Everybody knows how bill numbers are assigned. The luck of the draw on the stimulus bill was 1978, which is pretty symbolic when it comes the the state highway dominance in the bill the legislature passed. Nothing was funded from stimulus money by the state except state highways, yet they could have funded most anything. 1970s era policies on transportation are back.

Many of us in the legislature are as pro-transit as you are. We may not be as passionately pro-Sound-Transit-in-its-current-form as you guys, but I think this debate is about how we get MORE usable transit FASTER.

Again: Our multi-modal money is quite limited; most state revenues come from the gas tax, constitutionally limited. Until we have the political will to either impose a “new” financing scheme (e.g., congestion pricing, VMT) or change the constitution, the STATE LEGISLATURE’s role in transit will be limited. We certainly do what we can, but it’s limited, yes.

The legislature is uniquely UNABLE to impact Sound Transit’s policies. For years now, ST’s board has a legislative strategy that opposes any state action WITHOUT THE ST BOARD’S APPROVAL. (It’s in black and white, and I’ve got the link somewhere.) And they’ve been enormously successful in ensuring that we DON’T do anything that they even SUSPECT might impact them, someday, somehow. And they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff, lobbyists, advertising, to make sure we don’t touch transit. As this board is a creature of the county executive’s appointment philosophy, we are even farther removed from any impact. It’s a bad governance model, but I try not to talk about that anymore. I sincerely appreciate each of the board members, individually. However, I believe that this sort of federated board is easily captured and led by outside forces with goals different than the overall functioning of the transit system.

There are other ways to mitigate the situation, provide transit on SR520, without diversion of tolling proceeds. There must be NO diversion of toll revenue to any OTHER PURPOSE until we actually PAY FOR THE BRIDGE, including the transit lanes that we so desperately need. Without those additional transit lanes, NOTHING in transit actually works well in this corridor!! SO that’s job number one. YES, we can and will find operating funds other than bridge tolls. We are right now having legislation drafted (Rep Nelson, I believe) that would divert some portion of the ferry proceeds. Rep Hunter and I’ve been discussing this since last spring, in conjunction with city transportation and planning staff on this side of the lake, so there’s no surprise here.

I disagree with Rep. Eddy on her assertion that state legislators aren’t somehow accountable for transit, along with running the state highway department. Sound Transit is a creature of the state legislature, as are every other transit agency in the state. State government has a huge stake in transit in all its forms. Transit policy is obviously in the state’s interest. The state legislature’s policies are now being implemented just as designed, now legislators are protesting the policies they created.

Can we stop the finger pointing blame game and move on? Do something.

Too often these days, transportation players in the legislature behave like their only job is to run the state highway department. Anybody paying any attention knows that the highway department is actually running them. That’s why the legislature and the Governor spent all the stimulus they had on state highways, even though Congress and Obama intended that it be spent on most any type of transportation, including transit, rail, city and county streets and bridges, ferries and ferry terminals, etc. The state highway department fooled them all. Who could blame them? 1978 was the number on the state stimulus bill that recalled 1970s era state highway department policies – the bill number is a fair reflection on what seems to be the majority view of the people we send to Olympia when it comes to transportation.

Let’s see whether the legislature does the right thing on the Evergreen Point Bridge. Will they give all that toll money to the state highway department again? Or will they recognize that the state also has a huge interest in transit on the bridge, as an alternative to paying the peak tolls, and to make the whole 6 lane project work?

That’d be a good subject to focus on over the next few weeks. The way I understand it, without some modest amount of toll money to operate 40 some buses, the 40 buses are dead, and the people who would otherwise be on them will have no other choice than to help clog up everything else.

I will try to give you a quick description of my preference, but pardon errors, typos, because I’m doing this while listening to bill reports.

I believe that there is enormous potential in building the N-S light rail — Redmond thru B’vue to connect with the westside LINK at Tukwila — first. I believe that there is enormous potential for new housing, transit-oriented development, a better jobs/housing balance, in this corridor. So much of the B’vue-Seattle BENEFIT is simply building on, increasing the intensity of housing/jobs/etc. that’s already THERE. There’s not as much opportunity to meet our future jobs/housing needs.

If we are going to ever get housing prices down (other than having the economy tank), improve jobs/housing balance, provide more people w/the opportunity to live/work in urban centers, then I believe there must be a big increase in density in locations served by transit. The potential is THERE in the N-S corridor on the eastside of the lake.

Unfortunately, “studies” are done that look, for instance, at the BNSF right of way as it now exists. And that routing is found wanting. Well, that’s no surprise, and I didn’t need a consultant to tell me that. PORTIONS of the BNSF right of way may be quite appropriate for light rail. Others, not so much.

But it doesn’t matter what my preference is, because THIS IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Our regional leadership decided to put all their effort into the ID-B’vue routing. That’s fine; question asked/answered. But I can’t pretend that the routing makes any more sense to me today than it did earlier.

If it were designed for rail, ST wouldn’t have to design and test an expansion joint that will work with rail. And they probably wouldn’t have to figure out how to attach the rail and OCS poles without touching any of the steel in the concrete of the bridge deck.

I’ll also point out that it can be hard to get civil engineers to tell you something isn’t possible. If you’re willing to spend a lot of money, a lot of time, and/or accept a lot of risk just about anything is possible. I’m not saying rail on the existing I-90 bridge is impossible, but I do think it isn’t a slam dunk. There are some big technical challenges here. I the engineers working for ST are successful.

We’re in session, will be here late tonight and through Saturday. We’re still trying to get environmental and other good legislation teed up to get moved out of the House before cut-off next week. And then there’s the budget … to say nothing of the tolling bill that will demand much attention.

I do sincerely appreciate your passion — but have to focus on my job for a while.

Heck you might even be right across the street from the 41st already!

For these types of people rail transit is seen as a “yuppie amenity” that “doesn’t serve the poor or minority communities”. That rail tends to draw TOD around stations just adds fuel to their fire as it also becomes a “tool of gentrification”.

Proper maintenance will go a long way to ensuring the I-90 bridge doesn’t need to be replaced in another 30 years.

(27) (($1,500,000)) $1,928,232 of the motor vehicle
5 account–federal appropriation ((and $4,908,000)), $2,611,000 of the
6 transportation partnership account–state appropriation, and $14,682 of
7 the transportation 2003 account (nickel account)–state appropriation
8 are provided solely for project 109040Q as identified in the LEAP
9 transportation document in subsection (1) of this section:
10 I-90/Two-Way Transit-Transit and HOV Improvements, Stages 2 and 3.

Doesn’t look like they transferred any savings. Another nearly $2 million down for R8A stages 2 and 3. It’s even worse than we thought.

Your view of reality, quite frankly, is that you want to decide where light rail goes based on politics, rather than good planning and engineering principles. You’ve said plenty of times in plenty of forums that you want light rail to go somewhere other than where it’s most cost-effective. Then you go on to claim your idea is better. It’s just like everyone else who has their own personal magic idea for great transit – it doesn’t pan out, you need to let the professionals do it.

Representative Clibborn isn’t serving the entire state. She’s serving a small set of single occupancy vehicle interests who don’t want to sit in traffic to go to their jobs in Seattle. Well, the majority of her district says they DO want light rail in those lanes, and everything she’s doing has been to stop that.

The amazing part is that you’d call us ‘factional’ for asking you to stop trying to kill what your voters want. Our leadership in the city and county is not to blame – they came together with the rest of the region to pass a mass transit package. Now you want to kill it because you think it should serve Kirkland. Haven’t we been over this before? I think you just don’t like these facts:

http://seattletransitblog.com/2008/06/19/why-link-will-cross-i-90-first/

Smart routing is what we’re doing. Just because you don’t agree doesn’t mean you get to start throwing around insults of our local leadership.