Joel Connelly, a Horse’s Ass “Friend of the Blog” and Drinking Liberally attendee, absolutely savages Mayor Nickels’ tunnel in today’s column. It’s not a surprise; Joel’s been pro-rebuild for a long time, but I can’t help thinking the anti-tunnel trash-talking is played-out.
Why? Simply put, the tunnel isn’t going to happen. It’s going to lose at the polls. Plus, we don’t have the money. We have projected money, but we don’t have cash money. And Frank Chopp hates the tunnel, so it’s “game over.” Joel’s column is titled “It’s time for Nickels to bury tunnel,” as if the thing isn’t already politically buried.
I’d like to see columnists from every paper realize that we’re down to two choices. Do you want an elevated rebuild? Yes or no. The incessant hacking at Nickels and his dead tunnel just short circuits the debate. However, Joel Connelly does address the “surface plus transit” option:
The crowning consequences will come if there is no tunnel, no new viaduct and the tear-down, don’t-replace folks win out.
It’ll send thousands of cars toward Pioneer Square, which in the ’70s was the first place downtown rescued from highway culture. (Garages were to replace historic buildings.)
And, if the predicted 12 hours of daily gridlock comes to pass on Interstate 5, thousands more cars will crawl along the freeway, belching greenhouse gases into the air shed of America’s greenest city.
While cars would go through Pioneer Square on a the new Alaskan Way surface boulevard instead of a Viaduct, lots of people would be able to use new transit investments. That’s a good thing for the historic district. As for cars on I-5 and their greenhouse gases, I’m confused. Do cars somehow emit no gases when their cruising at 40 mph on the waterfront? Oh well… I patiently wait for the column in which Joel interviews Cary Moon or Ron Sims, two prominent “surface plus transit” supporters.
Lastly, I can think of no better way to fight the highway culture than to not build highways.
“While cars would go through Pioneer Square on a the new Alaskan Way surface boulevard”
Huh? WHY? The existing Alaskan Way doesn’t dead-end at the Pergola.
Oh, try living in the real world, for God’s sake. Just because you and the other Puritans want people to start riding the bus more isn’t going to make people do it. Why? Because buses suck. And replacing the viaduct with nothing isn’t going to make the buses suck any less–it’ll just make everyone else suck almost as much as the bus sucks. Maybe that’s the whole point of Puritanism, I don’t know.
If the tunnel is dead, I no longer care what option “wins”–or perhaps “fails to lose” is more appropriate. Both the elevated and surface options are equally unacceptable. But hey, the fact that city leaders can’t competently implement a project to save their lives is why I moved out of the city to begin with! Enjoy your new eyesore and/or ruined historic downtown, Seattle. I’ll be standing on the sidelines like Nelson Muntz, pointing and shouting “Ha-ha!”
Will,
Thank you for pointing out the absurdity of the argument that fewer cars stuck in traffic somehow emit more greenhouse gases than higher volumes of fast moving cars. Every gallon of gasoline burned has virtually the same amount of carbon content emitted into the atmosphere no matter what condition that gallon is burned. While cars in stop and go traffic do travel fewer miles on a gallon of gas than a car moving at a steady speed (hence differences in city vs. highway epa fuel economy ratings), more capacity for single occupancy vehicles equals more gallons of gas burned equals more greenhouse gas emissions.
Yes, more SOV car trips will be transferred to city streets and I-5 with a surface/option. But, a majority of commuters will adjust their commuting habits to minimize their time spent stuck in traffic. Want proof? Think back to the sinking of the I-90 bridge in the early 90s. Traffic volumes crossing Lake Washington went way down.
An Alaska Way option with less highway capacity and more transit capacity will equal fewer greenhouse gas emissions plain and simple.
Bill LaBorde
WashPIRG Director
Vote No! on Elevated Rebuild
The anti-car, anti-SOV, mass transit approach and mentality towards transportation policy is the reason that the region is nearing total gridlock.
Time for a new approach.
Build roads. I know it’s a refreshingly new, groundbreaking approach, but clearly what has been done for the last 20+ years hasn’t worked.
Add GP lanes. NOW.
The policy should be centered around how best to move SOV. Not how do we force folks into the HOV lane. That is a proven failed policy.
Build that expaned elevated structure.
New approach!? You’ve got to be kidding! Trying to build our way out of congestion is the old approach. We’re just starting (emphasis on “starting”) to try a different approach by building High-Capacity transit in this region.
Bill
Can we lose the myopia for a minute, please? The SR 520 bridge needs to be replaced. The replacement will have transit capabilities. Now, where will the money come from to do that? Current (lowball) estimates of the funding shortfall – assuming of courese RTID passes in November – are running at about $2.7 billion. We could raise the gas tax. We could tax employers (three bucks per employee per month). We could impose a per-mile charge on autos. There are numerous “green” ways to raise the revenue. My question is: why is the legislature IGNORING the SR 520 funding gap? Why are WashPIRG and Futurewise and the Sierra Club IGNORING this issue? The progressive community should make their voices heard that progressive revenue sources should be identified and implemented by the legislature to “bridge the bridge gap.” Otherwise, we are just looking at more sales taxes.
Oh c’mon Goldy … buzzards picking the carcass clean is in the finest tradition of scavenging.
The money’s not a real big problem — just grab the $400 million of public financing for Bennett’s basketball palace and the $300 million or so the NASCAR vultures want — and you’re there.
@ 6
520 has lots of folks big dogging it, like Sen Ed Murray. There is some controversy with 520. but much less compared to the Viaduct. RTID, if approved, is supposed to cover most of the difference.
Alex: You’re right about SR 520. RTID and the state’s response is ridiculous. WashPIRG will definitely make this one of our primary criticisms when we submit comments to RTID. The lack of proper funding for 520 in RTID vis a vis other projects on the list is a primary reason why we may well oppose the RTID package in November.
Bill
Joel is right. The tunnel option may be “dead” (although, it’s been “dead” for a long time, yet somehow keeps rising from the ashes phoenix-like) but the bickering is not. Joel’s real target is the bickering, which is very much alive and thriving, not the tunnel. And he’s absolutely right about the bickering — there will be serious political consequences if it doesn’t stop. Get on with it, and rebuild SR-99.
Will @ 9 wrote: “RTID, if approved, is supposed to cover most of the difference.”
No way Jose. After Mayor Nickels dropped the request that RTID put $800 M toward the previous iteration of the tunnel, that $800 M was reallocated by RTID to the SR 520 project. Coupled with the previous $500 M that was supposed to go to SR 520, the RTID share then would stand at $1.3 M. Add in the state gas tax increase money and tolls, and there REMAINS a $2.7 billion gap. And NO, Sen. Murray is not saying ANYTHING about a progressive or user-based revenue plan to make up that shortfall. He’s been silent on it.
The *terrible* thing about RTID is how HB 2178 from last session allows RTID expenditures to count against ST subarea equity imbalances. What that means is that the huge subarea spending deficits the eastside now has can be offset by RTID expenditures. In other words, billions of taxes will be taken from Seattle (ST’s “King Co. North” subarea) and spent on freeways in Bellevue, Sammamish and Issaquah. That is because of the high cost of light rail – the Seattle RTID taxes will be the offset, and they’ll be spent on sprawl causing road projects on the eastside.
thanks for your efforts Bill!
I typed out the wrong bill number above. It should read ESHB 2871:
http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/bill.....1-S.SL.pdf
Sec. 6 of that bill is the key provision. It amended RCW 36.120.040. That’s where it says the RTID taxes can be used to offset ST subarea equity imbalances.
So, using your logic, should we close the airports, so those greenhouse gas emitting airplanes cannot fly? Or are you under the impression that jet planes are not a part of the global warming equation? How about private planes/jets? Recreational motorcycle use? I’ve never seen a Harley with a catalytic converter, have you?
After all, people can bicycle to Las Vegas. Take a boat to Hawaii and Fiji.
Oh yeah, THAT would be stupid, as opposed to your eutopian social engineering by eco-fascist fiat that fucks the middle class as usual. Fuck Democracy when you are in favor of something that is “for my own good”. Right?
You guys are just like the Republicans. Two sides of the same coin.
2 “I moved out of the city…”
Good!
Hey, busdrivermike? There are some really good decaf blends available. You might want to try some.
The folks here are advocating every option available, and neither the liberals nor the conservatives seem to be lining up along party lines.
While some take issue with the vote, most of the objection is that the options presented are not real. The rebuild proponents seem to be presenting a project that will be even larger and uglier that the current viaduct, while the tunnel proponents are proposing a plan that the professionals claim would not work.
The surface option is not even on the ballot, other than by voting “no” to both of the other options. Some folks are advocating just that.
Me? I live in Pierce County. I’ve decided to root for the “tear it down” group, as I think it would cause business to migrate down here, while making Seattle much more pleasant to visit as a tourist. I’m looking forward to a San Francisco style waterfront, complete with mimes.
But I don’t get a vote.
Moron @ 15, you may want to rethink your glee.
http://www.forbes.com/home/200.....table.html
Seattle is far behind backward Little Rock, nasty Camden and Poughkeepsie, for God sake.
Sniveling at 2:30 PM (the post numbers occasionally change as posts in the buffer are spam-checked)
Let’s see. By your reference, Seattle has come up from number 80 to number 34.
Seattle is ahead of Dallas, Ft.Worth, Houston, San Antonio, El Paso, (is one of those villages missing an idiot?), not to mention Miami, Portland, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, St. Louis, Dayton, and, much to my personal dismay, Tacoma, (not really surprising, as I cannot find a decent Indian restaurant down here).
Do you even bother to read your references?
RE: @12 & @13 –
This allocation process of RTID taxes is interesting.
RTID will have the same spending boundaries as Sound Transit has. The ST subarea equity rules are that about the same amount raised in taxes is supposed to be spent with the five areas of the region.
But RCW 36.120.040 has an aggregation mechanism, for the purposes of determining how much RTID tax gets spent in each of the five areas. The E. King area now has a big ST deficit (due to all the past and future light rail spending in N. King, which does indeed include Seattle). So the amount of ST and RTID taxes would be aggregated, to determine where the combined proceeds get spent. That’d net out with a big chunk of the N. King RTID taxes raised being spent on widening roads and laying down new highways in E. King. THAT would explain why RTID plans on $1.5 bln. in “I-405” work – at least a fourth of that would be taxes from Seattle.
What say you Roger Rabbit, Esq.? How do you read it?
Joel is wrong about this. Just wrong.
The Mayor will not support the tunnel post March 13, after voters reject it. He’d be a dope to drop his support before then. Joel’s advice is politcal idiocy.
But Joel likes the rebuild of a bigger, uglier, smellier Viaduct.
And Joel does a total miss on the views of the rest of the people of the state, who generally love the city and are proud of it, even if they hate its politics. They get why the City doesn’t want another – bigger – Viaduct. They just haven’t really heard that the city has already agreed to pay the extra costs.
Most everyone in the state would support the lower cost option that works for the city – on the surface – and call it good. Except the highway department, which is still stick in the 1950s on this project and is dragging the Governor down with them.
I guess Roger Rabbit doesn’t like answering questions. Lots of lawyers are like that: big mouths that clam up tight when somebody asks them something. Oh, well . . ..
Here’s some more about RTID. RTID is going to be used to pave McChord Air Force base. Moreover, Seattle taxpayers will be paying a big chunk of that. This is from the “Local Transit” forum in the PI —
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The South Sound Senate Caucus just launched a tax-grab power play, using RTID.
Check out SB 6031:
–
http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/bill.....s/6031.pdf
–
Section One of the bill would mandate highway spending on particular road projects, in a particular order. At number two on that list is paying for a Cross-Base Highway. That project already is the subject of a lawsuit in Pierce County, on solid environmental grounds.
The remainder of this bill would do several things. RTID would be required to sell many billions (the exact amount is not defined) of dollars in face vale of long-term debt securities. The term of that debt, whenever it is sold, would have to be forty years. Some could be sold in 2009, some in 2020, etc.
So much for “pay as you go.” The South Sound Senate Caucus is bent on maximizing the amount of tax dollars from Seattle that go to paying RTID bondholders, as opposed to having Seattle taxpayers “just” pay billions to RTID for construction costs of roads in outlying reaches of the region.
It gets worse. Section Two also does the following. If all the RTID money is not enough to completely pay for the highway wish list in Pierce County the South Sound Senate Caucus has identified, then WITHOUT a public vote, RTID could raise additional sales tax and MVET on the entire region to finish up paying for those projects. That is, without seeking voter approval, RTID could add an additional tenth of a percent sales tax and an additional tenth of a percent MVET in all three counties to pay for these legislators’ pet roads in Pierce County.
Keep in mind, the RTID sales tax increase (or increases, if this bill passes) would be on top of the “Bridging the Gap” sales tax increase, and on top of the ST2 .5% sales tax increase. We would be at or near the top of places in country being hammered by sales tax. That is the most regressive form of tax. We are close to the top of that shameful list now.
RTID has legislative authority to impose taxes on businesses (a business excise tax). But it is just soooo much sweeter for these government leaders to slam families and the poor.
This is the kind of thing RTID and ST spawn. It also is what the new Regional Transportation Commission Report identifies as a fundamental flaw with the intrinsically unrepresentative and unaccountable governing structure of Sound Transit and RTID. Politicians appointed to those boards, and also the politicians in the legislature, manifestly are subject to conflicts of interest. They can not plan or act in the best interests of the region as a whole because they are accountable only to their local constituents.
________________**********_________________*************
Anywhoo, WILL, the point is that RTID money will not cover the SR 520 project, and it looks like state legislators from far-flung locales are going to get tons of that money for paving what now are relatively green areas.
So who here is a RTID supporter? WTF is UP with RTID?