conservative theory

Vote in 2008?

By Frank on August 16, 2007

In his column this week, Josh Feit at The Stranger argues that it would be better for environmentalists and transit advocates to vote “no” on this fall’s RTID/ST2 package, and instead hope for a transit-only vote in 2008.

Feit’s first argument is that there’s still plenty of work to do on ST1, so waiting another year to start on ST2 is no biggie. That’s specious logic. Sound Transit knows how to walk and chew gum at the same time. The more advanced planning they can do, the better. Land acquisition and construction costs are increasing at 3-5x the rate of inflation. Every year we wait adds hundreds of millions of dollars to the project.

Secondly he notes that the “the compromisers inform us cuckoo idealists that political reality wont allow a 2008 vote. Governor Gregoire won’t stand for it.” But the “political reality” has never been about Governor Gregoire. Rather, it’s been about the fact that the Puget Sound region, for various reasons, has always been skittish about big transit projects — from the failed 1911 Bogue Plan to the failed 1968 Forward Thrust to the failed 1995 RTA package to the failed 2000 Monorail. We need to be coaxed along slowly, carefully, and with lots of candy. Because, let’s remember, for all Seattle’s “progressive,” “big-city” pretensions, it’s still a small and relatively rural town in one of America’s most outlying provinces. That’s the “political reality” of the region, and it has little to do with Gov. Gregoire’s re-election campaign.

Finally, Feit notes that 2008 will be a much more favorable political climate for liberals, being a presidential election year. That has some merit, although one has to weigh the more favorable political climate against the increased risk of a transit-only package going in front of all three counties. It seems like a wash at best.

Regardless, it’s hard to see what a “no” vote actually accomplishes. Feit calls out the $1.1B I-405 expansion, for example. But that’s something that’s going to happen eventually. 405 needs to be expanded and there’s more than enough political will to make it happen. If environmentalists think they can kill the 405 expansion, they’re misguided. The best they can do is delay it, which will make it more expensive (and starve even more money from transit projects) down the road.

Vote yes this November.

Update: In retrospect, I was a little sloppy above when I wrote that I-405 “needs” to be expanded. What meant (and what I tried to get at in the rest of the sentence) is that there’s more than enough political and popular will to expand I-405. It would be very, very hard to stop it, given the relative power of the suburbs versus the city in Olympia and a general sense that Seattle gets all the attention. I-405 expansion is the one project that the Eastside really wants and, as I’ve argued elsewhere, it might even offer an opportunity for a surface/transit solution to replace the Viaduct.

Posted in , ,

Branding

By Frank on July 23, 2007

The Everett Herald tries to make the case that the Roads and Transit package will go down this Fall because (a) it’s too expensive, and (b) it’s not sexy enough. I’m not kidding about that last one:

“Emotion, emotion, emotion – capture it and you can win at the polls,” said Jami Warner, a public relations expert and campaign consultant from Sacramento, Calif.

The problem is that the so-called Roads and Transit tax proposal is boring – and expensive.

Bring sexy back! Personally, I think voters are ready to pull the lever for anything — anything — that will get concrete pouring.

I’m also skeptical of the article’s heavy reliance on Tim Eyman to prove the thing is dead, saying that Eyman has “been able to gauge the voters’ mood in the past, winning seven out of nine times he’s pitched initiatives since 1998.”

Isn’t more plausible that Eyman is not some magical svengali of the electorate, but rather just an anti-tax crusader whose goals happened to align with the anti-government mood of the 1990s? In the past few years, his initiatives have even failed to qualify for the ballot.

Posted in ,

Morin Article

By Frank on June 20, 2007

The Richard Morrill piece in Crosscut has been sufficiently fisked today by STB, so I won’t duplicate efforts (1% of trips? Really? Have we not yet comprehended that it’s only peak rush hour trips, not the 3.a.m. dash for Dick’s Burgers, that cause traffic and therefore need to be mitigated with transit?)

I do want to respond to Dr. Morrill’s comment “the cost of driving must and will rise.” Well, that’s true and not true. In the long term, the costs from congestion will certainly rise. But in the medium term, the cost of driving a car is likely to decrease. Think about it: the average fuel economy in the US is about 21mpg, but the Prius gets north of 50mpg.

We’re not all going to drive Priuses, but the cost per mile traveled will definitely go down, certainly for heavy commuters who choose such cars. Finally, the cost of carbon emissions will certainly decrease as plug-in vehicles become available that can be charged by nighttime excess hydro power.

In other words, it’s hard to say. We don’t know what the future will bring. But we’re pretty sure that we’re going to add another 1 million residents in the next 30 years, so we should probably invest in a diversified transit portfolio: roads, trains, buses, seaplanes, jetpacks, PRTs, etc. as well as Morill’s preferred solution, demand management (i.e. tolls and congestion pricing).

Posted in , ,

Bellevue

By Frank on June 19, 2007

The Bellevue Downtown Association, which presumably stands to benefit tremendously from the RTID/ST2 package, has endorsed it. And why not? They’re getting a big, fat I-405 and a light rail link to Seattle, UW, and the Airport. Win, win, win.

Kemper Freeman, the big downtown developer, is opposed to the plan. But he seems to be increasingly isolated. Where’s the big money and clout going to come from to oppose this thing? So far, I’m not seeing it.

Posted in , ,

Sierra Club and RTID

By Frank on June 14, 2007

I admire Erica Barnett’s work, especially her efforts to lay out the surface/transit option for the Viaduct so clearly and effectively. Most journalists are skeptical of anything that isn’t a highway. Barnett is one of the few who “gets it” in that sense.

That said, I’m bothered by this piece in The Stranger, lauding the Sierra Club for refusing to “cave” on the Cross Base Highway and accusing environmental groups who support the RTID compromise of “selling out.”

But politics is not a spectator sport, of course: tough skin is a job requirement. So let’s talk about the substance of the article. Barnett laments the fact that the joint RTID/ST2 package is too roads-heavy, despite the fact that over 60% of it is going to transit. The project, she says, includes “1,500 new lane miles of freeways and arterials” but only “50 miles of light rail.” Well, if we’re going to compare lane-miles to rail-miles, then the number’s at least 100, since the rail is double-tracked. And if we’re going to talk about moving people instead of moving cars (which was Barnett’s position during the Viaduct debate), then the 100 rail-miles have a capacity that’s probably close or equal to the 1,500 lane-miles.

The main thrust of the complaint, though, is that the greenhouse gas emissions of the cars on all those new “lane miles” will cancel out the benefits of rail. But that assumes that car emissions stay constant, which is far from certain. It’s more likely that cars will get cleaner and more fuel efficient over the next few decades (though cleaner cars are not the answer to everything). It also assumes that people won’t change their ways when given the option of light rail. People like Barnett and myself argue constantly that people will gravitate to denser, more transit-oriented lifestyles if they’re given the option. Isn’t that still the case?

Finally, Barnett wonders, “why, then, would environmental groups sell out light rail for a package that only paves the way for that to happen?” The answer is that the environmentalists can still tie the CBH up in the courts for years, if not decades. By that time, light rail could be up and running from Everett to Tacoma to Redmond and maybe people, having seen the alternative, will stop clamoring for roads like the CBH and its ilk, and the project will die on the vine.

Look, the Sierra Club has every right to oppose the package. Their agenda is simple: fewer highways, more green space. Barnett, too, has every right to oppose it. But the real question, for those of us who have to go to the polls in November, is simple: is it worth pushing light rail back to 2040 or 2050 in the hopes that we will get a deal that’s even better than the one on the table? Given the political realities of the region, our regressive tax system, and the skyrocketing costs of land, construction materials, and labor, the answer is a resounding “no.”

Posted in , ,

Cross-base and Can-Kicking

By Frank on June 9, 2007

The News Tribune has a good story on the aftermath of the last-minute effort to keep the cross-base highway from derailing the entire $17B RTID/ST2 package. I noted on Friday that the legislators essentially kicked the can down the road.

Here’s what I mean by that:

First, RTID/ST2 will probably pass. The CBH will get funded. Then, the mediation process between all the relevant parties will start January 2009, which, as the TNT points out, is exactly when Pierce County exec Ladenburg — whose “negotiating style made progress difficult” — leaves office. In all likelihood, Council member Shawn Bunney, who’s thought to be angling for Ladenburg’s job and has a good shot at it, will replace him.

After a year or two of mediation, if they don’t get what they want, the environmentalists will sue, send the project to the courts for a few years. Construction wasn’t even scheduled to begin before 2019 anyway.

So I guess what I’m saying is that, for those of you who think the Cross Base Highway is so bad you want to scuttle all 50 miles of rail to protest it, think long and hard. The project is still not fully funded, and it has many hurdles to cross before concrete starts flowing. Given that tenuousness, it’s hardly worth killing rail over it.

Posted in ,

More on the Opposition

By Frank on June 8, 2007

The Seattle Times sheds more light on the emerging opposition to RTID/ST2 that we noted yesterday.

As the campaign season approaches on a transportation ballot measure, an advocacy group called the Washington Traffic Institute has formed to oppose Sound Transit’s plans to expand light rail.

The group is led by Bill Eager, an engineer; Bruce Nurse, vice president of Bellevue mall developer Kemper Freeman’s organization; and Kathryn Serkes, a public-affairs consultant. At its Web site, truthabouttraffic.org, the group argues that rail won’t solve congestion.

Again, the group is hard to take seriously right now, since they’re chock full of out-of-towners and folks interested in resurrecting non-starter solutions like cutting a new freeway (I-605) through the Cascade Foothills. That said, Kemper Freeman has a lot of money and Eastside property, so don’t count them out.

Posted in , ,

Liveblogging the RTID Meeting

By Frank on June 8, 2007

rtid_mtg.jpg

I’m at the RTID meeting this morning, and it looks like an agreement was reached last night to avoid a potential showdown over the Cross Base Highway. An compromise amendment was just passed unanimously. Sounds like people were up until the wee hours of the night last night figuring it out.

The compromise involves a mediation process, to start in January 2009, to mitigate the environmental impacts of the CBH and $105m in additional funds. The decision, more or less, “kicks the can down the road.” Everyone agrees not to sue until after the mediation process has completed, but doesn’t waive their right to do so afterward.

More to come…

Update: “the costs of delay way, WAY, outweigh the costs of the plan.” – King County Councilmember Julia Patterson. Indeed.

Update 2: Okay, I finally got my hands on the official talking points: more money for SR167, a Tacoma Mall Access project, and funding for congestion relief on SR410 and SR162. Meanwhile, the mediation process on the CBH will move forward, including a host of local municipalities, the state, the military, and various environmental groups. So yeah: can kicked down the road.

Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney seems to have threaded the needle almost perfectly on this one, saving the RTID from what could have been a costly distraction.

Update 3: David Wickert at the TNT has the full story, indicating that the environmental groups are on board with the measure.

Posted in ,

Grisly Details on the Cross Base

By Frank on June 7, 2007

The News-Tribune has plenty of info on the maneuvering inside the Pierce County Council on the Cross Base Highway and RTID.

Long story short: the Council is split: four of them (plus exec Ladenburg) have put together a plan that increases CBH funding by $160M, while the remaining three, led by Shawn Bunney, have an alternative proposal that puts more money into Highway 167 and omits the CBH. Though Bunney seems to be outnumbered, he also happens to be the chairman of the RTID’s executive board, which gives him added influence.

It’s unclear where Ladenburg is getting the $160M number. The CBH was slated to get $477M in the RTID, but would have needed an additional $100M from other sources to be completed.

As for Bunney, he’ll need to peel off two more votes to override the veto. Perhaps by putting more money into SR 167 he thinks he can pick up, say, Roger Bush (R-Graham) and Calvin Goings (D-Puyallup). But that’s just wild speculation.

The Exec Board meets at 9am tomorrow. We’ll know more after that.

Posted in ,

The Truth About The Truth About Traffic

By Frank on June 7, 2007

If the RTID/ST2 package fails, it will be because there’s a broad opposition that can rally support to kill it. Thus far, no such opposition has emerged. However, the Seattle P-I has been running ads online for Truth About Traffic, which seems to be a clearinghouse of sorts for various pro-road, anti-transit organizations.

All your favorite road-builders are there. They’re mostly fringe groups, including a group of San Jose-based car fetishists called the “American Dream Coalition.” Further suggesting that the site is some sort of front, it is registered to a right-wing political consultant based in Spokane.

If this represents the sum total of the opposition, it makes me even more confident that the package will pass.

Posted in ,

« PreviousNext »