By Frank on October 24, 2007
King5 and SurveyUSA have releasedthe results of a poll on Proposition 1. The results show voters are roughly split 30%”Yes,” 32% “No,” and a whopping 37% “Undecided.”
A couple of interesting nuggets from the poll itself:
- Liberals are 2-to-1 in favor
- Support is even across all three counties
- Generation Y (the only voting generation who has a reasonable chance of commuting on light rail to the Eastside in their working lives) is in favor of the measure by 22 points.
- Meanwhile, the boomers are against it by 15 points
- People who have already voted are 3-to-2 in favor (a miniscule sample size, admittedly)
- Sound Transit is viewed more favorably than WSDOT
(Via CIS)
Posted in bicycles, kingcounty, Port, sr509
By Frank on October 17, 2007
Seattle Weekly‘s Mike Seely offers a smart way to think about Sound Transit:
In this day and age, commuter rail agencies should be viewed in the same light as sewer, police, roads and power authorities. We need them, and we should give them the money they need to get things done. Sound Transit, for all its faults, should be permitted to carry out its mission to the fullest. If they screw up, hold them accountable via personnel and structural changes, but don’t cut them off at the knees.
Sound Transit was created just 10 years ago by a vote, so its somewhat logical to think we can just end it by a vote, like the Monorail. I’m reminded of Bill Cosby’s stand-up routine about how the way his father viewed the father-son relationship (“I brought you into this world, boy, I can take you out, too!”). But that’s not a viable, responsible way to run a municipality.
Posted in Port
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.
Posted in bicycles, conservative theory, fares, lionel-industrial complex, Port, real time bus information, RTID
By Frank on September 26, 2007
Erica Barnett sums up the choice faced in November:
Since transit projects in our region historically have not come back to the ballot a second time larger than the first, this is probably our only chance to get as much light rail as this package offers.
Additionally, of the $7B marked for roads, you can mark either 70 or 85 percent of them as “good”, since they facilitate high-occupancy or freight travel. Sounds good to me!
Posted in Port
By Frank on September 26, 2007
Three months after an Elway poll showed support for RTID/ST2 at nearly 60 percent, a new poll is out showing a slight drop to 54 percent.
Despite the positive number, it’s important not to take anything for granted. Public opinion on projects like these is a tricky thing. The first UW freshman who will ride light rail from Everett and Redmond won’t be born until next year, so, like any infrastructure project, there’s a bit of a mismatch between the “voters” and the people who will reap the benefits.
Posted in Port
By Frank on September 24, 2007
James Vesely is concerned that there’s no single point of accounability for RTID/ST2. And he’s right: that’s the whole point of the package. It’s designed to provide supplimental funding to a whole bunch of projects that are currently under the purview of different agencies (WSDOT, Sound Transit, SDOT, etc.) but that have in common the fact that they’re part of an overall central Puget Sound infrastructure upgrade.
STB argues that this is a fundraising issue, which is true, but there’s more to it than that. The whole point of the vote is to say, “look, we have serious transportation needs in the central Puget Sound, the State’s not gonna foot the bill, and there’s no single government with jurisdiction, so we’re going to have all the goverments come together and work on funding the most critical projects.”
What we don’t want, it seems to me, is to create yet another agency like the Port that has its own separate accountability. But there’s no way we can have a direct chain of command, because there are overlapping jurisdictions involved, and the city of Seattle, for example, doesn’t “report” to King County. So this is what we’re left with: a coalition of governments.
In other words, while Vesely argues that a vote for RTID is “a vote for bureaucracy,” in fact the exact opposite is true. You’re voting for less bureaucracy, since the money will be funneled into projects that need it (SR 520, I-405, etc.) that are already under the management of existing bureaucracies (WSDOT, ST, etc.)
So we don’t want more quasi-independent fiefdoms like the Port, but we do want oversight and accountability. How do we get there? Knute Berger said it best a couple of years ago when he referred to these new bureaucracies as “designer governments.” He also pointed out that I-900, which was on the ballot that November, and which subequently passed, gave the State the authority to do performance audits of these agencies. There’s your accountability. In fact, we can go right over to the Auditor’s website and learn that his audit of Sound Transit is 99% complete. I hope Vesely reports on the results!
Posted in conservative theory, Port
By Frank on September 18, 2007
That Up Front episode also mentioned a Survey USA poll that King 5 commissioned. At first glance, it showed trouble for the Roads and Transit measure. But look close, and you’ll see that it actually doesn’t cover the same area that will vote on the bill.
The poll asked residents of King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. But only a small subset of those counties is in the RTID/ST taxation area (see image at right).
In other words, the survey included a lot of folks who don’t live or work near the proposed projects, and won’t be voting on them anyway.
Posted in conservative theory, Port, sr509
By Frank on September 18, 2007
King 5′s Up Front with Robert Mak, our local policy wonk-fest, featured the “Roads and Transit” proposition on Sunday. The “pro” crowd (Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl, an R&T spokesman, and a Downtown Business Association representative) were featured along with the usual cast of anti-transit characters (Jim MacIssac, Kemper Freeman, and Emory Bundy). You can watch the show on their website.
There was, in my opinion, a gaping “passion gap” between the “yes” and the “no” sides. The “no” side” is just way more passionate about their arguments than the bureaucrats that are defending the measure. Earl tried gamely in the hard hat tour, but it’s just not her job to be all bubbly about it in the way that the other side is.
This is a problem. The “yes” folks need to get people excited about this measure, not run from the numbers and play defense.
Posted in Port, ronsims
By Frank on September 11, 2007
I appreciate the micro-targeting as much as the next guy, but is it odd to anyone else that none of the the new Yes on Prop. 1 ads, including the Pierce County ones, mention the controversial Cross Base Highway?
To me, this is more evidence that even the supporters of the plan don’t think it’s going to get built.
(Via CIS)
Posted in Amtrak, bike, Port
By Frank on September 11, 2007
The Seattle Times on the state of the RTID:
In an Elway poll in June, 57 percent of voters surveyed backed the ballot measure. The poll also found that the road and transit proposals drew more support together than individually.
Elway said he was struck by the level of support “even though most people thought the costs are high, thought it would not be a significant improvement and thought there are many unknowns about the future.”
That suggests, he said, that people are so sick of being stuck in traffic that they’ll vote for just about anything.
The support has dipped a bit from 61 percent in the last Elway poll to 57 now, but that’s within the margin of error. Without a well-funded, unified opposition, It’ll be interesting to see how they stop this train (pun intended).
Speaking of which, one of the most curious paragraphs is at the very end, in section discussing what happens if the measure fails:
It’s possible light rail would reappear on the ballot fairly quickly, but fixing the region’s highways is another matter. Legislative leaders predict few people would want to touch the issue in 2008 because it’s an election year.
That would push any highway proposal off until 2009…
Explain something to me, election wonks: why is highway funding a non-starter in an election year but light rail is not?
Posted in conservative theory, Port
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