You’ve got to give us a why, Bill!

Posted on by Andrew Smith

He wants to disband Sound Transit, and he’s not the only person who wants that.

Disband Sound Transit. One less duplicative bureaucracy to fund and maintain. Finish King County’s light rail — since so much money has been sunk into it already we might as well go ahead and finish the thing, then operate it as a laboratory and concrete example of what not to do next time, should the region ever venture into rail again. Then turn it over to Metro. Give the Tacoma light rail segment to Pierce Transit.

Turn the Sounder commuter trains — which always made far more sense than light rail since the rights of way already exist and they move people between towns, a major source of congestion — over to Amtrak and/or the Washington State Department of Transportation (Amtrak already provides contract commuter service in California, Maryland, Virginia and Connecticut, contracts with the state of Washington for support of the Cascades service and provides maintenance services for Sounder). And turn express-bus service over to Metro, Pierce Transit and Community Transit, which should have been running it anyway.

It’s a list of action items without any reason. Why does he want to disband Sound Transit? Because it’s duplicative? What is agency is it duplicating exactly? Because “Metro, Pierce Transit and Community Transit” should have been running it anyway?

He ends with ‘Ban from regional transportation planning anyone who has uttered, or even thought, the phrase, “We’ve got to get people out of their cars.”‘ Yikes.

There’s nothing of substance here, but it’s worth noting that Virgin is not alone in his thinking, and we need to be vigilent against those trying to destroy our transit agencies.

Bill Virgin = Comic Relief

Posted on by Brian Bundridge

After reading this P-I Columnist thoughts on Prop 1, I think I honestly needed my ribs to be replaced from laughing so hard. First of all, I do admire him for some suggestions, such as replacing the 520 and Alaskan Way Viaduct but then he goes on to say to Disband Sound Transit and letting the regional transit agencies take over…. Sure, that’ll be fine in dandy to replace 500+ Sound Transit buses, give Sounder over to Amtrak and/or BNSF or another private venture and give Link over to King County.

If it wasn’t for Sound Transit, there would not be this additional transportation infrastructure that we now have thanks to Sound Transit because King County, Pierce County, and Snohomish Counties couldn’t get off their asses to develop an extensive transportation plan.

We now have an agency that while not near the size of King County Metro Transit but is already at 35+ million passengers in it’s short life span. I don’t see Sound Transit going anywhere anytime soon and with their recent credit approvals. We need to stop looking at Sound Transit who said one thing in 1996 and changed it in 2001 because of increased costs because every other country happens to be developing at a faster rate that the United States is….It is not Sound Transit’s fault for raising fuel costs, concrete costs, steel costs.

If anything, all of our networks need to be under ONE name instead of 4 different agencies (Community, King, Pierce, ST) I would personally would not mind the new Puget Pass/Orca Pass to include the Washington State Ferry System (foot and passenger) on top of all of our other systems. I also wouldn’t mind the Monorail under King County Metro but that would never happen.

So yes, we have a lot of ideas, plans, thoughts, how we would love to get rid of Sound Transit but without ST, we wouldn’t be where we are at today without them and for that, can not thank this agency enough. Central Link Light-Rail is coming to Seattle in 2009, South Lake Union Streetcar in December, Community Transit’s Swift BRT in 2009 and King County Metro’s RapidRide BRT in 2010 and the 2003 Legislative Transportation Funding Package, Nickel fund, and the 2005 Transportation Partnership Funding Package are well under way all over our State to get our roads improved and in a State of Good Repair.

Give it time for everything to come together and you’ll see that our tax money is going to something good but you all need to realize that it takes time to build up the funds to get our roads repaved, repaired, to get our transportation in a condition that meets our needs, and most importantly, keeps our strong employers in our region. Without a effective transportation system, Seattle and the Puget Sound region will fail to be a world leader in trade and our economy.

Gregorie tells Microsoft that replacing 520 still a priority

Posted on by Brian Bundridge

In the seemingly endless debate of the 520 bridge and highway improvements, it seems the State is going to branch off from RTID and move forward with the project set to start construction in 2012.

A question I’m sure some will raise is where is the money going to come from?? That is what I would like to know. I’m actually quite glad this is going to happen though. This might free up some funds to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/339358_bridge13.html

“Last week … the voters said no to Proposition 1, and when they did, I don’t believe that they said no to us having a responsibility to replace the 520 bridge,” Gregoire said. “The replacement of the 520 bridge is essential for Microsoft for it to be able to get its employees, for it to be able to do its business in an efficiently, effectively, safe way …I intend to provide for Microsoft what it needs to continue to grow and be literally the largest corporate campus in the world.”

I do understand the Governors distress about the 520 bridge. Thousands of Microsoft employees cross over both directions each weekday, for meetings, lunch, etc. Not all Microsoft employees have the ability to tele-communicate. For our region to risk loosing Microsoft because we couldn’t get our act together is out of the question and we need to provide a solution to not only 520 but also I-405, SR-167, and the Issaquah-Hobart Road, a popular alternative that is heavily congested now.

Train Wreck

Posted on by Frank Chiachiere

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Eric Earling, proving once again that he’s the only interesting writer over at Sound Politics, has a very smart post on why things got to be the way they are:

The whole reason the RTID came into being is because Olympia refused to find a way to foot the bill for the road improvements this region so desperately needs. Once state government punted to the locals, the County Councils of King, Pierce, and Snohomish were able to cobble together a compromise that began to address the stunning backlog of overdue projects. That’s why Prop 1 was so amazingly large to begin with.

Yet, we have the Joni Balter’s of the world proclaiming the package just needs to be smaller. The problem is that the measure was so large to begin with because people like Balter have spent years saying “let’s slow down and talk about it some more until we feel comfortable about this.” As delightful as that Seattle-way of doing business is, at some point somebody has to start making tough decisions and living with the consequences.

Read the whole thing.

Getting Rail to the Ballot

Posted on by Martin H. Duke

There’s a lot of talk about getting some light rail to the ballot next year. As Daimajin points out, I’m not sure that it’s within Sound Transit’s authority to propose that some portion of the ST district be taxed to fund a particular project. Any lawyers out there that can clarify the limits of Sound Transit’s charter?

It’s evident that asking the three-county district to vote on a Northgate extension alone is dead-on-arrival. Another possibility is to revisit the bus/rail extension option that was briefly considered by the board for this year’s ballot, which would have involved only a 0.3% sales tax increase. Although that option was savaged during the comment period in favor of more aggressive rail construction, the kind of person who comments at that stage in the process is likely a wee bit more energized about transit than the rest of us.

Unfortunately, it’s not clear if that option has enough in it for Snohomish County. Snohomish representatives on the Sound Transit board were quite adamant that getting to Northgate did not adequately serve their constituents, to the point of fighting the idea of “loaning” subarea funds to complete the Northgate line. I found this to be shortsighted, but is probably reasonably reflective of the attitude of voters there.

The other alternative, of course, is to abandon going to the whole district altogether, and do a Seattle-only or King-County-only vote. Legally, I’m not sure how this would work out: would the City just deliver a lump of money to Sound Transit? Set up a separate authority to complete the work? Again, calling all the lawyers…

No doubt we can count on the Sierra Club to produce the initiative it looks like we’ll need…