suggest you take a look at what it would cost to add 2-4 lanes between I-90 and Northgate, for instance. Plus a new ship canal bridge. Plus, a new convention center”
Evidently you’re trying to make a point by describing things already built. So your point is what? I don’t get it.
Not so long ago, the righties screeched about raising the state gas tax 9 1/2 cents. Never mind that if the state didn’t take that 9 1/2 cents from them, the oil companies would have. That’s because pump prices will go up until they limit demand to what the oil companies can supply. The pump price is going to be the same whether the gas tax is $1 or 1 cent.
I spend about $25 a month on gas. You can raise gas taxes all you want to pay for bridges, buses, or light rail. I’ll still spend $25 a month on gas, but the oil companies would make less profit, so I’d have to sell my oil stocks and invest in something else. I can live with that.
Light rail does carry more people in a given space than roads — if people use it:
“Roads have capacity limits [of] … about 2,400 passengers per hour per lane. … Light rail … can handle … over 20,000 passengers per hour per track.
“Most North American systems are limited by demand rather than capacity and seldom reach 10,000 passengers per hour per track ….”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L....._operation
One of the things you need to attract riders is someplace to park their cars. Ridership will be small if it’s limited to people within walking distance of stations. If we spend $2.5 billion to build a light rail tunnel from Northgate to the U. District, and you want 100,000 people a day to ride it, where are you going to put 50,000 to 80,000 cars? The Northgate Transit Center has parking for about 100 cars, more or less. And there’s no land available in the vicinity to build more parking spaces. There is no residential housing at all within easy walking distance of that transit center.
Every time I challenge light rail boosters on the financial costs or the impractical aspects of their schemes, all I get back is pie-in-the-sky arguments. You won’t make a sale to me with that approach. If you want me to support light rail, show me something that works.
Actually, I did sell one of my oil stocks today.
“ignorant slagging-off of light rail between the airport and Tacoma”
This wasn’t ignorant, it was smart. And I’m from the Tacoma area.
The fact a light rail system filled to capacity can carry as many people per track as 8 lanes of freeway doesn’t mean it’s 8 times as cost-effective as freeway lanes. If it costs 12 times as much, it’s less cost effective. I don’t think cost should be the only consideration when comparing transportation options, but it’s not an irrelevant consideration either. However, the already startling cost-inefficiency of light rail in Seattle — where per mile costs exceed 5 times the U.S. average — are magnified by the funding mechanism. The shifting of these costs from users to non-users makes light rail, to noncommuters like me who have minimal transportation expenses to begin with, much more than 5 times as costly as roads. Instead of paying $25 a month for transportation, I would pay hundreds of dollars a month (that I don’t have) for a system that won’t even be built in my lifetime. That’s just plain fucking absurd and you ought to be able to see that all of your efforts to shove this nonsense down my throat are getting nowhere. I’m opposed to what you people want to do and I’m going to keep voting against it until you come up with something that is both workable and fair. The schemes I’ve seen so far are neither.
I’ve stated my position on this and I’ll now move on to other topics.
RR said: “We can’t afford a $4.4 billion floating bridge, so forget it and replace the 4 lanes we have.”
Sorry, Roger, I normally agree with you, but here is where you and I depart.
One of the things which makes me cringe the most is when I see them “widening” a bridge every ten years to add an additional lane, or building a new overpass without leaving enough room on either side for the inevitable extra lane which will need to be added in the future. Sure, it costs more now, but it will cost a log more to do it all over again in the future. And considering that we can’t seem to get any transportation projects done in this area except once every thirty years or so, we might as well do it right while we are at it.
I’ve lived in a state where money was a real problem (Tennessee). But the people here in Washington State are much wealthier, on average, and many times over. We have the ability to do it right, if we have the will to do so. Tax reform will be required. But we can create great public projects for the benefit of our children and grandchildren, if we weren’t so parsimonious.
Personally, I’m willing to forego that planned investment in a wide-screen HD TV this year, if the same money would guarantee that the Alaska Way Viaduct of 520 Bridge replacement gets built right. Somebody’s going to lose their lives eventually on those structures unless we do something soon, and I can live with my 19 inch TV for a while longer in order to avoid that.
Why is it that we know what is right, but we keep putting it off, indefinately, in favor of the way we have always done things?
We know that 1950’s era freeway bridges are going to pancake in an earthquake – we saw it in San Francisco in 1989, and later in Kobe, Japan. But still the Alaska Way Viaduct hasn’t been fixed.
We know that children learn foreign languages when they are taught them early in school, when the brain has a natural tendency to acquire language skills. That’s the way it’s been taught in Korea and Japan and China for the past 20 years, with great success. But here we still don’t start to teach foreign languages until high school.
We know that year-round schooling works better, simply becuase of the increase in the number of instructional days. But for the most part, we retain an attachment to a nine-month school year, based upon a rural model which hasn’t been justified for at least a half-century.
Why is that?
“Every time I challenge light rail boosters on the financial costs or the impractical aspects of their schemes, all I get back is pie-in-the-sky arguments.”
No, Rabbit. We used the Expert Review Panel, the state DOR, the State Treasurer, and several other sources. The more we threw at you, the more you sounded like a dumbfuck Rush Limbaugh dittohead.
“@20 They haven’t built a rabbit concentration camp yet that I can’t chew my way out of. ”
Just so long as you don’t have to concentrate yourself, Rabbit.
“We can’t afford a $4.4 billion floating bridge, so forget it and replace the 4 lanes we have.”
Classic. Roger wants us to widen his highways, and keep others’ highways in a state of gridlock (along with those buses he pretends to like).
Here’s why Roger needs to come out of the angry white guy closet, and sign up with the GOP or nutcase Libertarian Party: Roger believes he is at the center of the universe. If a program, plan, project doesn’t directly benefit his personal life, he’s against it. Fuck the greater good. We should all follow Roger’s pathetic self-centric “good.”
Problem is, if all the broken, self-centered cranks in Pugetopolis got together to “set things straight”, they would quickly learn none of their grudge-based “vision” of “how things should be” lines up with any of the other fellow cranks’ personal vendetta-based visions. Funny how that works.
You’re right about one thing, Roger….there’s going to have to be a place for all the people to park their cars, because in the not too distand future they’re not going to be able to do anything else with them.
@32 Well, why don’t you explain it to me again, because every time I divide $11 billion by 1 million households by 20 years, I keep getting the same number.
@33 “Thanks for repeating the tired Dori Monson/Rush Limbaugh talking points, Roger.”
So far as I know, Lush Flimflam has never said a word about Seattle’s light rail project, and I have no idea what Dori Monson says about it because I don’t listen to him.
It’s a fact that roads are built with dedicated transportation taxes paid by people who own vehicles and buy motor fuel.
@45 “If a program, plan, project doesn’t directly benefit his personal life, he’s against it. Fuck the greater good.”
You’re full of shit. I pay for lots of things I don’t use, including schools, buses, ferries, most city services, most of the parks in this city, most of the libraries, etc. But I’m a senior citizen on a limited income that doesn’t go up for inflation and you want me to pay hundreds of dollars a year to subsidize commuters who make many times my income. Fuck you.
It’s a fact that light rail is paid for with a general sales tax paid by everyone regardless of whether they use light rail or not.
Those aren’t “talking points,” they’re FACTS.
correction
@33 “Thanks for repeating the tired Dori Monson/Rush Limbaugh talking points, Roger.”
So far as I know, Lush Flimflam has never said a word about Seattle’s light rail project, and I have no idea what Dori Monson says about it because I don’t listen to him.
It’s a fact that roads are built with dedicated transportation taxes paid by people who own vehicles and buy motor fuel.
It’s a fact that light rail is paid for with a general sales tax paid by everyone regardless of whether they use light rail or not.
Those aren’t “talking points,” they’re FACTS.
@45 “If a program, plan, project doesn’t directly benefit his personal life, he’s against it. Fuck the greater good.”
You’re full of shit. I pay for lots of things I don’t use, including schools, buses, ferries, most city services, most of the parks in this city, most of the libraries, etc. But I’m a senior citizen on a limited income that doesn’t go up for inflation and you want me to pay hundreds of dollars a year to subsidize commuters who make many times my income. Fuck you.
As I’ve said before, you can build any light rail system you want, if you pay for it with gas taxes or farebox revenues. But attempting to pass the costs of a ridiculously expensive system to general taxpayers will earn you my “no” vote at the ballot box.
Fucking highwaymen robbing old rabbits should be ashamed of themselves.
BlankShooter:
Most of the public agrees 100% with Roger on this one. ST has a long wait before they win any more funding. The ST plans are too grandiose and expensive compared to the alternatives. The agency also seems to be getting arrogant again and that doesn’t help either.
The Governor’s answer was the right one, almost. No one should be endorsing any new ballot measure before they see the costs, and measure the benefits.
It’d be good for everyone in the state if Sound Transit can put together a right sized package that makes the right next steps, which include extending light rail to Northgate and Bellevue.
The Governor ought to be encouraging Sound Transit to work toward a ballot measure this fall, but waiting to see what’s in it before going gung ho for it.
And she shouldn’t be playing rail engineer.
When it comes to transportation in the region, Olympia needs to provide locals with the tools they need to make things happen and then get the hell out of the way, or pitch in.
Watch for Dino Rossi to have a transportation platform soon. Expect him to insist with a straight face that he can build a new eight lane 520 bridge in five years (any eight lane bridge proposed by the state would be stuck in courts for 20 years just like I-90 was), he’ll probably tout that he’s focused on reducing congestion but won’t come clean about the costs or anything close to reality, he’ll probably say he’ll shake up the state DOT and the ferry system, and he probably try to paint the Governor as someone who is trying to take away road capacity because of Seattle values, even though Gregoire led the biggest and most successful road expansion package in state history, affirmed by voters.
After the Stranger sees Rossi’s package, their heads will clear when it comes to Governor Gregoire.
Rossi’s transportation package probably will consist of endorsing Timmy Lieman’s $120-million-a-year promise to cut commuting times by synchronizing traffic lights. Without raising taxes, of course. The $120 million will come from the same place I did — pulled out of a hat.*
* And you thought baby rabbits are delivered by storks? Or maybe you think we hatch from Easter eggs? Ha! You were misinformed. See http://tinyurl.com/2gj2mu
@14 Steve, the 70% figure sounds too low. The article you linked is very short and offered no specifics. Perhaps in Texas more general revenue the norm subsidizes roads; I don’t know. According to Wikipedia, user fees (including gas taxes) pay for only 56% of interstate highway system costs, so if the 70% figure is accurate, then without doubt a major share of the 30% is federal funding of interstate highways.
There is, in fact, a rational justification for subsidizing interstate highways from federal general revenues: They serve a national defense function. Remember, interstates were built under the “National Interstate and Defense Highways Act,” and one of their purposes was military mobility. So, it makes perfect sense to provide some funding from the same revenue stream as other defense expenditures. It’s easy to call this funding “transportation spending” instead of “defense spending,” but that ignores its functional aspect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....#Financing
The point of my comment is that by history and tradition, roads have not been funded from general revenues, but rather with dedicated transportation taxes. I believe my statement to this effect is factually sound. At the state level, no general fund revenue goes to roads, and so far as I know, no local general revenue goes to roads either. On the other hand, no gas tax revenue goes to public transportation. I believe my observation that there is a dichotomy between the funding mechanisms for roads and public transportation is sound notwithstanding your remark.
You mention external costs. I expressly excluded discussion of these costs from my comments in this thread, so your comment is in this respect non-responsive. The external costs of cars obviously are large; so large they are the best powerful argument against cars and roads. I purposely avoided this issue to keep the focus of my discussion on direct financial impacts on taxpayers. If you want to discuss the externalities of cars, that’s fine, but that’s a different topic and is non-responsive to my discussion.
Light rail in Olympia makes sense. In Seattle, a monorail might make more sense because it avoids the tunneling and shoring that Sound Transit wanted to spend tens of billions on. That’s the factor making light rail 5 times as expensive in Seattle as the U.S. average. Avoiding that expense by adopting a public transportation mode that avoids tunneling and digging makes sense. A bull-headed insistence that senior citizens have a vague and generalized “duty to society” to fork over their food and medicine money to subsidize a super-gold-plated commuter system they won’t even live to see built is merely dogmatic stupidity accompanied by thick-headed bullying. Persisting in this course will only create antagonisms in the community that may prevent anything at all from being built.
I mentioned monorail. The Seattle monorail was scrapped because it would have cost $11 billion instead of the promised $1.75 billion. I would vote for Phase 2 light rail in a flash if it could be built for $1.75 billion, even though I will never use it, because that would be a good deal for our community — and possibly a start toward addressing the external costs of cars that Zemke mentioned, as well as such broader issues at sprawl and global warming. Would only that Phase 2 could have been built for the $11 billion true cost of the monorail, voters might have gone for it. It didn’t lose by very much. But that figure, everyone knew, was a pig-in-a-poke.
It just doesn’t make any damn sense to choose the most expensive and least possible possible mode of public transportation if you want to build a mass transit system. The pigheaded insistence of light rail proponents on building light rail, and only light rail, to the exclusion of alternative modes doesn’t make any damn sense, either. Neither does their equally pig-headed refusal to address the separate, but equally toxic, funding issue. The light rail crowd seems hell-bent on committing political suicide. I’m not going to exert myself to talk them out of it; that’s their business. I have enough on my hands simply to keep them from raiding my grocery cash. They’re every bit as aggressive and rapacious as Nigerian internet scammers — and, unfortunately, more dangerous and harder to fend off. But I will keep fighting this attack on my household’s vital financial interests as long as I have to; I have no choice.
I must add, though, that I’m very suspicious of the claimed car-reduction benefits of light rail. Even Sound Transit never claimed light rail would reduce car travel; they represented that, at best, it would absorb a portion of future commuting growth. Every public official involved in the RTID/ST2 debate acknowledged that traffic congestion will get worse even if Prop. 1 passed.
A major disadvantage of light rail, compared to buses, is that you can’t alter the route. In addition, it only serves a relatively narrow corridor. Finally, anyone with point-to-point transportation needs can’t use any mode of public transportation unless both points are on the route, or at a minimum, adequate parking is provided at suburban boarding stations so that it’s possible to drive to the boarding point. And public transportation is not feasible for anyone who must transport tools and materials, or must drive a sales route, or go into the field in the course of his/her work day.
During the pre-election debate over Prop. 1, the projections I saw indicated that Sound Transit, if fully built, would ultimately carry only 1% to 2% of the region’s daily commuter traffic. If these figures are correct, then light rail does not relieve traffic congestion; does not significantly reduce car emissions; does not prevent sprawl; does not reduce the need for new freeway lanes or road construction; does not, in fact, accomplish anything at all except make a barely noticeable contribution to the region’s people-moving capacity. By the funding mechanism chosen, what it mainly does is force taxpayers to subsidize the commuting costs of a select group of commuters that until now have been borne by the commuters themselves.
Mr. Feit’s interview and article were mostly right on the money; although he was much too generous is his “grading” method for Mrs. Gregoire. She’ll be gone soon anyhow, so who cares.
Sound Transit’s entire raison-de-etre (sp?) is that it allows recruiters at large employers to tell recruits that the Seattle area has good public transit. That suggests to recruits they’ll be able to buy a reasonably priced house in the scenic hinterlands, drive to a park and ride lot, and be comfortably whisked to their employer’s doorstep. The large employers also know that such a system would eliminate workforce tardiness/excuses by some measurable amount. As those employers wouldn’t be paying for the trains (due to how much regressive taxing the ST model relies on), they think the scheme is worth it.
Once you use a little perspective, you can see ST is not worth it to the VAST MAJORITY of people being forced to pay for it. If the feds and businesses paid for it all (like in Portland and basically everywhere else) it might be worth it. But even that’s not likely, due to geologic and topographic challenges here.