These guys love the line “largest local project in American history” but, it’s pretty easy to see that it isn’t. Someone sent me this link showing what the typical family already pays in transportation taxes.
A Seattle Times review of major transportation taxes estimates that agencies collected an average of $843 per adult in urban areas of King County, including Seattle, last year. The figure for Seattle residents is $881. Roughly half the money went to transit, and half to roads.
Look at the graphic, of the $843 per household, $385 was for transit. Adjust that for transit now (increased property taxes), but eliminate the $30 sound transit car-tab fee has been retired, we stay at $385. So we get about 45% of the average county resident’s transportation tax spent on transit. With Roads and Transit, it would add $250 to each family for transit, and $150 for roads. I kow these are a bit “back-of-the-envelope” because I can’t know the exact number, but that still keeps transit under 50% of transportation spending, not the 90% the gas and concrete crowd crows about.
Things are really bad in terms of transportation here. Commutes just keep getting longer an there’s no reason to waste time will they get worse and our local economy is slowed because of it. That’s what Kemper Freeman doesn’t understand: who’s going to pay for his over-priced downtown Bellevue condos if no one can get anywhere?