ronsims

Times vs. Sound Transit

By Frank on February 13, 2008

Goldy does the heavy lifting in taking down this pernicious Seattle Times op-ed. Sayeth Goldy:

Of course the real question here is why the Times is so adamant about demanding “reform” of Sound Transit, an agency that just came through its audits with flying colors, while they remain silent on the issue of reforming the Port of Seattle, an agency so arrogantly mismanaged that it has now become the target of a Justice Department investigation into allegations of criminal fraud? Now that’s what I call “a muddle.”

Read the whole thing.

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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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R&T on Up Front

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.

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Really?

By Frank on August 2, 2007

After a parade of anti-rail hit pieces, Crosscut apparently feels like they need to run a pro-rail piece. You can read it here. It does a pretty good job of dispatching the anti-rail pieces that have appeared before.

But get this — the author, William Echols, is Crosscut’s intern. An INTERN! That’s right: after going out into the world and finding anti-rail professionals in the transit community (no easy task, since most transit planners agree that light rail should be part of any urban transit network), the best that David Brewster could do for the “pro” rail piece was to look around the office and say, “how about… you! Yeah, you…. when you get back from fetching us coffee, why don’t you fire up Wikipedia and put together a pro-rail article, eh?”

Look, I have no idea how the Crosscut “newsroom” really works, and for all I know, Brewster doesn’t even drink coffee. I don’t mean to impugn the credentials of Mr. Echols, either. Like I said, he does a fine job. But one can only imagine what kind of an enlightening article we’d get if we had an actual, real-life transportation planner or professor writing a pro-rail piece.

(via CIS, who’s equally astonished that Crosscut even published a pro-rail article)

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Was it the Times' $7B Error?

By Frank on July 18, 2007

You know, it would be a shame if we lost the Seattle P-I But it would be a real shame if we lost the Tacoma News-Tribune, because it seems to “get” local reporting in a way that puts its big sisters in Seattle to shame. Case in point:

But the new error is a peculiar one. Originally, in fact, it doesn’t seem to have been Sound Transit’s error at all; the mistake was reportedly made by the Seattle Times.

In preparing a June 4 story on the total cost of Phase 2, the Times double-counted $7 billion in expenses when it added everything up to reach the $37.9 billion figure.

It was a good-faith mistake. If journalists were whiz kids in math or accounting, they’d probably be earning an honest living doing something else.

But the mistake ultimately became Sound Transit’s. That’s because the Times – to make sure it had the numbers right – ran its arithmetic past the agency’s staff. The staff missed the Times’ $7 billion error, the $37.9 billion figure was published, and the correction that came out last week left Sound Transit deeply embarrassed.

As the article goes on to say, Sound Transit doesn’t use the $37B number. Only the Times does. And even the Times sometimes uses $23B instead! It doesn’t let Sound Transit off the hook completely, but it does cast the story in a different light: The Times uses an alternative accounting measure to tabulate the total costs. When they presented it to ST and said, “does this look right to you?” ST said, “yeah, that’s right,” even though they don’t use those estimates in their day-to-day planning and operations.

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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.”

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The P-I Talks to Steinbrueck

By Frank on June 8, 2007

The P-I’s Opinion Leaders Podcast had an episode from May 22 with Peter Steinbrueck on the future of the Alaskan Way corridor that I’m just now listening to. Steinbrueck does a great job of moving the conversation from moving cars to moving people, which is a much-needed paradigm shift.

He laments the carbon emissions of cars, using the familiar greenhouse gas argument for transit. In response, David Horsey cites a Schwarzenegger speech (possibly this one) about electric cars of the future that won’t pollute. Doesn’t the greenhouse gas argument disappear, Horsey wonders?

Steinbrueck’s response isn’t great. But this is a really, really critical point. So let me help him make his case!

Steinbrueck makes two basic points in response to Horsey: (a) he thinks combustion engines are going to be around for a long time, and (b) even biofuels have environmental problems. Both of those things are true, but neither is the best rebuttal to Horsey. The best rebuttal is that the electricity for those cars has to come from someplace, and currently that place is carbon-belching coal plants (in most of the U.S.). Even hydrogen-powered cars need electricity to electrolyze the hydrogen in the first place.

In other words, there’s simply no getting around the fact that it takes a large amount of energy to move a single person and their 2,500-lb car around the city. By switching to electric cars, you haven’t gotten rid of the problem, you’ve just moved the carbon emissions from the tailpipe to the smokestack. Finally, you’ve still got congestion. If electric cars push the cost of driving towards zero, they’ll end up increasing congestion because people will drive more.

All that said, I still think there’s a benefit in moving to electric cars. Electric cars can be ligher, and, more importantly, they can be recharged at night when the grid has excess capacity. But they’re not reason enough to abandon transit-oriented development.

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Near Collision!! (Not)

By Frank on May 31, 2007

KPRC Houston has some footage of light rail trains nearly colliding. Well, not really. One train got switched onto the opposite tracks, meaning that it could have potentially collided with an oncoming train. The operator halted the train in time.

Just FYI, you can expect these sorts of quasi-hysterical reports once Link Light Rail opens in Seattle: “passengers scared,” “investigation ordered,” “transit official to resign,” etc., etc. Of course, tens of thousands of people actually die in car crashes every year, so keep it in perspective.

Train collisions are dramatic, and one can blame them on some mythical, distant bureaucracy, whereas car crashes are just deadly and are usually the fault of regular citizens.

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Fun With Dollar Signs

By Frank on May 30, 2007

KNDO/KNDU, the Tri-Cities NBC affiliate, is running this wonderful bit on their site. As any savvy restaurant-goer knows, more dollar signs means it’s MORE EXPEN$$$IVE!

Seattle-are voters facing $$$38 billion roads-transit decision
Associated Press – May 30, 2007 1:25 PM ET

Corrected Version

SEATTLE (AP) – The Regional Transportation Investment District is expected tomorrow to approve a $$15 billion tax request to voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties.

If approved in November, the regional taxes would help pay for projects like a new four billion dollar Highway 520 floating bridge over Lake Washington. Tolls will be part of the funding package, and planners say the toll could be $$6 round trip by 2018 when the new span could be finished.

The road proposal would be paired with a $$23 billion plan to expand Sound Transit to Tacoma, Bellevue and nearly to Everett.

Both multi-billion dollar proposals must be approved to take effect.

Of course, they don’t even bother to explain that that $$$38B [sic] includes 30 years of finance charges, which, as we’ve noted before, is incredibly misleading.

On the plus side, at least it’s the corrected version. I’d hate to see what the uncorrected version looked like. My guess? It had more dollar signs!

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Nabobs!

By Frank on May 29, 2007

The Highline Times channels the ghost of Sprio Agnew to editorialize in favor of november’s RTID. Money quote:

Unfortunately, the uneasy coalition of roads and transit proponents is threatening to come unraveled.

The roads crowd thinks it is weighted too much toward transit while the Greenies think highways get an unfair advantage.

The measure is expensive and does not solve all our long-delayed transportation problems.

But voters should reject the nattering nabobs of negativism, as a disgraced former vice president put it, and consider the measure carefully before November.

(not to be confused with this great Queen Anne bar)

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