For legislative bodies, I’m of the opinion that individual legislators really ought to subsume their constituents’ needs to the need of the whole. So yeah, state legislators should advocate for the areas they represent, but they should do what’s best for the state when the two are in conflict. After all, they’re state legislators. And yes, I realize in practice it doesn’t work that way for most politicians. So I’m glad that Ed Murray has for the bulk of his career in government had a regional/statewide view of problem solving.
Still, now that he’s no longer a legislator, he should probably knock it off. I mean, finding regional solutions are great if they benefit Seattle. But if they don’t benefit Seattle, there’s really no point in him doing them.
So now that there’s a plan to save transit in Seattle, I hope that he can find more times when Seattle needs to, or it’s just Seattle’s best option to, go it alone. Sure it would have been in Seattle’s best interest to be better connected to the suburbs. And it would be better for the planet if the rest of King County used buses more. But the rest of the county’s rejection of buses means it’s in Seattle’s best interest not to tether ourselves to the rest of the county on transit.
Seattle is big enough and different enough politically from the rest of the state and the county that sometimes the best thing is to go it alone. I realize that might offend the mayor’s sensibilities. But he wanted to be Mayor and not Senate Minority Leader, so his job isn’t to form the best coalitions, it’s to lead one city.
I’m not optimistic about the planet’s future prospects. As scientist Stephen Emmott wrote in the concluding sentence of his book, “Ten Billion,” about the chances of humans adopting rational policies to stave off environmental disaster, “I think we’re fucked.” That’s an impolite way of saying the human species is doomed to destroy itself. (The planet will be fine; it will recover after humans are gone.)
So, Carl, I’m not as fixated on the environmental benefits of riding bikes, buses, etc., as you are. The issue for someone living in the suburbs, as I see it, is simply how to get to work if one’s job is downtown, where streets are car-unfriendly, parking is prohibitively expensive or non-existent, and car commuting is near-impossible because of the rush hour traffic jams.
It’s now quite a few years since I’ve worked downtown, but even in the ’90s car commuting was expensive, unpleasant, and damned inconvenient for the average working Joe who didn’t have a reserved parking perk in the basement garage of an office tower. (Those buildings were built to house a couple hundred privileged execs who drove to work in Porsches and Mercedes, and several thousand worker drones condemned to riding overcrowded buses.) In short, unless you were a bank president or law firm partner, the only way you could work downtown was to ride a bus.
So I rode the bus. For years. It worked, more or less, except when my job required me to travel outside the office, in which case I rode the bus if I could, and brought my car downtown (and paid for expensive parking my public employer didn’t reimburse me for) if I couldn’t.
Today, the transportation situation is much worse for downtown workers than it was 20 years ago. There are more office towers, more worker drones, yet the freeway is more crowded than ever, there’s less street space available for cars, there’s less parking and what there is costs a lot more, and in short, most of the people who work downtown today could not get there without the bus system. The downtown economy would shut down without the buses.
So what are we going to do? Make life even more stressful and difficult for overburdened and stressed-out worker drones? Downtown businesses are cutting their own throats if they let bus service collapse, because without the buses, they won’t have a workforce. You simply can’t make all those commuters drive their cars, because there’s no place to put the cars.
How this gets paid for is secondary. If Seattle doesn’t figure out a way to pay for it, a substantial part of Seattle’s economy will collapse. That’s what is at stake.
And I didn’t even say a word about the environment. This isn’t about the environment. Even if you’re an environment-be-damned Republican who cares only about business profits, you need these buses, because you won’t have a business without them.
Or Murray’s been running for Governor since the day he announced his candidacy for Mayor of Seattle.
@2, Maybe. But Seattle mayor hasn’t exactly been a grand stepping stone to higher office.
@3
Yeah, but unfortunately, all he has to do is win the Democratic primary, and it looks like he’s already got a lot of the establishment behind him. Whoever he faces from the Republicans will be so fucked up that we’re going to support Murray.
After all, Gregoire fucked up some shit as AG. The one I remember most clearly was when she failed to file paperwork for some important suit and then managed to stick a staff attorney with the blame. And then who was her opponent, Rossi? I seriously weighed not voting for her, but in the end, with some prodding from a friend, I had to.
@4 And it’s not like the republicans have been able to field a candidate that has cross over appeal to democrats and rise about the toxic aspects of the party in general. Republicans have hurt the brand that much.
Wait, I thought Murray was Mayor of Olympia? You’re saying he’s our Mayor? Fuck…
@4 You’re blaming Gregoire for a mistake made several layers of management below her? That’s like blaming Obama if a post office in Idaho loses a letter.
@rodger rabbit:
Don’t you know that to the Teabaggers Obama is personally responsible for every single bad thing any employee of the Federal government does. The same rules apply to any democrat at any level of government. On the other hand It’s OK if you are a Republican.
@4, Gregoire herself did not file the appeals or responses or keep the calendar. The State AG is an administrator and directs policy for the office; the AG is not responsible for clerical tasks. Her staff attorney did not make certain that one of the office paralegals calendared that case, and it was indeed that attorney’s fault for not ensuring that that happened.