Orphan Road

For bikers who also bus . . .

Metro is also launching a demonstration project to ease restrictions in the tunnel on where bikes can be loaded and unloaded from bus bike racks. The change is expected to make it more convenient for people who ride both bikes and buses. Cyclists are urged to take care when moving off the platform to load their bikes on the front of the bus, and are reminded to use the stairs or elevators – not escalators – between street level and the platforms in stations. If the demonstration project proves successful, Metro will consider making the changes permanent.

http://your.kingcounty.gov/exec/news/2008/0915metro.aspx

Joshua Kelley

Good to see that Ron Sims has taken up the mantle of go-to anti-rail crank for the local media. Thanks, Ron!

Sims is peeved that the buses stuck in traffic downtown only stack up three deep. He'd like to see them going at least five deep.

The Port and the County have until the end of the year to buy the Eastside rail line from BNSF. Apparently they're making good enough progress that Ron Sims has backed down on his ultimatum. Either that, or he's realized he's run out of cards.

The bottom line is that the Port wants to buy the corridor, and they have the money and the votes to do so. The point of contention among the commissioners is what to do with the tracks. But here's soemthing that should give everyone pause:

When the three-way agreement among the port, the county and BNSF Railway was made public Nov. 2, the deal's announcement included the stipulation that BNSF would remove the single track from a little-used section of line between Woodinville and Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park in Renton. That section would be leased to the county, which would lay the trail on top of the rail bed after BNSF had cleaned up any contaminated soil.

You can see why Sims doesn't want to keep the tracks in place. Having the County on the hook for any soil contamination would not be fun for anyone (assuming there is actually contamination). Better to let BNSF clean it up before the public takes ownership, even if that means taking out the tracks.

Finally, I think you have trust the transit agencies here. If they don't think there's the ridership to support transit, they're probably right, and it's going to be an uphill battle to do it without their support. There are just too many moving parts (literally!). Remember the last time some folks tried to do an end-run around the transit planners?

Update: Link fixed.

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.

Part of Ron Sims' proposed King County budget would include a 25-cent hike in bus fares, presumably bringing prices to $1.50 for an off-peak trip and $1.75 at peak times. That seems reasonable to me. Transit fares in many cities are at or above $2, so Metro is still a relative bargain.

His levy on homes to support a passenger ferry service is a bit...odd... and a .1% sales tax increase to fund drug treatment is just wacky. I mean, doesn't anything get paid for out of general operating funds anymore?

In yet more wackiness, Sims argues that his proposals would cost "a lot less" than Proposition 1. Well yeah, but it also does a lot less. MUCH less. Ferries are not interchangeable with light rail. And how exactly does a drug treatment center improve transit?

We want our politicians to not be beholden to "special interests" or what have you, but we also need them to be accountable -- to have a fear in their hearts that if they don't listen to their voters, they could be out of a job. It's a two-way street.

I mentioned last Friday, in discussing Ron Sims' decision to not support Prop. 1, that Sims seemed liberated by the fact that he's been effectively shut out of higher office. But liberation can turn to be a double-edged sword (to butcher yet another ying-yang metaphor!).

Yesterday, Danny Westneat took that sentement to its logical conclusion, saying that Sims should resign if his heart isn't in it anymore.

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.

I've been remiss in not commenting on Ron Sims' guest op-ed in the Seattle Times coming out against the Roads and Transit package.

There's no point in sugar-coating it: this is a substantial setback for the "Yes" campaign. As executive of Washington's largest county -- the county that stands the most to benefit from the investments in the package -- Sims' opposition is significant. He's a credible progressive voice, and, as a former Sound Transit board member, he needs to be taken seriously.

STB does a good job of dissecting the nuts and bolts of Sims' argument, so I won't go through them here. The counterintuitive gist of Sims' argument amounts this: "we're running out of time to solve our transportation problems, so we need to slow down!"

He has a point. The funding for this plan is frustratingly slow. In order to collect enough money to start construction, we have to basically wait a decade. But Sims needs to offer more solutions for this. Why is it so slow? What factors do we need to change to speed it up? He doesn't say.

Now, we know that Sims has been very concerned about regressive taxes, and he's been a key voice in calling for a statewide income tax to make the tax burden more level. That's the kind of fundamental reform that's needed before we can even begin to think about more aggressive financing for transportation projects. But he avoids this altogether in his op-ed.

Reading Kerry Murakami's backstory on Sims in the P-I, I'm struck by just how liberated he must be right now. Having tried, and failed, to capture the Governorship, and with two relatively young and well-entrenched Democratic Senators in our state, there's really no where else for the man to go, politically (Transportation Secretary in an Obama administration??). So he's free to think big, from congestion pricing to surface-street solutions for the Viaduct (which, as Josh Feit noted, was a "kooky" idea until Sims got behind it).

But ideas are not the problem in this state. We're a hotbed of innovation. The problem is knocking heads and bringing interest groups together to agree on something, anything. I personally think the Roads and Transit package is that thing. It's not perfect, but it works. If Sims wants to dedicate his time to something else, I wish him godspeed. I certainly share his values, and so I imagine I'll support what he proposes. But at some point we need to stop dreaming and start digging.

Update: I have more, somewhat coherent thoughts on the global warming angle over at Bruno and the Prof.

The Seattle Times' Bob Young was on KUOW's Weekday this morning, discussing all things Port-related. He suggested that, although its true that the Port is no longer interested in owning Boeing Field (which it would get in exchange for the BNSF corridor), it might still be interested in managing the airport.

Also, Young noted that the Port commissioners' pushback against the deal may have been motivated in part by a desire to push back against Ron Sims, who's been giving them a hard time over the Lora Lake Apartments, low income housing that the Port wants demolished in advance of the third runway at Sea-Tac.

Sims seems to enjoy sparring with the Port. Two years ago, they fought over Southwest Airlines at Boeing Field and the implications for light rail at Sea-Tac.

Ron Sims is determined not to let that right-of-way slip through our fingers. From a King County press release:

Sims, along with the environmentalists and transportation advocates, signed a statement of Principles of Dual Use for the corridor. The principles include the promise to work with local, state and federal agencies for money to build a rail line on the 40 mile corridor being sold by the railroad. Trail advocates from the start have advocated the dual use of this critical public asset and the statement of principles signed today emphasize their absolute commitment to this goal.

"All of my documents and all of my staff presentations are about dual use. But let there be no doubt to anyone about our intention to include a rail line if we are able to secure public ownership of this corridor," said Executive Sims. "If the money were available, we'd build modern commuter or high capacity transit rail immediately."

Some transit advocates feared that once it became a trail, no one would tolerate building rail on it. But the rail advocates don't have the money or the ridership numbers to justify a train. The PSRC study recommended trail now, rail later. But Sims wants to reassure us that rail is still a priority.

Although the Port Commissioner is explicitly mentioned, there's no talk of the infamous trail-for-airport swap that the kids were crazy about back in the day.

Update: The P-I's spin: Sims is trying to buy time until he can come up with the dough.