Recently I got trashed on another area blog for suggesting that money for the tunnel was not, in fact, money in a general fund that was being unjustly withheld from schools and bus subsidies. Commenters there were sure the dedication of gas tax revenues should be changed, but strangely mum on other possible changes. No calls for a state income tax, cutting the military budget, or ending the ‘War on Drugs’ from that crowd.
In fact, some recent chit-chat on a bus seems to sum us up. A fellow rider let us know he thought DSHS was the biggest money-waster in the state. A little later I admired his shoes, wondered where I could get a pair. and learned the naval shipyard issues them to the employees. We’re so used to this that it took me a full day to see the irony.
Re-arranging the deck chairs won’t save this Titanic. We need to cut the war budget in half, end the drug wars, institute a state income tax, and ride the damn bus for free. A few other things that should be free, or nearly so, are sixteen years of quality education, health care, and room and board if you still can’t afford those after all that education and doctoring.
This is not the impossible dream. In fact, the most fundamental laws of economics, and all of human experience, show that really getting on that agenda would restore our prosperity for decades to come.
Or, we can resign ourslves to the drip-drip-drip of budget shortfalls and downsized services. But one thing should be obvious- you can’t fund transit with a tax on gasoline. Those horses aren’t pulling in tandem.
Ok, in the past Frank has occasionally scratched his head and wondered “What does this have to do with transit” so let me spell it out- the best fare-box recovery I’ve ever read about was 76%, leaving a cool quarter of the costs to other funding. And that’s before we start asking just how much of the bill should be presented to the actual riders.
After all, much of the investment will benefit riders 30 years in the future, and the property owners closest to the stations. Businesses with an expanded labor pool from which to choose the best and brightest will also benefit.
In short, with transit, you make a choice- a massive huge investment in rails, equipment, and signaling, or a massive huge investment in labor and fuel for buses. The more successful you are, the bigger the investment you need, and we have reasons to believe we want to be very successful indeed.
When the tide was coming in, taxing gasoline, real estate, and consumerism may have made sense. With the pressing imperative to cut carbon emissions, these are no longer reliable taxing mechanisms. We need to rethink this so we can do what we want to do.