All posts by Zach Shaner

As ST3’s Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET) drama continues, yesterday the House Transportation Committee passed HB 2201 by a bipartisan 20-5 vote. The compromise bill would require Sound Transit to use the newer 2006 vehicle depreciation schedule, and to offer credits and refunds to those who had already paid under the old one. In addition, the bill requires Sound Transit to find the money to do this without impacting project delivery. The bill states that if this new valuation method threatens project delivery, the agency has trim project elements in a specified order:

If, when implementing the program, the RTA is not able to deliver the plan as approved originally, the RTA must identify savings and cost reductions first, from parking facility projects; second, from commuter rail projects; third, from transit-bus related projects; and fourth, from light rail projects.

It’s hard to believe it’s only been six weeks since Sound Transit 3’s (ST3) Motor Vehicle Excise Taxes (MVET) took effect. Car tabs have always been a political minefield. People pay them up front in a lump sum, and those who drive but don’t take transit experience them as a punitive taking. On March 1, the voter-approved MVET went up by 266%, from 0.3% to 1.1%. Endless digital ink and legislative oxygen has been spilled decrying the MSRP-derived depreciation schedule that calculates the MVET. That formula tends to inflate car values over their realistic resale price for the first decade or so of a car’s life.

The resulting sticker shock has proven a golden opportunity for disingenuous legislative grandstanding. To hear Republican legislators tell it, this controversy proves that Sound Transit is an agency in need of sweeping accountability reforms after hoodwinking voters and stealing from them.

But this framing is like a hunter blaming the bear for stepping into a trap it set. The depreciation schedule was not a Sound Transit creation, but a legislative directive clearly contained in the 2015 transportation revenue package (SB 5987). From the Final Bill Report:

Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET). An MVET is a tax paid on the value of a motor vehicle. For the purpose of determining any locally imposed MVET, the value of a vehicle other than a truck or trailer is 85 percent of the manufacturer’s base suggested retail price of the vehicle when first offered for sale as a new vehicle, excluding any optional equipment, applicable federal excise taxes, state and local sales or use taxes, transportation or shipping costs, or preparatory or delivery costs, multiplied by the applicable percentage listed in the depreciation schedules. [emphasis mine]

So the ST3 MVET was intended to have a business-as-usual formula, just at a higher rate, and this language passed the Republican-led Senate 37-7 and passed the Democratic-led House 54-44. If anything, it was the conservatism of the package’s framers that has caused the controversy, as all parties involved simply grandfathered in an existing structure rather than create a new one.

None of this is intended to say that voters haven’t experienced unpleasant surprise at their car tabs, or that certain low-income or high-income-cash-poor citizens haven’t found it burdensome. Talks to rework the formula, or to add low-income rebates, etc, are valid discussions. Whether you support a rate reformulation or not, this sort of legislative back and forth is normal and healthy.

But the political posturing about Sound Transit’s conduct throughout this process continues to be dishonest and misleading. The aspersions cast upon the agency neglect the layer cake of process and filters through which all of these proposals must pass before they see the ballot box, the tax bill, or groundbreaking. It is all a painstakingly conservative process by design, and Sound Transit has been following the rules to the letter. If legislators want to change the letter of the law, that’s their prerogative. But Sound Transit works with what they are given, and they cannot bill us a penny without our aggregate consent.

Last Wednesday, CH2M submitted the I-90 and Mercer Island Mobility Study prepared on behalf of Sound Transit.

If you’ve not been following the drama, a quick recap: Mercer Island has been making considerable noise since 2015 about perceived loss of mobility due to East Link construction. Whereas prior complaints were more generic and white-hot, of late the complaints have been much more focused on mitigation for the closing of the express lanes for East Link construction and the coming SOV-to-HOV conversion of the westbound ramp from Island Crest Way to I-90. Islanders maintain that they are owed mitigation for this by the 1976 agreement granting their solo vehicles special access to the I-90 express lanes, and also by a 2004 amendment to the agreement holds that:

[t]o the extent of any loss of mobility to and from Mercer Island based on the outcome of studies, additional transit facilities and services such as additional bus service, parking available for Mercer Island residents, and other measures shall be identified and satisfactorily addressed by the Commission, in consultation with the affected jurisdictions.”

To date, WSDOT and Sound Transit have held that the agreement clearly and permanently committed the center lanes for transit and that Mercer Island SOV access was a temporary and conditional use. The agencies noted in a letter to Mercer Island that SOV use of HOV lanes, even temporarily, would be a violation of federal law and a trigger to repay grant funds to the federal government. In response, Mercer Island announced its intent to sue Sound Transit, threatening both the schedule and budget for East Link.

Things have softened a bit since then. Mercer Island reneged on its threat to revoke shoreline permits for Sound Transit, and the ST Board committed in March that the city and agencies meet regularly to negotiate issues around Mercer Island Station beyond traffic. The current study was an olive branch between the agencies and the city, seeking data to quantify the scale of any lost mobility, in the spirit of the 2004 amendment.

Well, the study results are out. In a memo to Sound Transit board members last week, Secretary Millar summarized that:

the Mobility Study concludes that the overall mobility for people traveling to or from Mercer Island will be similar to or slightly improved compared to existing conditions during the six-year East Link construction period, and will be improved once East Link light rail service begins in 2023.   A short summary of the study is attached. [emphasis mine]

Continue reading “Study Shows No Significant Impact to Mercer Island”

A recent blog post by well-respected local meteorologist Cliff Mass, “Fixing Seattle’s Traffic Mess,” offered an anti-urbanist grab bag of bad ideas. Bemoaning the current state of traffic, Mass distills Seattle’s traffic woes to 9 problems:

• Road diets that “promote congestion and substantially reduce maximum throughput”
• Poor road conditions resulting from “Seattle Council members paying [less] attention to the traffic-producing bad roads than kayaking out to oil platforms destined for Alaska”
• Excessive draw bridge openings
• Sounder is too unreliable, and the trains are “less than half full”
• Distracted driving 
• Link serves the Rainier Valley: “It takes forever to travel that segment and sometimes the trains get into accidents with cars.”
• Undersupplied parking at Link stations: “Folks need a place to park if they are going to use the train”
• Bike lanes: “The only safe way to commute is to be totally separate from cars, not the side lanes of the “road diet” streets”
• “Continuing lack of bus service“

Many local outlets piled on the criticism, including The Stranger, but I see no reason to single out Mr. Mass. His assertions are widely held, intuitive, and derived from common sense. They are also completely unsupported by data.

To wit, road diets haven’t greatly increased travel time or reduced throughput, drawbridges must open by Coast Guard mandate, Sounder is 95% reliable and carries 500 passengers per trip, Sounder mudslides have gone down markedly due to intensive work by WSDOT, a Duwamish Bypass for Link would cost $1B and only save 3-4 minutes, transit parking is a niche product that cannot scale, and our local and regional bus service levels are at historic highs.

Just as Mass’ diagnostic skills are lacking in his post, so too are his 3 prescriptions: passenger ferries, flexible app-based carpooling, and a Big Data approach to signal timing, etc. Perfectly reasonable sentiments, but none of them remotely sustainable. To the extent that app-based carpooling diluted transit ridership, it would make things worse. While Big Data can optimize flow at the margins, the fundamental use-of-space problem is immutable. And when it comes to passenger ferries on Lake Washington, King County’s official report showed that they would suffer from low ridership and would incur costs three times higher than Sounder.

But if you’re stuck behind the wheel, it’s reasonable that you’d think “two lanes would be better than one”. Link’s Rainier Valley deviation feels slow, even when it only costs a couple minutes for people like Mr. Mass who likely view it as an airport shuttle. If you would love to ditch your car but the park and ride is full,  you’ll wish there were more spots. In each of these cases, people’s lived experience contradicts what the data clearly says. Accordingly, we should cut such folks some slack, and do a better job of showing our work.

If you drive everywhere, it may well look like madness, and Seattle’s urbanist policies are a visible and convenient foil. But if bike lanes et al were to blame for traffic, you wouldn’t expect traffic problems in car-focused places such as Kennydale Hill, the Fife Curve, or Joint Base Lewis McChord. But we know that each of those places are equally choked by traffic. So if you find yourself thinking, without irony, “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded,” it’s time to take a step back and learn to distrust your intuitions. It’s hard to get things right, especially outside one’s area of expertise. Mistakes are acceptable, but we shouldn’t assert without evidence.

It’s nearly done. Forget the questionable process by which it came about, the undeniable lost opportunity for transit investment instead,  or the coming tax bill for litigation and overruns. Bertha will likely break through in the next few days, and there will by a highway bypass tunnel underneath Downtown Seattle two years from now. It’s time to try to look at the bright side.

The Viaduct will be gone. The Waterfront will be opened up. There will be a continuous cycle path along the waterfront, and widened sidewalks to boot. The surface highway that replaces it will be far too wide, and too many concessions have been made for car ferry access, but the net reality on the ground will be undeniably better than the Brutalist monolith above Alaskan Way today.

The question for transit advocates is how much lemonade can be squeezed from the highway lemon, if any? Just a few years ago, the highway bypassed what most considered “Downtown”, but in the intervening years Downtown has growth into South Lake Union to such an extent that direct service to Republican Street now seems like a plausible transit use.

Partially because of the tunnel’s disutility for transit but mostly due to the anticipation of West Seattle light rail, Metro’s Long Range Plan includes just one SR 99 tunnel route, “Corridor 2003”. The route would combine parts of Route 21X and Rapid Ride C, serving Arbor Heights, Fauntleroy, and Alaska Junction before running express to South Lake Union.

These sort of boomerang routes have a long history in Seattle due to the Columbia Street express ramps. Routes such as the 79 from Lake City are long gone, but many routes from the north today still serve the south end of downtown first, including Route 355 and a number of Community Transit routes. Similarly, routes such as AM Route 577 serve Seneca, 4th, and Pine Streets before turning down 2nd to serve South Downtown.

But though Metro doesn’t anticipate such a route until 2040, access issues are perhaps most acute in the next few years, when the shiny new tunnel will lie unused while the surface streets suffer all number of constraints. Maybe we should look at such routes a bit sooner?

Consider that the traditional approach from West Seattle to Pioneer Square will continue to be served by Rapid Ride C and Routes 21 and 120. There is a good case to be made for supplemental peak service that serves SLU and Belltown first. “RapidRide CX” could run from Fauntleroy to SLU, perhaps replacing Route 116. “Route 126” could run from SR 509 to SLU, providing bypass service for Burien and complementing Routes 121 and 122. These routes could terminate in SLU, or more likely could continue into the Central Business District via Dexter/7th/Bell/3rd or Westlake/Lenora/3rd.

Such route designs deserve study going into the One Center City years of “maximum constraint”. We’ll have a huge new tunnel that we’re afraid not enough people will use. Let’s put some buses in there.

Downtown tunnel cell service is LIVE. T-Mobile customers now, Verizon, AT&T to roll in next couple weeks. Bars from IDS to UW! pic.twitter.com/5HMoVRFu4I

— Sound Transit – 🚆 🚈 🚍 (@SoundTransit) March 28, 2017

In an afternoon tweet, Sound Transit announced that cell service has finally come to the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT) between Westlake and International District. Previously delayed by finite staffing resources, Sound Transit says that T-Mobile customers have full service starting today (March 28), Verizon customers will have service beginning Thursday (March 30), with ATT following in “early April”. All networks have 911 capability beginning today.

The staffing and resource limitations also meant that the work had to be done more sequentially than initially planned. This delayed the rollout of service to Beacon Hill, where work will now begin. Service to Beacon Hill is expected later this year, but a more specific timeline remains elusive.

So now you can listen to STB’s podcast, or check bus transfers, or scroll Twitter, or have (quiet!) phone conversations to your heart’s content.

A perceived tax burden is often less about the amount owed than it is about matching one’s prior expectations. In the recent Sound Transit Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET) controversy, relatively little has been made about the quantitative burden – people generally aren’t parsing dollars – but much has been made about rate fairness. Sound Transit’s use of a traditional depreciation schedule based on the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) sufficiently differs from one’s everyday experience of their vehicle’s value that it feels like a punitive taking. But if ST3 had proposed raising the same amount of funds via a steeper depreciation schedule and a higher authorized rate, I am confident that the number of changed votes would have been negligible. People generally vote on the perceived merits of the projects in question, period.

Motor Vehicle Excise Taxes (MVET) have two strikes against them. First, their annual lump sum payments feel more viscerally punitive than property or sales taxes. Biannual property taxes are often embedded in rent or mortgage payments, and sales tax is a drip drip of a few dollars here and there. Second, using vehicles as a tax source intuitively feeds the War on Cars narrative, but it is little different than using gas taxes to pay for HOV/bus lanes. An excess of motor vehicles is a major reason for transit capital projects in the first place, and most of us who ride transit also own those cars. It is eminently fair to use one to help us transition to the other, and moving away from cars and toward transit is a spatial imperative if we are to continue to grow as a city.

My own car’s MVET cost $150 this year, and it admittedly was an unpleasant experience to pay it. But rationally I know that the total amount is fair, I voted yes with the majority, and that that’s the way democracy works. I also know that if I spend more than $8,500 this year on taxable goods, I will have contributed more in sales taxes this year than I did in MVET.

Sound Transit’s MVET is also surprisingly progressive. If through ‘defeasance’ we reverted to a 2006-era depreciation schedule, owners of cars less than 11 years old would see a tax cut and owners of cars greater than 11 years old would see a tax increase. So any populist uprising is a lot of smoke and mirrors. The dynamics nicely emulate the current healthcare debates in the other Washington.  It may play well for legislators to stoke the fire, but reversion would be an effective tax cut for the rich, done in the name of the little guy. 

Discussions floating around about a low-income MVET rebate are valid and promising, and Seattle provides the precedent with its $20 car tab rebate. The hit to ST’s revenue would not be severe, and those hardest hit by ST3’s taxes would get a welcome reprieve. But those of us who can pay should pay. Expensive vehicles are luxury goods that reflect our income status, and in a regressive state that already disproportionately taxes the poor, MVET is one of the most progressive sources available. It is progressive and fair for the Lexuses of Laurelhurst to pay more than the Toyotas of Tacoma.

UPDATE: Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D – Seattle) introduced SB 5906 Tuesday night, which would allow a low-income rebate from Sound Transit’s portion of the MVET and property tax. It is the companion to HB 2148, by Rep. Kristine Reeves (D – Federal Way) that was introduced a couple weeks ago. Senators have the rest of today to sign onto SB 5906.