Washington isn’t a state with a reputation for achieving consensus, but if there’s one thing on which nearly all the political insiders agree, it’s that the $16.5 billion Sound Transit/RTID Roads & Transit package that’s headed to the ballot this coming November is as good as dead.
I’ve heard it from Democrats and Republicans, from liberals and conservatives, from package supporters and package opponents. I’ve heard it from politicians I trust, and from politicians I emphatically don’t trust. And everybody agrees that the package is just too big and too expensive for our skeptical electorate to approve at the polls.
But… um… I guess I should’ve asked some actual voters, because a new poll shows quite solid support for the package, both before and after respondents are informed of the details.
61% of respondents supported the package when presented on an “uninformed basis” with no persuasive messaging:
“A transportation package has been proposed that would increase the sales tax by 6/10 of 1%, and the car license tab by 8/10 of 1%. It would fund $16.5 Billion dollars in road, highway, and mass transit improvements in Pierce, King, and Snohomish Counties”.
When respondents were informed of the package’s costs, but not its elements, support dropped to 49%:
“This package will cost the typical household $150 in additional sales tax each year, plus $80 in license tab tax for every $10,000 of your car’s value.”
Not surprising. But then once voters are informed of the major components of the package, support rebounds to 63%, and remains at this level after positive (66%) and then negative (61%) messaging is presented. (FYI, the poll was conducted by Moore Information and EMC Research, April 1-4, and consisted of 800 registered voters with a 3.5 percent margin of error.)
The imminent, inevitable failure of the Roads & Transit package has become a rallying cry for supporters of creating a new regional transportation commission. “We’ve got to do something to restore the confidence of voters,” I’ve been told on more than one occasion. But if these poll numbers are even remotely accurate, it looks like a substantial majority of voters are confident enough in our current transportation planning to spend $16.5 billion expanding light rail and making other critical transportation improvements.
So much for the common wisdom.
What does the Northwest Regressive Institute have to say about increasing the sales tax by another 0.6% to 9.5%?
Goldy, voters overwhelmingly rejected a 1% sales tax increase for education, so why are you so quick to believe 60% will say “yes” to a .6% increase for roads?
If you grab that $400 million Clay Bennett wants, you only need $16.1 billion more. It’s not enough by itself, but every little bit helps.
If you grab the $200 million NASCAR wants … see the principle here?
For everyone except the government, when you want to buy more of something, you have to buy less of something else, so the total amount coming out of the pot stays the same.
Why doesn’t it work that way for government? Why do pols always asssume they can keep coming back to taxpayers of limited means for more and more and more and more and more more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more and more?
This tax package won’t create a Tim Eyman; it’ll create 10 Tim Eymans. Has anyone thought of that?
The first thing that needs to happen is planners must sharpen their red pencils and turn $16.5 billion into a fraction of that amount.
The 520 bridge is an excellent place to start.
The pols and WSDOT, in drafting their transportation wish list, assumed a 6-lane bridge (compared to the present 4-lane bridge) will be needed to handle population and traffic growth.
They must think $10 tolls on both bridges will have no effect on traffic volumes. They are wrong. Commuting across the lake will become unaffordable for the modestly paid pink-collar workers who fill the cubicles of Seattle’s and Bellevue’s office towers. And it’s not just $200 a month of tolls these workers will have to pay to continue commuting across the lake. To continue driving across the lake, they’ll also have to pay $200 to $300 for parking, higher vehicle tab fees, higher sales taxes on cars and car repairs, and, I predict $3 gas will become a thing of the past in the not-distant future. Unless employers are prepared to pay bank tellers and phone receptionists $75,000 a year, the thousands of workers who staff Seattle’s and Bellevue’s office will find cross-lake commuting out of reach.
Then, traffic volumes will plunge. I say a 4-lane replacement bridge is enough. And that, by itself, will shave costs enormously.
But I wouldn’t stop at paring down the size of the 520 project. We need to ask sharp questions about why a very simple structure made of a very cheap material — concrete — which is 7,600 feet long costs $4.4 billion when a very complicated structure made of a much more expensive material — steel — which is 5,400 feet long costs $849 million. That doesn’t compute.
And voters, not to mention pols, also should be doing mental calculations about what will happen to projected gas tax revenues when high gas prices push fuel economy up. Let’s say gas doubles to $6 but your vehicle’s fuel economy doubles from 20 mpg to 40 mpg. You’re not saving anything — it still costs you just as much to commute to work — but you’re doing it with half the gas which means gas tax revenues drop by 50%. Has anyone besides me thought about that?
I said in a previous post that $10 tolls, $400-a-month parking, and $10 gas will erect a financial Berlin Wall between Seattle and the eastside communities. Most of the traffic volume across the bridges comes from the tens of thousands of modestly paid cubicle slaves who work in Seattle and live in Bellevue, or vice versa — a lifestyle that cannot and will not continue if those cost levels are imposed, unless employers are willing to pay $100,000 a year for semiskilled office labor. I don’t see that happening. What I see happening is cross-lake commuting becoming a luxury of the affluent. You could probably skip the new bridge and handle that traffic with a single ferry boat across Lake Washington.
Maybe WSDOT should buy and refurbish the Kalakala.
While I support paying for 520 with tolls, I think a high tolls will motivate many people to take the roundabout routes via I-405, causing further congestion in that corridor while leaving a 6-lane 520 bridge underutilized.
520 would become, in effect, an HOV lane for those who able and willing to pay. Everyone else would sit in stalled traffic through Renton and Kirkland, burning more gas and spewing more emissions than ever.
It would also become harder for employers in Seattle and Bellevue to recruit office workers who live on the other side of the lake, and they’d probably have to pay them more money to induce them to make the expensive commute.
PelletHead: Did you eat the wrong batch of Sharkansky carrots?
Maybe senility does a Rabbit good. I agree with everything your wrote.
For instance: NYS Thruway was to have a sunset clause on the tolls back in the early 90s. 2003 (last year published) tolls were at $438,705,000 because there is no other best way to get from NYC to Albany or Buffalo to Albany. Once the beast is unleashed it will be there forever.
Also, I thought you Moonbat!s placed responsible “candidates” up for election to determine the best funds use. We all know the cost overruns will be much higher than projected because of the environmental impact studies, donks for xyz environment caper, donks for not in my back yard protestations.
So how will this $16.5 BILLION really be accounted for?
In addition, the tolls are usually cash money that goes out the door to foreign countries as the governmental bodies involved lease these rights to foreign countries in exchange for upfront money.
“I’ll pay you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
re 6: You’re not the enemy. It’s the Vigueries of the world who sold you this bill of goods you call “conservatism.
So how will this $16.5 BILLION really be accounted for?
PUDDYSTUPID: NO PROBLEM!! THAT EYMAN AUDITING DEAL WILL SAVE THE TAXPAYERS HERE! DONCHA REMEMBER? YOU VOTED FOR IT!!!
LMAO!!!
This new data is consistent with every other piece of research on this topic: the majority of voters of the region are way ahead of special interests and they want more action on transportation.
We do have a legislative session underway, so special interests produce rhetoric to support their slant on any number of things. And then key legislators pick up the rhetoric to try to hoodwink reality, bluster, turn into political pundits, badmouth things that they aren’t completely satisfied with, and attempt to move their own special turf and extort concessions. (Anybody come to mind?)
There is no public groundswell for new high paid elected elected officials to do anything – let alone do more delaying dithering debating on transportation projects. Better to put those tax dollars into real transportation improvements in a timely way.
Compare this regional ballot measure to where things were on I-912 in July of 2005 when no one thought that that gas tax roll-back initiative with some 400,000 signatures could be defeated that year as gas prices soared. They were all dead wrong.
When the various lobbies get done with their focused horse trading in Olympia this year they will wake up. Best to ignore the vapid rhetoric spewing from Olympia during these days and pay attention to what real people are saying: get on with it.
Sighhhhh
Goldy is likely correct. Most people are willing to pay directed taxes for things THEY need.
The problem is that we STILL lack any sense of a long term transportation and traffic plan.
Light rail is everybit as important as the beardless young version of Goldy says. But, light rail needs to be done along with other sorts of planning and that is nt happening.
Look at Capital Hill. The panned station is njo where near a parking facility. Presumably a lot of folks will use this as there route to the airport. How? The bus ride to Broadway may take as long as the drive to SeaTaC.
Look at Aurora … or didn’t you know that Aurora IS the AllCan, is the Viaduct?
Look for ANY major roads, other than freeways and viaducts, through Seattle! There are NONE. Major NS roads never are the broad boulevards one sees in other big cities .. e.g. Comm Ave or Mass Ave in Boston. We have dinky, narrow wagon wheel paths that are barely wide enough for two cars. Add a bus or a trolley anf there is NO room for anything, not even a bike!
Look over the water to far off Redmond-Issaquah-Bellevue … has no one noticed the traffic flow in the AM and PM. Seattle has become a bedroom! Folks drive out of here to work in the AM and back at night! This si OK by me, but doesn’t it necessitate a rethinking of how we route light rail?
Finally, look at B-B-B-Boeing. Zeus, Appolo and Raven willing, the lazy B will live long and prosper in Everett. The Lazy B is a manufacturer! It makes planes and jobs. Hopefully, the plane factory will lead to other job centers, but this means we need good commercial transport … aka freeway or toll roads that connect Vancouver BC to San Fran.
Does anyone see Aurora/the viaduct as an answer?
The bottom line, the lack of regional transportation planning makes everything more expensive in the long run and hurts the public support Goldy talks about because people do not see the long term benefits.
I am hardly qualified but here are my thoughts:
1. The Viaduct
Dump it. All the data says we do not need it for commercial traffic and it is absurd to consider Aurora as a viable NS corridor.
Instead create a FULL CITY traffic plan including creating better pathways, esp. boulevard size roads, on the waterfront, connecting MLK/Rainier to Lake City Way, replacing the Mercer mess with a functional road around Lake Union, AND creating a cityy wode transp[ortation plan … busses or whatever but DOIT!
2. NS
Seattle is not a sensible stop on a freeway. In the long tterm the rgion needs either to expand 405 or build 605.
3. EW
Recognize that Seattle is a bedroom might mean building lightrail TO/FROM Bellevue and Redmond.
One Jew’s ignorant opinions probably do not matter.
Let’s see — we voted for a 0.4% sales tax and a 0.3% MVET back in 1996 to build Sound Transit. Eleven years later, we have a state of the art light rail system reaches from Everett to Tacoma and moves 150,000 people per today. Not to mention a commuter rail system of similar distance along a different path.
Since Sound Transit has been such a resounding success so far, people should have no problem approving another $17 billion.
Roger Rabbit @ 5
You will get kicked out of the Democrat Party for making such sensible suggestions!
Here is another one — why not simply impose tolls each way on both of the existing Lake Washington bridges, without building anything new? This would reduce traffic volume and increase the use of busses. There would be no need to build an expanded bridge anywhere, and we would save billions.
And if the 520 bridge sinks, raise the tolls on I-90 even higher and have a couple of ferries put at Evergreen Point.
The original Mercer Island floating bridge cost only $8.8 million in 1940.
http://archives.seattletimes.n.....laced+cost
How much did the replacement cost in the early 1990’s, after the original bridge sunk?
Apparently, it only cost $76 million to replace the old Lacey V. Murrow floating bridge after it sunk in 1990:
http://archives.seattletimes.n.....urrow+cost
So obviously $4.4 billion is a big rip-off for the Evergreen Point SR 520 bridge. But that is what we get for letting Democrats ruin this state for the past 25 years. Extremely high taxes and very little to show for it.
“A transportation package has been proposed …”
“It would fund $16.5 Billion dollars in road, highway, and mass transit improvements . . . ”
The terms used are slanted to get positive results.
I’d like to see all the actual questions. Who paid for this poll?
Think of what those numbers would look like if they said “Sound Transit and something called RTID want limitless taxes. These two governments will have boards you can’t vote anyone off of, and they will have the right to cut back on the deliverables promised after the election. The taxes would last forever. The total amount collected by ST and RTID over the next five decades out of our community likely would top $50 billion, and we’d still have to raise taxes on you just to pay for SR 520 (but we won’t say now what those additional taxes will be). ST can’t do anything on time and under budget. Still support it?”
In other words, the “negative messaging” might not have been all that negative.
And, “mass transit” sounds good in the abstract, but if you start talking about trains that only a fraction of those you are asking taxes from would use regularly, well, the numbers definitely would drop and drop and drop.
Lets see.
A 16.5 billion dollar transportation package, and it will cost an extra 6/10 of a percent on the sales tax, pushing my sales tax up to 9%, and an additional 8/10 of 1% annual excise tax on vehicles.
And for this extra money, we’ll be getting:
I think that there might be a case made for the additional taxes, but someone is going to have to do a really thorough job of explaining exactly where the money is going and what it will be used for.
What *exactly* was the content of the “positive” and the “negative” messaging?
Is this poll, and the results, posted anywhere?
This is a really interesting blog entry by Goldy. Hey Goldy, where’d you get this info. about this poll from?
@12 It would be more accurate to say “Most people are willing to make others pay directed taxes for things THEY want.”
For example, Bellevue commuters flying across 520 in their Beamers will thank the working-class families of Georgetown and Beacon Hill who pay sales taxes for a shiny new bridge.
@17 Concrete rusts in saltwater? I learn something new every day!
Roger Rabbit’s Plan To Reduce 520 Bridge Construction Costs
It seems that back in the ’60s and ’70s a lot of dreamers began building ferrocement sailboat hulls with visions of cruising the seven seas. Few, if any, of these projects were completed and today these uncompleted projects litter marinas, ports, and shorescapes all the way from Long Beach to Bellingham.
Why not round up all these abandoned ferrocement boat hulls and use them as pontoons for the new bridge? After all, they were designed to float, and probably do float (at least as good as anything WSDOT builds), and best of all, they’re free. Plus, we’d be ridding our coastline of visual blight. Those concrete boats are good for something after all!
That should cut the cost from $4.4 billion to $100 – 200 million, mostly for gas to truck the “pontoons” to the construction site. Can’t beat that deal.
And maybe we could offset the remaining costs with TV royalties. Call up Dave Letterman’s agent and ask if they’re interested in our new bridge making a special guest appearance on his show’s “Will It Float?” segment.
Could you post the entire poll, including all questions, all answers, who paid for the survey, how the questions were worded and most important who’s the sample? What percent are from Sno, King and Pierce? Also how accurate has this pollster been in the past?
Bet ya’ dollars-2-donuts the money behind this slanted survey comes from some entity that would get rich off ST2/RTID taxes. My guess would be that a pavers’ union, or Parsons Brinkerhoff, or some other entity of that ilk wrote the check to the pollsters.
The odds that we’ll get any details beyond those shown in the original blog entry from DG are Zip, Zilch, and Zero.
Roger Rabbit must be eating new vita carrots, he actually is making sense tonight.
I’d call and let him do a segment on the Imus show …oops
Goldy is out off town on this one however, the people in this state are feeling rather reamed out these days, especially after this legislative session.
Hey GS (and the rest of you wingnut freaks), make sure you read my posts about the FAA in the new thread, you’ll really like what the Smirking Chimp’s political appointees are doing to our air transportation system! Their population-reduction plan means more room for you on the freeways!
Good post, Goldy. It’s no surprise anti-rail pundits like Joel Connelly and Ted Van Dyk are trying to claim doom and gloom – they WANT the transit & roads measure to fail this November.
And given the strong support for regional rail and roads projects, about the only thing they have left in their holsters is the hysterical spreading of doubt.
Just read Ted Van Dyk’s ranting every two weeks in the P-I:
-On top of the existing backlog, elected officials soon will ask private interests to underwrite a ballot campaign this fall for a crushingly cost-ineffective Sound Transit regional light rail system as well as new local roads. They’ll be kidding, right? –
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ted12.html
Van Dyk may not know it, but according to the poll Goldy posted, he’s condemning the PUBLIC, not those (popular) “corrupt” politicians he always harps on. Do these cranks ever wonder to themselves why those politicians keep getting re-elected by wide margins????
Van Dyk and other rail opponents http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf try to pretend buses stuck in traffic (BRT) can replace rail in a growing metropolitan region. They claim we should use developing countries (like Colombia – where car ownership rates are at 5%) as the transportation model for Pugetopolis to follow. Van Dyk has got to be kidding, right?
If Ted Van Dyk ever decided to take the bus one day, he might come to the realization how dishonest his arguments really are.
And then there’s Joel Connelly, “hero of the middle class,” taking his lead from a billionaire:
The “Big One” will very likely come this fall, when voters in four central Puget Sound counties are asked to fork up $15 billion or so for highways and Sound Transit light rail projects.
-“We are headed for a train wreck in November,” said John Stanton, co-founder of Western Wireless –
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....oel16.html
Look, I can see why the public should remain skeptical about multi-billion dollar projects. It’s our money they are spending, after all. But it is also we who benefit from those projects, in terms of jobs, mobility, the local economy, and more free time spent outside a traffic jam on I-5, I-90 or I-405.
Connelly, Van Dyk, John Carlson and Kemper Freeman wouldn’t have a problem if the $16 billion were only to be spent on freeways, along with a few crappy buses. It’s rapid transit – and light rail specifically – which has remained as the bane of their existence for over a decade.
But now we know just how small a segment of the population their views are representative of.