The Seattle Times has article of how prop 1 fared around each district. I’m not suprised that it faired so poorly in places like West Seattle or Sammamish where not much if anything was being built. But I am suprised it did badly in places like Federal Way and Auburn, where both rail and roads were planned. What this says about how a transit-only vote would fare, we have to wait and see.
My concern is, if we bring a transit-only vote next year to the whole RTA district and it doesn’t pass, it will kill rail transit for decades. So will it pass? It’s not obvious either way. I don’t want to argue about the sampling accuracy of the Sierra Club’s poll any more, since I’ve already upset a bunch of people, but we can agree on this from the poll: clearly, the transit was more important than the roads for single-issue ‘yes’ voters. They asked the question “What was the main reason why you voted yes? Because of the road projects, or the transit projects, or both?” and 35% said transit, only (!!!) 11% because of the road projects, but 54% because of both the transit and road projects. Now, the question they didn’t ask to the “both” pollees was “if a transit-only package were on the ballot would you have voted ‘yes’?”
On the other hand, taxes were the major problem for ‘no’-voters.
Still 35% is encouraging, and if even Prop. 1 with roads passed in the 43rd, let’s bring a transit-only ballot to at least Seattle in 2008 to extend the thing to Northgate. We’ll get a huge progressive turnout for the presidential race, and that would be sure to pass.
What do you guys think?