lionel-industrial complex

Gregoire

By Frank on July 17, 2008

Brewster writes:

Complicating the Ladenburg situation is his race for state attorney general, in which incumbent Rob McKenna, long a rail skeptic, is expected to wrap a yes vote by Ladenburg around his neck. Gregoire expects the same from gubernatorial challenger Dino Rossi, which is why she is said to be determined to block the vote in 2008. Nickels, still estranged from the governor over the Alaskan Way Viaduct, is paying her no heed on this score.

Gregoire’s strategy of cowering under the covers and praying for an Obama wave to sweep her into Olympia is looking more embarassing by the minute. America is awash with bold, progressive politicians in states far redder than WA (Kaine, Schweitzer, Sebelius, etc.), and Gregoire acts like it’s 1994 and Newt Gingrich is still running the national agenda.

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Nickels on the Viaduct

By Frank on November 25, 2007

I’m just now getting around to Mayor Nickels’ appearance on the P-I‘s Opinion Leaders podcast.

It gets interesting (for our purposes!) when he gets a question about the Viaduct. He notes that he’s been meeting with Ron Sims and Gov. Gregoire, that they’re approaching a consensus, and they have people working together on a solution. In his response, he touches on the following:

  • Taking advantage of the underutilized street grid, especially 6th Avenue
  • Moving the Alaskan Way Streetcar to 1st Avenue, to potentially connect it to Ballard and West Seattle
  • Making I-5 more of a through-way and not a downtown street
  • Not advocating for a tunnel or an elevated highway
  • Some concerns about freight mobility

He also mentions the Embarcadero in San Francisco, a well-known example of an elevated freeway being replaced with a surface street, and notes approvingly the I-5 closure this summer in Seattle, which he said showed that traffic patterns are flexible.

Now, he didn’t commit to anything, but it sure sounds like hizzoner has all but embraced the so-called surface/transit alternative, that Sims is on board, too, and together they’re trying to convince the Governor to see the light. Good stuff.

I’m skeptical about a streetcar having enough capacity to serve the Ballard-Downtown-West-Seattle corridor, but at least he’s thinking along the right lines: no new elevated highway.

Anyway, he said we’ll hear more after the new year. Keep your eyes open.

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Prop. 1 and Global Warming

By Frank on October 2, 2007

Trying to contain the fallout from Ron Sims’ decision last week not to support Prop. 1, Governor Gregoire says:

“Maybe (the measure) isn’t perfect. … I don’t care if it’s not perfect, we have got to move forward. And the last thing we need is to have the 1.2 million (people) that are coming into the Puget Sound area over the next decade, and leave the status quo. Want to talk global warming? That is a disaster.”

It’s a clever move, trying to pivot off of global warming, which, as Josh Feit argued, was the “one cogent moment” of Sims’ editorial.

But I think we need to step back for a moment and acknowledge that there are limits to what highway planning can and cannot do to halt global warming. The single largest cause of global warming is the burning of coal for electricity. Car and light truck emissions are just 20% of the total. More controversially, gridlock, too contributes to global warming. And though I’m not naive enough to believe that simply adding more lanes will end gridlock, adding HOV capacity to the 520 bridge will do far more good than harm in that regard.

(To be fair, transportation — including planes — accounts for over half the CO2 emissions in the Northwest specifically, but (a), that’s only because we get much of our electricity from hydro, and (b) because CO2 is only one of the gases that contribute to global warming)

So while I completely agree that denser, transit-oriented urban development is one key component to reversing climate change, it’s not the only one. Increasing fuel efficiency, reducing the use of coal-fired electricity plants, and somehow figuring out how to stop cows from passing gas are just three things that would do more to stop global warming than whether or not we pass Prop. 1 this November.

The Sierra Club and Ron Sims (both of whom I admire) would like to make this vote a referendum on global warming. It’s just not that simple.

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