Last week, the Seattle Times featured an Op-Ed by our own Sherwin Lee, which strongly supported moving forward with East Link and attacked Bellevue’s city council for wasting money. In response, another one of Bill Hirt’s letters appeared in the newspaper. Two things are remarkable about this:1) Hirt’s letter contains a major factual inaccuracy in every paragraph, 2) Hirt has a history of somehow getting letters published that contain major factual inaccuracies in every paragraph.

In the first paragraph of his letter, Hirt implies Sherwin works for Sound Transit by calling us the “Sound Transit (ST) blog.” Hirt has commented on this blog before and should know we aren’t a government agency. In the second paragraph, Hirt claims that members of Sound Transit board are unelected. All members, save for one, are elected officials. Hirt’s point may be that these officials are not directly elected to the ST board, which is true (and good), but his use of imprecise language seems like no accident.

Photo by Oran.

Hirt asks indignantly, What gave the ST Board “the authority to ignore the council in selecting the light-rail route through Bellevue?” The answer is in the Op-Ed he’s responding to: a “1999 ruling in a state growth-management case” which cited RCW 36.70A and decided that light rail is an “essential public facility.”

In Hirt’s third paragraph, he claims that while the Eastside provides “40 percent of ST  funding,” “only a small part” “will ever be spent there.” Every dollar raised in the Eastside will be spent there under a rule called subarea equity and the Eastside is projected to provide 26% of Sound Transit revenue in the coming decades — much less than Hirt’s claim.

In the final paragraph of his letter, Hirt says that Sound Transit has not spent “one dime evaluating two-way bus only lanes” across I-90 instead of light rail. That has been studied, and a busway would provide a slower ride to the 10,000 fewer people who would ride it daily.

Many rely on the Seattle Times and other newspapers to give them the facts and encourage debate where appropriate. Publishing letters that get basic facts wrong doesn’t encourage debate but rather stifles it under the weight of ignorance, cynicism, and even malice. Though the average citizen is expected to make some mistakes regarding public policy, we should expect the media to provide some barrier between us and outright falsehoods.

It’s easy to think that Mr. Hirt lacks real intellectual rigor and has no sense of responsibility for what he inks, but what does that say about the Times’ staffers who choose to give him space in their paper?

Chicago Row Houses (wikimedia)

PubliCola reports that “lowrise multifamily” zoning area, covering 8% of Seattle, will become somewhat more permissive:

And, perhaps most significantly, the new law would eliminate the minimum amount of parking developers must build in low-rise multifamily areas (currently one space per unit), allowing developers to build housing without dedicated parking (saving tens of thousands of dollars per unit).

The comment thread has a pretty wide diversity of opinion, but I’m having trouble perceiving complaints about the parking change as anything but defense of an existing subsidy. After all, the road right of way is public property. Anyone with a garage and/or driveway sufficient to park the cars of their family and friends isn’t concerned about on-street parking. So in essence, you’re seeing people whose property doesn’t have enough space to store their cars requiring that new construction be able to store its cars. In other words, “I got here first.”

Meanwhile, people moving into a place that provides no parking are likely to be fairly relaxed about giving up the car if it becomes too much of a hassle.

This is huge.

wikimedia

One of the stronger objections to my quasi-support for a rebuilt viaduct is that the City of Seattle would not realize the $700m in savings between that project and the Deep-Bore Tunnel.

In principle, I suppose WSDOT could demolish the current structure and walk away, leaving Seattle to clear the rubble and do something with the space. Although  that’s essentially surface-lite, I don’t think it’s a reasonable possibility. The State has consistently committed to funding the main roadway, and has demonstrated deep interest in preserving the flow of cars and freight through downtown.

Under the DBT plan, the roadway and construction mitigation amounts to $3.1 billion dollars. This is funded out of $1.8 billion in gas taxes, $600m in other state and federal funds, $300m from the Port of Seattle, and $400m from tolls.

The final iteration of the rebuild allocates $2.9 billion to similar projects, plus $103m for I-5 improvements. It would be absolutely unprecedented for WSDOT to not fund the state or interstate highway. Interestingly, the seawall is viewed as so integral to the viaduct that it’s included in the same line item in the report. But let’s assume that the State leaves that with Seattle to the tune of $244m*. Whether the $100-300m in savings is captured by the Port, toll payers, the highway fund, or even Seattle would of course be a matter of negotiation. In no case, though, would I presume that a dime of the State’s money would go to transit aside from the customary construction mitigation.

Seattle could be tasked with funding $234m in street improvements under the rebuild plan. The DBT price tag for the City is $811m*, leaving a savings of $333-577m seawall-depending. Now it’s certainly not the case that that money is automatically programmed into transit. However, transit advocates have a much better shot with the Seattle City Council than the Washington Legislature. We certainly have a strong claim on the $267m required to make the transit part of the viaduct plan work.

Then, of course, you have overruns and tunneling risk. But you’ve heard about those.

* Accounting for the flood district’s $30m contribution to the seawall.

The new card vending machine.

Eastside transit riders no longer have to travel to Seattle to purchase an ORCA card in person. A new ORCA vending machine was installed at the Bellevue Transit Center recently last month. You can find the machine outside the rider services building on the north side of the transit center.

The machines are the same model found at Sounder and Link stations with limited functionality. What you can do is listed in 5 simple steps on the machine itself. You can add value to your e-purse, purchase a pass, check your card’s balance, or purchase a new Adult card. The machine accepts cash (coins and bills), credit cards, and e-purse for payment. You cannot purchase a paper ticket. Senior, disabled, and youth cards still need to be obtained at a customer service office or by mail.

While the list of ORCA retailers is slowly growing, retail locations can only add value to existing cards; they do not sell ORCA cards. The new vending machine is a welcome addition that will make ORCA more convenient to use for many.

If we had to choose between a new viaduct or a deep-bore tunnel, which should we choose? First, I think the reality is that a deep-bore tunnel will be constructed since “important” people are interested in it succeeding. If I’m wrong and the tunnel project does collapse, the ensuing political chaos would result in an environment where surface/transit/I-5 has just as much of a possibility as being built as a viaduct.

However, for this first part, let’s assume we could choose just between a new viaduct and the tunnel. Martin has gone to great lengths to show that the city would save hundreds of millions of dollars if a viaduct were built instead of the deep-bore tunnel. It’s true, but money saved isn’t necessarily spent and it’s not obvious that Seattle would tax itself to invest in transit and bike projects just because it would have taxed itself for a deep-bore tunnel. Major transit investments like the Central Streetcar are dead-on-arrival — there isn’t local political support — and we wouldn’t see money from the state for transit: improvements beyond basic mitigation are certainly considered optional by the state. The state has already ignored the transit funding it agreed to with the deep-bore tunnel agreement.

Photo by Oran.

These things are important, because in any scenario where a viaduct is being rebuilt is over the very strong objections of the Seattle mayor and city council members: if the state is already overruling us, why would they sweeten the pot? Heck, why not build a bigger viaduct or one with more off-ramps? And if the city is upset with the state, would it partner on strategic transit improvements?

After all, the transit elements of the rebuild plan were included in the same stakeholder process that was completely ignored when state and local officials agreed to build a deep-bore tunnel. I think Martin’s comparing a fully politiked deep-bore tunnel to a conceptual viaduct. It could be the case that a rebuild would result in tremendous local spending on transit, but even more transit spending is possible with surface/transit/I-5 where transit is moved near the forefront of the plan.

More after the jump…

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