Doomed

This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.

Is it really true that the $16B transportation plan on this fall’s ballot is doomed? The Seattle Times reports:

Legislators worry the package is too expensive for voters to accept yet doesn’t fully fund a new floating bridge or complete as much work as they think is needed on some of the region’s most-congested highways, such as Highway 167.

Instead, the money is spread too thin in order to cover as many projects as possible, they say.

Here’s the problem: projects like this are what legislators call “Christmas Trees”: everyone wants to hang their own special ornament until the whole thing collapses under its own weight. That said, there’s nothing really egregious, as far as I can tell, in this package. It’s not like anyone’s proposing a 12-lane I-605 through the Cascades. Mostly it’s a series of much-needed and long-deferred projects: fixing SR-520, widening the southern section of I-405, etc. Oh yeah, and $9.8B to send light rail to the Eastside.

All of these projects seem to have fairly broad public support. What’s important now is for our legislators to stop allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. It’s time to start “moving dirt,” as Pierce County Exec. John Ladenburg says. This package is not perfect, but it’s good enough. And the longer we wait, the more expensive the construction costs will get, meaning that we’ll be getting less and less for our money, and the fights will get even nastier.

Put another way: construction costs are rising by about 10% a year. That’s $1.6B on a 16B package. Meaning that if we wait a year, we add $1.6B to the cost of construction. Widening I-405 is going to cost just over $1B. In other words, it makes absolutely no sense to oppose this initiative if you’re, say, trying to kill the 405 project, since by voting for it now instead of next year, we’re basically getting 405 for free.