I love that my two favorite local politicians are hashing things out in the mayor’s race. In this case, they have dueling posts on Slog about sub area equity. Sub area equity is an important issue for a Seattle mayor who will have a seat on the Sound Transit Board of Directors. First, was Ed Murray, who I agree with in general, opposing sub are equity (I’m ignoring the political sniping in both; I’m pro political sniping, but not what I want to write about here).
Sound Transit’s sub-area equity requires that any money raised in one of the five sub-areas of the Sound Transit district must be spent in that sub-area. It may seem sensible on the surface, but it is really a terrible policy, originally cooked up by light rail opponent Rob McKenna (when he served on the King County Council and the Sound Transit board) as a way of forcing transit dollars that should have been spent in Seattle to be diverted to the suburbs instead.
Sub-area equity has done more harm to the cause of efficient deployment of limited transit dollars in the central Puget Sound—and thus more harm to Seattle—than any other single decision made in the last two decades of transit planning. It allocates dollars based not on density and demand for service, but on political geography. Instead of building a system from the inside out to maximize ridership and benefit smart land use decisions, it balkanizes the region and facilitates sprawl.
Sub-area equity needs to go. And it needs to be replaced with a more sensible policy that stipulates that Sound Transit dollars will be spent efficiently to add light rail where it will have the maximum impact in terms of moving people, i.e. in denser cities like Seattle and our growing inner-ring suburbs. Such a policy would ensure that Seattle’s transit needs are better accommodated – particularly our underserved West side Green Line communities including Ballard and West Seattle – while also ensuring that hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars are not diverted to building light rail in outlying areas where population densities are insufficient to support strong ridership.
I’m not sure it encourages sprawl (it brings transit to less dense places, but those places are already sprawling). But in general, I agree that there’s more bang for the buck in denser areas. And transit ought to be built more in our big cities and inner ring cities, and sub area equity is a hindrance to that. So fair enough.
Mayor McGinn has a response.
In fact, at the urging of myself and others, the Sound Transit board accelerated all of their planning around the region so we are prepared to go to the ballot in 2016 if the legislature gives Sound Transit revenue authority to support expansion.
All of that work falls apart if a Seattle mayor suddenly decided they wanted to change the deal. By attacking sub-area equity Ed Murray threatens to blow up Sound Transit. Sound Transit’s board was willing to advance these rail planning studies in Seattle in part because I pledged Seattle’s support to help complete the regional system. Communities outside of Seattle have been banking on future rail while the central portion has been built in Seattle. Proposing to end sub-area equity and take the money for Seattle is guaranteed to destroy the regional political coalition for rail and doom the chances of putting Sound Transit 3 on the ballot in 2016.
Further, sub-area equity protects Seattle. The recession significantly reduced Sound Transit’s revenues too, and they are working hard to meet their commitments elsewhere in King, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties. We need to ensure revenue raised in Seattle stays in Seattle to support our projects – which is why Seattle needs to defend sub-area equity, not attack it.
Even though McGinn probably wrote the better piece, I still agree with Ed Murray on sub area equity.
Carl,
There isn’t much interest in this topic. Put up the Friday Night Funnies.
Rail development very much does promote sprawl, just like freeways or any other efficient form of transportation when it connects dense urban cores with exurban or rural areas. Look at the rail lines out of NYC or Chicago, where commuter trains have a long history, and follow the sprawl. That has been exacerbated by the automobile, but people who live in eastern Pennsylvania and work in Manhattan aren’t generally driving to and from work each day; they’re taking the train. Better for the environment in terms of fossil fuel use, but it’s still sprawl.
And promoting sprawl is exactly the point. Every major transportation project in this region is driven by real estate development, not Ed Murray’s quaint (yet sensible) notion of “moving people,” which is – sometimes – a side benefit. Local examples abound, including the recent, obscenely expensive Paul Allen Beautification Project at South Lake Union, which sure looks pretty but made the Mercer Mess worse (!), and the downtown tunnel, which won’t move nearly as many people as the rejected, cheaper alternatives, but sure is a bonanza for waterfront property owners.
It’s the same with light rail. Putting the first Seattle line down MLK (rather than Rainier, a chronically congested arterial where more people and businesses were at the time, or some other part of the city) was all about developing the MLK corridor. Which is well underway; mile after mile of MLK is unrecognizable from ten years ago.
It’s the same with the current push for lines to outer suburbs with relatively low prospective ridership. It’s not at all efficient in terms of moving the most people with limited transportation dollars. It very much promotes sprawl. But for the people who build the new sprawl and have the foresight to buy property wisely, it will work out very well indeed. Their investments in local politicians will pay for themselves thousands of times over.
And we wonder why traffic here sucks. There’s three simple answers: 1) Too many cars. (Which is, in part, a function of our badly underfunded public transit systems.) 2) Too many competing agencies. 3) Too few big transportation projects – whether focused on public or private transport – that are actually designed primarily to facilitate, you know, transportation, rather than something else entirely.
” … as a way of forcing transit dollars that should have been spent in Seattle to be diverted to the suburbs instead.”
Translation into English: A guy running for mayor of Seattle in an election that suburban voters don’t get to vote in wants suburban taxpayers to be taxes for transit services they won’t get any benefit from. That doesn’t seem like a very difficult position for a mayoral candidate to take.
” … so we are prepared to go to the ballot in 2016 if the legislature gives Sound Transit revenue authority to support expansion.”
Huh? I’m under the impression we’re already paying Sound Transit taxes — to the tune of double-digit billions. They want more? Are we looking at a double-digit sales tax in 2016 and beyond?
“Proposing to end sub-area equity and take the money for Seattle is guaranteed to destroy the regional political coalition for rail and doom the chances of putting Sound Transit 3 on the ballot in 2016.”
No, it won’t doom the chances of putting it on the ballot; it’ll merely guarantee its defeat. After all, how many suburban voters will vote to tax themselves for transit that benefits only Seattle and does nothing for suburban commuters? They’d have to be irrational (or hate their money) to vote for such a tax.
“Even though McGinn probably wrote the better piece …”
No doubt; Murray doesn’t even know the difference between “diffuse” and “defuse.” What has happened to literacy in this country?
@2 What’s so terrible about sprawl if you can get people out of cars and into more efficient and less polluting modes of transportation? Does Ed Murray’s vision of our region consist of five million humans crammed into rabbit warren-like 200 sq. ft. apartments and condos? Not everyone wants to live in conditions where they might get hit by bullets coming through walls from their neighbors’ domestic quarrels. Is there something intrinsically bad about people who work in downtown Seattle living in Bellevue, Issaquah, Mukilteo, or North Bend if they don’t commute by car? But not to worry, if you build light rail to the suburbs with 50 parking spots at the station, you’re not going to get more than 50 riders. So maybe spending the money building transit to the ‘burbs is just wasted anyway.
LINK would not fit in the Rainier Ave, Martin Luther King Jr Way south of Rainier was wide to begin with. Rainier was originally a streetcar route. Denver is building a bigger system, and providing more options. I admit, the RTD made a mistake with the G-Line which was a suburb to suburb line(complementing existing service from Downtown), and they suspended that service, which will be brought back soon. Connecting the I-225 line with the East line Electric Commuter Rail line.
http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/i225_1
The FasTracks plan was approved in 2004, and it was ambitious. Although, on the southwest portion of the Denver Metro area, I think they left a gap between the existing line and the W-Line, which opened today.
http://www.rtd-fastracks.com/main_26
@1 Speak for yourself. Lots of us are interested in how much taxes we have to pay and what our money is used for. Just because you’re not doesn’t mean we’re not.
Anyway, building rapid transit through places like the Rainier Valley will gentrify those areas, and the low income people pushed out of what will soon be high-rent neighborhoods have to live somewhere, so we should extend light rail to the state parks out in the woods where everyone earning less than six figures will be living in campers and tents so they can get to the DSHS office in Rainier Valley to sign up for their food stamps.
From 6,
Yawn…where are the Friday Night Funnies?
One aspect of the RTD East line, is 2 stations will serve a growing mixes-use, mixed-density neighborhood development. What’s interesting is what it used to be. Stapleton International Airport. One of the few remnants of the airport is the control tower. The Central Park Boulevard station will be just west of where the runways used to be.
http://www.stapletondenver.com.....nnectivity
The original plan was for the line to open in 2014 , but it will be most likely 2016. The East line, ironically, will also connect Denver Union Station with Stapleton’s replacement, DIA.
Back here in our own region, the Sound Transit runs between Seattle and Redmond are bursting at the seams, but in the “wrong direction”. It’s all the Microsofties and employees of other companies in the “technology corridor” who like to live and party in the big city.