Earlier this week, I slogged from Olympia that a battle was brewing over tolling.
The question: How should money generated from tolling be divvied up between roads and transit? (Note to Will at HorsesAss, “Transit” means BRT, HOV, bike lanes, light rail and light rail connections among other investments that get us out of cars.)
Considering both Josh and myself are already out of our cars, I figure he’s using the royal “us”. That is, unless he’s referring to my occasional Flexcar use to visit family on holidays in rural NE King County. In which case, good luck getting me out of that car, since there’s no light rail to Carnation. But I digress.
From the comments to Josh’s post:
Josh, if you really, really want to kill the tolling idea for 520, this is exactly the way to do it. Tolls are supposed to pay for the 520 replacement. I have no problem with using part of the toll money for transit… if it’s built into the replacement bridge. Two HOV / transit lanes down the center, with dedicated ramps, like I-90? We can do that. But the farther the money moves away from the bridge itself, the greater the public outcry and the chances of the toll idea being shitcanned.
If we’re getting a new bridge, it makes sense to make robust transit-oriented functionality a part of the design of the bridge. This means HOV and bike lanes. This means bigger light rail-carrying pontoons and interchanges that make bus travel easier. If we make these investments, does it really matter how we we divide the tolls?
When the old Tacoma Narrows was set to be tolled way before construction on the new bridge even began, there was a lawsuit citing a law that was put in place stating that it was illegal to toll a structure that had been paid for (a law developed in the late 60’s after the current old Narrows was built and paid for). Am I wrong about this, or wouldn’t our government be showing incredible short-sightedness in trying to do this again? Sounds like an effort that could blow up in their face and cause further delays.
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
Three gripes:
1. Collecting tolls for a bridge that doesn’t exist.
2. Using said tolls for something other than the bridge.
3. Tolls being too high. I’ve heard up to $10 round trip!
This isn’t rocket science, but it does involve some knowledge of economics….do they even teach that at Evergreen?
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but bicycling is no more transit than a private helicopter is transit.
That said, bicycling totally rocks and is, if you yours, you kids’ future.
Bike today or my grandkid is going to eat your grandkid!
Why would you spend a billion dollars or more of scarce public funds to build a structure to carry light rail that may never been built? And what are the odds of light rail being built, given that you couldn’t get voters to approve it even when you advertised it at 1/10th of the actual cost?
I’m still waiting for someone to explain how you raise $28 billion for light rail from a tax that costs 1.2 million households only $120 a year. By my reckoning, that’s less than $150 million a year, and it would take 233 1/3 years to raise the $28 billion. Of course, with the payments stretched over such a long time period, the end cost would balloon greatly, and most of your payments would go to interest, so you never would get the damn thing paid for.
It makes no sense to me to spend an extra billion dollars to accomodate a light rail system that will cost the average household at least $1,200 a year for the next 20 or 30 years, in order to make 98% of the population subsidize cheap (and inflexible) transportation for the other 2%, especially when a goodly number of those 98% won’t even live long another to ride on the damn thing.
I’m not against light rail per se; but if you want it, you have to find a better way to do it than this. In the meantime, the 520 bridge needs to be replaced anyway, and it should be done in the most cost-effective way possible (4 lanes; no approach tunnel), and should be paid for by those who use the road system (gas taxes, tolls).
Think about this: If 520 were scaled back to simple replacement of the existing span, you could build it with the funds already committed, and wouldn’t need the tolls.
How will commuters feel about paying $5, $7, or $10 per trip for the privilege of looking at the empty space on pontoons that was put there to carry light rail that will never be built because the voters will never agree to fork over %5 of their annual household income for the rest of their lives so 2% of their neighbors can avoid the expense of owning a car?
Roger,
Provide a third lane in each direction that’s paved, but with recessed rails as well. Until or unless someone conjures up a way to actually run their pretty little trains, busses will run along ’em just fine.
In truth, the best way to deal with the whole problem might be to remove the bridge entirely and use the money to subsidize everyone who’s presently commuting over that route to move closer to where they work, or provide a tax incentive to employers to reverse the current trend away from allowing telecommuting and flextime.
Aside from whether or not it’s becoming a death trap, the present situation on 520 has become so unpleasant that sooner or later some people are going to resort to swimming across the lake instead. Hell, there are some days when that would be faster.
Here is a truth told me by a highly placed Oly insider: AIN’T GONNA BE NO LIGHT RAIL ON A NEW 520!!! NOT NOW, NOT EVER!
Get used to it, get over it, learn to live with, embrace the bus within!
How soon before the light rail fanatics form a religion devoted to the propogation of their faith? They regard light rail as holy grail now, so it seems as though it’s only a matter of time.
No light rail on 520. Period!
The Piper
The pontoons aren’t a great idea, because they’ll just make it easier for detractors to create doubt about whether the first rail corridor served should be 90 or 520. Anyway, by the time we *do* want to put rail on 520, the structure we build today will be at least halfway through its operational lifetime.
@4,6
The new Narrows bridge was built so that it can carry light rail in the future, if people want to do that.
@6
“remove the bridge entirely and use the money to subsidize everyone who’s presently commuting over that route to move closer to where they work, or provide a tax incentive to employers to reverse the current trend away from allowing telecommuting and flextime.”
Heck, yeah!
@3
Yup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_transport
Public transport, public transportation, public transit or mass transit comprise all transport systems in which the passengers do not travel in their own vehicles. While the above terms are generally taken to include rail and bus services, wider definitions might include scheduled airline services, ferries, taxicab services etc. — any system that transports members of the general public. A further restriction that is sometimes applied is that transit should occur in continuously shared vehicles, which would exclude taxis that are not shared-ride taxis.
@9…BS…
Again, LIGHT RAIL AIN’T GONNA HAPPEN ON A NEW 520 EVER!!!
This word comes from Oly based upon the insistence of Seattle/King County politicos.
There…will…be…no…light…rail…on…the…new…bridge…
I used monosyllable words to make the concept easy to understand.
The Piper
Good luck Piper, as these types are stuck on stupid and dense as spent uranium…
@13
The way things have been going in King County there might never be a new 520…
Stick your bike lanes up you ass. There no return on the investment use it to move people not a certain class of idiots.
Here’s what I don’t get…
Earmarks, or in other words, defining in some detail how and where money that is already appropriated will be spent, are “bad.”
But defining in some detail where and on what each dollar appropriated for a bridge replacement will be spent is “good.”
Nope, don’t get it…
And with all due you-know-what, Piper, your claim about some supposed tip from a “highly placed Oly insider” is dubious. A: the person may not even exist. B: the person may not know shit. C: the person may think they know shit even though they don’t. D: the process isn’t over, and shit happens.
Ken, when you start to look at moving people instead of vehicles, rail oooks eevn better.
@17…DL…
I never claim to know things I don’t know. How I know what I know isn’t anyone’s business. Suffice to say I talk with a lot of people all across the spectrum.
And I can tell you that the shot-callers in Seattle/King County have zip-zero interest in any light rail on 520. What transit will roll on the new bridge will be buses.
The Piper
I just don’t buy Will’s argument. He offers no evidence (like polling) that voters will reject a tolled project that slices off a small portion for transit operations on the same corridor. A high toll to fund the bridge will dramatically increase transit demand on that corridor. The buses that run on that corridor now are standing room only at peak hours. Without new buses to take the demand, that corridor just won’t function.
Here’s my longer comment from the same Slog comment referenced by Will:
If you’re going to go to the trouble of re-building a bridge, you should build it in a way that it will be useful for a century to come. That means maximizing the corridor’s efficiency in a way that also addresses the critical environmental issue of the next 100 years – global warming.
Efficiency means maximizing throughput – of people and goods, not cars. Given that this corridor is incredibly tightly constrained (just ask UW, the Arboretum and the neighborhoods on either side of the bridge), that means using a combination of car, transit and bike capacity. If you maximize the transit opportunities, you can carry more people in one HOV lane than you would in, even, three more car lanes.
The need to dramatically reduce carbon emissions over the next 40 years- something the Governor and Legislature has already agreed to- adds more weight to the need to favor transit as much as possible for maximizing capacity.
Most importantly, these tolling bills are not just about 520, they establish the policies for tolling anywhere in the state. When you look at variable tolling as a way to better manage the existing freeway system and create a non-tax based pool of revenue to meet future transportation needs, it would be insane to limit tolling revenues to a 90/10 asphalt/transit ratio.
Everyone should quit working and go on welfare like the
democrats do. Change your last name to Rodriguez and say
NO HABLA ENGLAIS when you show up at the doctor. Then
work on recycling govt cheese wrappers and do it for the
children. OH, and get some Blame Bush T shirts. This
country needs to get back to the original Constitution
where only landowners could vote.
This debate about whether transit should be eligible for toll revenue is a false debate right now.
It is being forced on us by interest group leaders trying to outdo each other in communicating their transit support.
The people who ought to decide what the toll revenues are used for are the people who will be paying the tolls. Not the Sierra Club, Transportation Choices or WASHpirg.
In the case of 520/90, I’d bet that the people who pay the tolls won’t mind using some of the money for transit, as long at it doesn’t make the toll rates completely unreasonable. So transit ought to be eligible. The proposed legislation that brought this up also establishes advisory committees for tolled places to help sort things out like this.
They key to moving forward in 2008 is not to settle every issue on tolling. It is to establish a framework to guide future decisions. The proposed legislation is about the most progressive legislation of its type anywhere in the nation.
So why this big transit controversy. If we wind up collecting tolls on 520, they will probably never come off. Looks like the tolls will need to raise roughly $2 billion over about 25 years. 10% of that is a lot of money.
And its not like the $4 billion bridge isn’t helping transit anyway. The new bridge would authomatically have huge transit benefits the minute it opens under a 6 lane configuration because buses won’t be stopped in the same traffic at today’s bottenecks. The deal already is that expasion beyond 6 lanes is only for transit.
This current squabble seems rooted in some lobbiests trying to outjump (or out green) each other – all forgetting how fundamentally the legislation is making a huge green setp forward.
They need to wake up.
“The way things have been going in King County there might never be a new 520…”
This gets my vote. Fuck the bridge, let it sink. The best way to cut down of our CO2 emissions is STOP COMMUTING SO DAMN FAR!
More realistically though, @6 has the right ideas.
As someone who’s a big proponent of light rail, I’m not in the “Build light rail on 520” camp myself. There’s no precedent for building light rail on a pontoon bridge in fact, so it’s a big gamble that’s not worth even chatting about, much less investing in.
Let’s allow the new bridge to at least have one or more HOV lanes each direction that’s continuous for starters. For those who commute between Seattle and the Eastside (Yes, Microsoft employees, talking to you), your rides on the 520-bound routes would certainly improve.
Unfortunately, SR-520 has poorly designed HOV lanes in the Eastside portion, well away from the bridge, so buses going westbound are STILL stuck. The HOV lanes disappear just before the big I-405/SR-520 interchange, which takes up half of the torturous commute back to Seattle.
The point of mentioning this?
Well, light rail between Montlake and the Eastside doesn’t *have* to be connected to SR-520 itself.
If a certain very rich tech company based in Redmond is serious about creating a portal between an ever growing work force living in Seattle as opposed to the Eastside (especially to compete with that other really rich tech company based in Mountain View, California establishing bases here), they do have the means to help fund a way to get people across the water and past all the traffic in no time.
However, to flip flop again, a much better solution to reducing traffic would be for most of the tech companies in King County to allow more people to telecommute more often, the cleanest solution of them all.
@6 A $10-per-trip toll would effectively turn the bridge into a Berlin Wall anyway.
@8 Yeah, I don’t understand the light rail worship, either. Chances are by the time it’s built most of the objections to cars will be overcome by new technology, anyway. Pollution? Hydrogen fuel cells or plug-in electrics will eliminate it. Congestion? Computer-guided cars could help reduce it. Twenty or thirty years from now, automotive technology will have changed so much you won’t even recognize tomorrow’s cars. By the time light rail is completed people won’t even remember what problem we were trying to solve by building it!
At the rate this region gets things done, levitation will be perfected before the damn thing is built, anyway.
@14 It ain’t us who are littering the landscape with spent uranium that makes people sick. That’s you guys — the anti-environment party, a.k.a. Dirty Republicans.
@16 Dear klake: Please get on a bicycle and ride it downhill into an intersection as fast as you can. Thank you. Yours, Roger Rabbit.
@19 “The buses that run on that corridor now are standing room only at peak hours. Without new buses to take the demand, that corridor just won’t function.”
That’s not unique to 520; that’s also true of every other commuter bus route in the city. We need more buses, period.
@20 I agree! There’s no reason to work. This country doesn’t respect workers. It doesn’t pay them. And it taxes the shit out of work! So, I did like Mark says — I quit working! I’m a capitalist now! I get paid for pushing dollar signs in little circles on a computer screen, just like Republicans do. Screw work! There’s no reason for anyone to work! You should inherit money or play the stock market, like Republicans do. Working is for suckers and saps.
@20 Speaking of welfare, Republicans get a lot more than Democrats do. Corporate welfare is 5 times the welfare provided to individuals, and a lot more than that if you disregard nursing home care for the indigent elderly, which is by far the biggest chunk of individual welfare spending. I think we should cut Republican welfare, including crop supports, no-bid contracts, subsidies, and corporate tax breaks. Then we’d have a lot more money to spend on food banks and unemployment benefits for people who want to work but can’t get a job because Republicans have mismanaged the economy.
@23 You don’t get rich by paying your costs of doing business. You get rich by making other people pay your costs of doing business.
@20 Duke? David Duke, party of 2…your table is ready. Will Mr. Thurmond be joining you tonight?
So…er…so light rail is just an evil conspiracy by the liberals in Seattle? I assume that’s also true of Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Fort Worth, Jersey City, Kenosha, Memphis, New Orleans, Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento, St. Louis, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose and Tampa. All part of the vast evil left wing conspiracy?
Look. Fact, Seattle will grow. Single family homes become 2, 4, or 8 units condos. Apt/condo buildings become taller and denser. No new roads will ever be built in the city limits, there is simply no ’empty’ space. So take the traffic we have now, and double or quadruple the population, and do what? You can double the population on Capital Hill, but you can’t build a single yard of new ‘road’ on it. Buses are better than single cars, but still are just ‘vehicles’ on the road and subject to the same traffic jams. Only a separate light rail/elevated/subway will work in the future.
Sure maybe we’re just at the very STARTING stage, barely big enough of a city to need it and barely able to make it viable, unlike an extreme example like New York where the subway is required for a functioning city. But Seattle ain’t getting smaller, and every day the costs to “start” building a system will go up.
@34
You forgot Dublin!
http://www.railway-technology......index.html
And Berlin!
http://www.bvg.de/index.php/en.....name/Trams
You could also include Los Angeles, except I guess their massive new subway system doesn’t qualify as “light rail”.