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…
I have this vague feeling of despair that if we do get ST2 as it is back on the ballot, it’ll be in 2009 and it’ll fail. And that will kill rail for a long time: basically another generation.
If we could get it on the ballot for 2008 and it’d pass, that would be awesome, but some how I think we’d need heavy modifications the likes of which you have described: a smaller light rail package and more buses/sounder extensions.
At very least, if we could get a northgate-only portion on the ballot paid for by Seattle tax-payers, that could get momentum enough that it would not destroy rail.
But we need something to pass and soon, and I’m not sure I 100% trust the Sierra Club to get a ballot proposal this time around.
I think a Seattle-only measure is likely to succeed, especially if it’s in 2008.
At the same time, what I was trying to point out is that there are significant technical issues with how a Seattle-only measure would apply to Sound Transit, and somebody who knows more about the legal aspects of this than me should sound off.
I’m pretty sure that a series of Seattle only street car initiatives would work. Then maybe we’ll even be able to get a monorail up!
Look an extention of the SLUT to Udistrict and up Capitol to First Hill and down to the ID and the waterfront will give this city a nice little circle and pave the way for a Udist to Fremont to Ballard street car and maybe something from Ballard to QA to DT and from DT to West Seattle (probably not street car) via California Ave.
There are many many options.
And really I just wanted to show people this http://frostfireseeds.com/amount-of-space-required-to-transport-the-same-amount-of-people-by-car-bus-or-bicycle
that didn’t seem to work, and yet it was my whole purpose for commenting.
Let’s try it again.
Troy,
Given monorail’s history in this city, I think the chances of its approval are close to zero, sadly. They just got through selling off the SMP’s property acquisitions!
Also, Ron Sims’ BRT initiatives are supposed to handle Ballard – Downtown – West Seattle. I’m not the biggest fan of BRT, but they’re probably just as fast or faster than the streetcar.
I’ve never even seen that smaller proposal before.
Are there any others?
Yes, there’s a oderate rail extension with a 0.4% tax. In the event, they went for the 0.5% maximum rail extension based on public feedback.
That smaller rail proposal accompanied by road improvements shoud’ve been what we were just voting on. It likely would’ve passed, and if people were pleased with the rail system it could’ve been extended.
What a stupid waste of time we just had.
The tax may have been too high, but people didn’t like a lot of those roads projects either.
I thought the majority of them were good, but a lot of people disagreed.
During the public comment period, the 0.3% proposal was trashed in favor of the bigger ones.
Of course, the kind of people who comment 1 year before the vote tend to be transit zealots.
Just a 2 cents on why, having recently moved to Snohomish Cty from the Eastside, I couldn’t vote for Prop 1, although I think it’s imperative to DO something about the woeful mess transportation is now.
I’d like to see more genuine mass transit BY RAIL, & not more smelly lumbering busses necessitating a mind-bogggling amount of connections with nowhere to wait out of the rain & cold. The Metro, the Tube, anyone? Europeans have the train thing all figured out–WT* is wrong with us, anyway? Granted, our geography poses some challenges, but some sophisticated engineering, though expensive initially, would prove to be a great investment. Another beef I have, with the rail service already in place, is that the hours it runs are laughable. If you’re not at the platform precisely at whatever hour it leaves last (5:45 or whatever, & that’s after taking a lumbering smelly old bus to get there), you’re either stuck in downtown for the night or facing cab fare home–in my case 20+ miles–kinda defeats the point of mass transit. Is it any wonder people who work jobs with more demanding hours or offbeat schedules are still driving their cars?
I’d devote the lion’s share of funds to rails, with side spurs to central points in our infamous city of villages, with fast & light busses circulating every no longer than every 2o min, even less at peak times, and of course, 24 hours for the rails & spurs.
I’d then devote a truly modest amount to repairing & maintaining the surface streets & interstates.
What really cracked me up about Prop 1 was the pledge to add “more lanes” to freeways. Yeah, we see how well that’s worked so far–a couple miles on drivers are forced back into the mainstream because the lazy-man’s illusory way of “expanding freeways” so far hasn’t involved expanding the roadbeds (where even possible). I suppose I needn’t mention how those brief miles of “additional lanes” attract the really aggressive drivers who think they’ll just sprint around traffic until forced back into it. I’m sick of them. “Yes, YOU first, you MUST be FIRST, after all,” I often find myself muttering at them.
Ah well. I’d really rather get out of traffic altogether & have a nice ride along the coast on a fast, efficient train in the morning. Will Puget Sound EVER catch up to the rest of the world? (But not LA, which is where we seem to be headed now).
[...] governance reform didn’t pass (again) in 2008, but even getting Sound Transit back to the ballot in 2008 was an uphill battle. The majority of news coverage of the 2008 ballot was calling it a [...]