* Too little spent on transportation and infrastructure
* Too much of that spent on roads, not rail and transit
* Of the road money, too much spent on new capacity, and not enough on fixing what we already have.

If they had hacked I-405 expansion to fund rural bus service or repair farm roads, I would have been cool with that. If they had stiffed Metro but funded Whatcom transit to the rafters, that would be a bummer for me but I could respect it. There are enough systematic problems that we don’t have to be at each other’s throats over resources.

Take a look at the committee assignments in the house transportation committee (link). Of the 29 members, only 11 are from King, Pierce or Shohomish counties (38%), of those 3 are from rural parts of those counties, leaving only 27% of the members of the key committee from urban puget sound, despite the fact that urban puget sound represents 50% of the population. Even more maddening, only one, ONE, of the 29 members of the house transportation committee is from Seattle. That means Seattle, whose delegation makes up 12% of the state house, holds only 3% of the seats on the transportation committee.

THAT is why Seattle gets screwed in olympia. It’s because OUR OWN legislators DON’T CARE about transportation. Where are the Seattle legislators? What are they spending their time on? It is not “Olympia’s” fault, it’s our fault. You want reform, call your legislators here in Seattle and tell them that if they don’t make transportation a priority and get themselves on the transportation committee, you will be voting for someone else.

We actually can make that threat now thanks to the top-two primary. Every Seattle legislative race in 2010 will likely be between 2 democrats, meaning we could actually have a real choice for once and can actually start holding their feet to the fire on transportation.

You do make a good point however about spending money on improving freight mobility in the west, which is the major bottleneck. Of course, one of the reasons it’s a bottleneck is because SOV commuters keep gumming up the transportation system that should be focused on economic development rather than subsidizing a gratuitous suburban lifestyle.

Inter-regional transportation systems are the foundation of every city’s economy. Those who imagine that intra-regional commuters are the sole or even the primary purpose of a transportation system should pick up a book on urban and regional economics.

This isn’t an east/west issue or even urban/rural (so much), as this is a “major east-west through highways get lots of money” issue.

Also please say you begrudge a poor as dirt county like Pend Oreille stimulus money because high-five for that.

Two trips have shown you all you needed to see of 45,000 sq. mi. that you never feel the need to make another trip. Truly, you are a worldly and well-traveled individual because you fly to Japan or San Francisco or New York so much but never drive to Eastern Washington (a decision which belches many times the number of hydrocarbons into the air than the reverse – good job reducing your footprint). Damn Microsoft yuppie scum.

You don’t care about general transit and transportation issues nor even the environment, you care about transit and transportation issues for people like you. That’s why despite a brief note and asking for input from commentators about whether you need someone on South King issues, you plowed ahead despite the lack of regular commentators from other subareas.

Even in a rail world, disproportionate money is spent on rural areas with high-maintenance trackage. I’d bet good money that if I-90 were magically replaced with HSR, that Kittitas County (being a section of the state that experiences severe and stressing weather variation) would see a similar proportion of dollars.

Do you think your food just magically appears at the farmer’s market (NB: the farms from the Kittitas Valley have a shorter, and therefore less impactful, commute than those in Bellingham) or in the supermarket or something? Once again, damn Microsoft yuppies with their “depth” of lived experience.

The number one issue with the federal stimulus money was that it was too small, so stuff like regular maintenance work got prioritized over actual investment (because that’s what’s going to need to happen with the South Park Bridge – it needs to be replaced not just repaved). If you can’t get that through your, ultimately, ignorant skulls, then there is no hope for transportation planning in this country.

The State has established the policy of funding State road projects like the viaduct and leaving projects like Mercer up to the City. Just because the Stimulus rules don’t preclude the use on local projects is no reason for the State legislature to change their policy.

1. There’s no federal rule that says that the stimulus money has to go to state projects and not local projects. That’s just a decision that state policymakers (Clibborn and Haugen) made. That’s what “aren’t eligible” means in this case.

2. The state doesn’t lose any share of local tax revenue when cities incorporate, except in very specific circumstances, like annexation of large unincorporated areas, and even then it is only temporary. There is a revenue shift from counties to cities when incorporation or annexation happens, but it’s one that the counties are universally in favor of because it decreases their costs more than it decreases their revenues. The state’s share of sales and property atx revenue is the same in cities and in unincorporated county territory.

So our legislators obviously think that the distribution of the funds is in some way fair. If you/we don’t like it we can try to vote them out of office, and change the allocation of representatives such that urban areas are better represented. I think that is highly unlikely to happen.

Lastly, those with less population should still have good roads; it’s going to cost more per person, but that doesn’t mean they deserve any less. Seems equitable to me.

That really makes no sense to me. If I move out to the middle of no where I still deserve good roads why? Because it’s my god given right? Cost ot the taxpayer be damned?

Seriously? If that’s the best you can come up with you need to go back to thinking about the problem.

I understand why – simply to quell the “why do Seattle-ites get everything” argument. I don’t mind the argument on either side, but it’s erroneous to say that those in other counties are receiving so much more than here.

Lastly, those with less population should still have good roads; it’s going to cost more per person, but that doesn’t mean they deserve any less. Seems equitable to me.

Yes, the agricultural economy of Easter WA is significant, but it just isn’t that significant in the larger statewide picture. Roughly speaking, King County by itself represents 30% of the State’s population, 40% of the State’s jobs, and 50% of the State’s tax base. Add in Pierce and Snohomish Counties and Pugetopolis clearly represents the bulk of this State’s economy no matter how you decide to dice the numbers.

If you want to take care of this State’s economy, you really need to take Pugetopolis first.

But on top of that, if you really care about supporting Eastern WA ag-business, then you really should be supporting investment in Western WA and not Eastern WA. Half the cost of shipping a product from Eastern WA to ship-deck is incurred between the pass and the ship. If you want to reduce shipping costs for Eastern WA, then the easiest way to do it is by working on the 50% of the cost that is incurred on this side of the State.

Think of it this way – repaving I-90 east of the summit does exactly zero to reduce shipping costs for Eastern WA, but investing in freight mobility and portside facilities on this side of the State surely would reduce shipping costs.

It happens every two years in Olympia when legislators decide how to spend federal funds that come to the state. One reason: the current legislature is only interested in “state” roads owned an operated by the state DOT. They have shown little interest in city streets (like Mercer) or county roads (like South Park) or transit that is not operated by the state (everything but ferries.) Sure, they talk, but when the rubber meets the roads, the legislature uses it for state roads, a disproportionate share of which are outside urban areas.

The Obama administration wants to change that. That’s one big reason why the reauthorization of federal transportation policies by Congress was delayed 18 months: to allow the administration time to lay the groundwork for true reform. The focus: let regions decide how to spend more of the federal funds in transparent ways instead of earmarking behind closed doors by legislators in state capitols. And require the regions to spend the funds on projects with the most merit, ending the silos that restrict the lion’s share of federal funds to road spending, and ending the closed door horsetrading that characterizes decisions made a state capitols.

It is likely to happen.

I don’t agree that spending on I-90 in Kittitas County doesn’t benefit Seattle and King County – it is a huge connector for both. And it isn’t just about whether you use it, it is also about where you get food and other goods (like Wine!), or you realize other more intangible benefits.

The point of stimulus was never to equalize spending in turfy ways anyway. It was to jump start the economy in really tough times. Those Kittitas County construction jobs may well be held by people who live in Seattle. The contractors who perform the jobs generally have ties to the urban region and King County. The lift in tax receipts from the churn or the stimulus funds helps the entire state.

The other thing I would point out is this: although the funds the NY Times looked at could be spent on any type of transportation improvement – state capitols almost always decide to spend them on roads the state owns, not transit, even though transit was eligible. But the true accounting and viable compare will come only when funds that can only be spent on transit are added to the calculation, That’s when the urban tally will go up substantially, especially in a city like New York, which, because of transit’s operating characteristics there, received a huge windfall of stimulus funds that rural place didn’t get any of.

You don’t want all that stimulus money going to Eastern WA but you also don’t want our tax money going over there. So what do you suggest? We let their infrastructure crumble, along with their economy? Washington State is one economy, we’re all in the same boat, and we don’t need someone who governs only what s/he can see from the top of the capital building.

I also hope I need not remind you that I-90 runs far beyond Seattle to Spokane – it goes allllll the way to Boston. Just because YOU don’t cross the mountains to the other half of this state doesn’t mean billions of dollars worth of goods doesn’t…

Other projects like Mercer aren’t eligible. We’ve been through this before. It’s a City project. When cities incorporate they take control of a big chunk of the tax revenue. In return they have to take responsibility for much of the infrastructure. Seattle can’t take local sales tax and property tax and still expect the State to take care of city streets. There are stimulus funds that will go to cities and Seattle needs to make sure they muzzle up to the trough and get their fair share.

As far as transit capital there are restrictions on creating jobs and creating them now. Placing a bus order that is a year or more out doesn’t cut it. Buying rail cars from Europe or Asian really doesn’t cut it. Then you’ve got the issue of who’s going to fund the increased operational cost of added equipment. Hey, great, we’ve got a hundred new buses; oh, wait, we’re cutting service… just park it over there :-( And you can’t just take the money and use it to pay off orders already on the books because that isn’t creating any new jobs.

The stimulus really was a case of make hay when the sun shines. The shovel ready jobs were mostly roads because, well that’s what the State does. Who else is going to do it? We also got some needed rail funding because those studies and projects were done and in good order thanks to years of work by WSDOT. While we currently have a backlog of expansion and improvement plans waiting on funding this should be a wake up call to legislators that when funds are again available long term planning for rail improvements need to get back on track.

About 2/3 of the money did go to basic road repair projects, which is a good thing because we do need to do a better job of maintaining what we have (including I-90 east of the mountains). Those maintenance projects are as shovel ready as you can get and they produce a lot of instant jobs. That said, it was absurd for the state to blow $35 million on an interchange at the Yakima Valley mall and a lot of other pork barrel TPA projects when it could have spent that money on transit capital around the state, funded a variety of bike/ped projects that were shovel ready and fixed crumbling infrastructure in the Seattle area such as the South Park bridge, Spokane Street Viaduct and, yes, the Mercer Mess. The shunning of transit by state legislators was the biggest outrage (although not at all surprising).

See this report for more: http://www.transportationchoices.org/stimulus_120days.pdf