At Northwest Progressive, Scott has a thought-provoking post on Sierra Club’s case’s denial by King County Superior court. The Sierra Club, an environmental lobbying/political group, had been trying to add their own “con” argument to the voter’s guide because the con argument that goes with the bill is an anti-rail position. The Sierra Club supports the rail portion of the bill, but opposes the RTID roads portion. The court ruled that the planned con section is within legistlative guidelines, and it is too late to change it.
Scott’s point is very well though out:
The Sierra Club is the only major environmental organization to oppose the measure. The Washington Conservation Voters, the Washington Environmental Council, Futurewise, and other groups dedicated to a sustainable Earth strongly support Roads & Transit.They believe, as we do, that by investing in fifty miles of new light rail, thirty miles of new high occupancy vehicles lanes, enhancements to Sounder commuter rail, and Park & Ride expansions we can decrease single occupancy vehicle use and improve our transportation choices.
Additionally, by removing dangerous choke points that cause congestion, we can improve the reliability of our bus system and make our roads safer.
The roads section of the bill is mostly freight roads, HOV lanes and is chokepoint improvements. It has very little new roads in it, the major new road, the so-called “cross-base highway”, it does not even full fund. My position is that we will never get a fully baked region rail system if we don’t start it now, and we’ll never get expansions and increased rail systems in the future if we don’t start now. Opposing a bill that creates something we need, light rail, because it has something you don’t really like, roads, is counter-productive because the roads projects are likely to get built anyway by politicians, and they are not likely to build rail on their own accord. I feel like if you’re going to oppose roads being built, you should do it where huge roads projects much worse than this are, and don’t oppose those that are tied to necessary transit improvements.
Should we never build more roads? Should we destroy the ones we have? If you hate roads, than that is the only logical step after the Sierra Club’s argument.
Whoa — seems like a complete failure to check the facts. RTID is not just choke points and freight roads. It is two new lanes each way on 405, 509 extension, 167 extension, SR 9 widening, I-5 widening and more. 74 new lane miles of general purpose highway, 150 new lane miles when you bring other highways and arterials. Puget Sound Regional Council has modeled the traffic after we build all these highways – 45% increase in automobile use by 2030, even taking the positive effects of Sound Transit into account. This type of growth in automobile traffic makes it almost impossible to reduce global warming pollution from automobiles, the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in our region, much less the 80% reductions by 2050 that the scientists tell us are necessary. If you care about global warming, you have to say no to this ballot measure. Make them come back with a plan that will work — congestion pricing that will actually reduce congestion and traffic. That way new investments in transit can give us a shot at reducing global warming, instead of being used to enable a massive road expansion.
>The roads section of the bill is mostly freight roads, HOV lanes and is chokepoint improvements.
The single biggest project is the widening of I-405. Those new lanes could have been HOV, or tolled, or HOT freight — they aren’t.
Also, expansion was put ahead of taking care of the 520 bridge. The $1.3 billion for I-405 is the amount of the funding shortfall, even with tolls, of 520 replacement. The priority with RTID billions of dollars in highway expansion, not safety and not maintenance.
Anonymous posts. Something tells me these comments come right from the Sierra Club.
Might be, who cares?
Are they right?
People, you have to pay attention to facts.
” Make them come back with a plan that will work — congestion pricing that will actually reduce congestion and traffic. ”
Yeah so that in 2030 Seattle is still using buses held up in congested streets that the additional people will be using. NO THANKS! Seattle needs to wake up and start realizing that transit is severely lacking here. It is time to be responsible about this issue. Boeing left, it isn’t impossible that major companies will leave to go somewhere with less mobility problems.
clearly, anonymous, you have little understanding of how congestion pricing works. Congestion pricing is about the only thing that will get buses UNSTUCK from traffic. And yeah, Seattle certainly needs to improve its transit, but lets not go about it in such a way that we undo all the benefit of transit by building more polluting roads at the same time.
It’s blindingly obvious that we need more transit. That is one fact, but we have to hold in our heads at least one other fact, which is that more clogged highways cause more greenhouse gas emissions, at a time when we have to make sharp cuts — something like 80% by 2050.
And you are kidding yourself if you think those new RTID highways won’t be clogged by 2030 anyway. Study after study says they will.
Sorry, we’ve got serious and complicated problems to solve.
A little more nuance, please..
Here’s another thought to hold in our crowded heads…what if, by 2020 or 2050 or whatever, automotive technology has actually advanced to a point that emissions of greenhouse gases are actually declining while traffic is up?
With oil already at $80/barrel, battery technology making at least some advances, and Americans unable and unwilling to change their lifestyles dramatically, it doesn’t seem implausible.
I’m all for transit, and I also think the Sierra Club is wrong about this one.
We need both more efficient cars, and fewer cars in order to get to 80% reductions by 2050. Clean cars alone cannot do the trick. The recent clean car legislation in Washington, when implemented, only offsets population growth, it does not reduce emissions. The magnitude of the challenge, and the stakes, don’t allow us to sit back and wait for some magical technology. We need to start taking action now.
Life is too short to not say who you are, but apparently I’m immortal.
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