Ron Sims has come out against Prop 1 in an editorial in the Times.
I look at this package with the knowledge that in 50 years, my oldest son will be 80 when it’s paid off. My granddaughter will be 55. Their ability to make public investments relevant to their lives and times will be severely limited by this package. Should I be so lucky, I will use my pension until I am 110 years old to pay my share!
Is Sims argument, “this’ll take too long, so let’s do nothing and just wait and THEN do something.” Huh?
Anyway most of his points fall flat:
Projected light-rail ridership to Bellevue and Overlake is lackluster because of indirect routing. Traveling from Capitol Hill to the Microsoft campus via downtown Seattle and Mercer Island is slow and cumbersome. The retrofit of Interstate 90 for light rail will slow express-bus service and increase commute times to Issaquah, Sammamish and North Bend.
There’s already express bus service there that carries 10,000 people a day. We need rail for the other corridors.
I found Martin over at the desk drawer does a great job of providing a counter-argument to Sims:
He spends a paragraph complaining about the package’s size:
If approved, we will see the largest tax increase in state history. Starting in January, car-tab taxes will triple, and the sales tax will be 9.5 percent (10 percent in King County restaurants).
and in the very next paragraphs, complains that the delivery is too slow and that the package doesn’t do enough:
The benefits of this package are far from immediate. Even if on schedule, 60 percent of new light rail won’t open until 2027. Light rail across Lake Washington is at least 14 years away. The Northgate extension is 11 years away…
This roads-and-transit plan just doesn’t move enough people.
Which is it, Mr. Sims? Do you want an expensive package that delivers lots improvements quickly, or do you want a relatively low tax rate that spreads out expenditures over the long term?
Emphasis in the original. Martin shows that many of Sim’s points in the article are not salient (van pools, congestion pricing, etc.) and that he has very few arguments against the package other than what the Sierra Club has been preaching for ages now.
Sims talks about “But the plan still calls for landscaped lids in Medina, the wealthiest neighborhood in our state, financed with regressive taxes on the working poor” when his Metro buses are funded by a .9% sales tax and run buses through Medina as well! Those in glass houses…
I suspect that Sims is playing politics because he is in charge of Metro, and doesn’t want to see his bus fiefdom usurped by rail. It comes through strongly in the piece as he talks about van pools and express buses, the domain of Metro, the agency he runs. Of course he wants the money into his agency! He is playing a silly game though, since rail will along bus funds to go to other areas, thus increasing transit numbers on a large scale.
I’m conflicted on the merits of the package myself, but I must say that Sims’s arguments are far more convincing than your counter-arguments. I think his point on the cost vs. timeline is that the plan costs too much considering how slowly it builds transit. If it cost less and was this slow, fine. If it cost more and was faster, maybe that’d be fine too. But it’s not really contradictory to say that the cost/benefit of the Roads+Transit plan is out of whack.
Frankly, I think he’s right. The plan is *way* too slow given the sprawl, congestion, and development issues we face. I live in West Seattle. If this plan is successful and on schedule, then upon my retirement 30-some-odd years from now, I could take a bus from West Seattle to SoDo, then transfer to a train that takes me to Lynnwood. It’s hard to see how that’s worth the size and time of the investment?
Overall, the plan doesn’t strike me as a system designed to get people around the region — it’s a system designed to ease highway congestion. And no, they’re not the same thing. The first is a system designed for people taking transit. The second is a system designed to make driving easier.
For what it’s worth, I live in a two-adult, one-car household, and I commute by bus and bike. I’m pro-transit and pro-government investment. But I just don’t see how this pencils out.
I’m conflicted as well. But the cost v. timeline argument would only make sense if this was a quoted price from a contractor. The price is an estimate of what this project will cost with this timeline. Is the estimate too high? Great – we’ll get money back (though it usually lands in the other direction – not fully considering all of the costs).
I suppose a valid argument against this project’s cost v. timeline is to say that you know of a better plan – a less expensive path or faster construction method*, for example. If Sims has a better plan in mind, I’d love to hear it.
*hmmm… it seems like a monorail would be fairly quick and inexpensive to build…
-Matt the Engineer
sage… do you have another plan? It’ll take years to make a new plan, and it’ll be the same as this one, except then it’ll be MORE expensive, so the taxes will have to be higher or the construction slower.
What do you really want? If you vote for this now, you can accelerate it later. If this is voted down, ST will be gone next year.
Matt, nice jab at the monorail. :P
’twasn’t a jab. I still have no idea how that thing didn’t get built.
@Ben Schiendelman:
You ask if I have a plan of my own — of course not, I’m a transit-user, not a traffic planner. But I do have a vision of what will make transit work better, and what won’t. And I think a plan that takes this long to do this little just isn’t worth it.
I’m pretty much neutral on what the transit technology should be, but it does seem that light rail in general is way too expensive for what it gets us. Investing these $ in these projects just ties up so much tax capacity and general public goodwill that I’m skeptical we’ll be able to accelerate the investment ever.
I don’t have a plan, but here’s what I envision: I would like to see a system that moves people by connecting neighborhoods, and one that caters to the transit-dependent by providing better late-night links and neighborhood circulation. If you have to drive or bus to the light rail station to get on the line, and then transfer to another mode of transit to get to your destination, we haven’t done too well. And one and a half sprawling light-rail lines in 50 years or so doesn’t help us build the density we so badly need.
We don’t need a transit system that connects the suburbs to the city along the I-5 corridor. Certainly not for the billions this is going to cost.
Wait, Ben: Why would another future plan be the same as this one? Seriously, why is a rethink of the route so impossible to imagine?
Sage, you’re not doing yourself any favors by defending a guy with an inherently contradictory plan, using your nebulous plan
Just saying “it costs too much” isn’t much of an argument at all. Compared to what? Permanent gridlock on I-5, and wars over whether you turn already jammed general purpose lanes into bus-only? You seem to exist in a state of self-imposed ignorance, if you will excuse my harshness. Rather than dream this stuff up, and compare concept to real-world examples or plans, give us something a bit more solid than cotton candy to wrap our brains around.
“I think his point on the cost vs. timeline is that the plan costs too much considering how slowly it builds transit. If it cost less and was this slow, fine. If it cost more and was faster, maybe that’d be fine too.”
Uh, sage. That wasn’t an argument either. That’s what is called a “logic loop.” You didn’t say anything.
“Frankly, I think he’s right. The plan is *way* too slow given the sprawl, congestion, and development issues we face. I live in West Seattle.”
Oh. I get it. If it doesn’t come to my back yard, it shouldn’t come to anybody’s back yard. How communitarian of you. Guess what, get a load of this: you might MOVE some day! When I voted for monorail the first two times, I knew my neighborhood would never see it. But guess what (again)? You gotta build something, somewhere to connect the dots. Right now, thanks to the endless loop hand-wringing you seem to be fairly good at, we are right where we deserve to be: not very far. Luckily, we have a chance to finally change that in a month.
If you want to get an idea of how long it takes to make REAL things happen, take a look at these websites.
http://www.soundtransit.org/x3245.xml
http://www.soundtransit.org/x3014.xml
http://www.soundtransit.org/x3009.xml
“Why would another future plan be the same as this one? Seriously, why is a rethink of the route so impossible to imagine?”
Sorry, Ron Sims and our new friend, sage. This isn’t about drawing lines on a piece of paper. When a government agency is spending billions of our tax dollars, you don’t just stop midstream and declare “it costs too much…can we just draw a line somewhere?”
“I could take a bus from West Seattle to SoDo, then transfer to a train that takes me to Lynnwood. It’s hard to see how that’s worth the size and time of the investment?”
Why not? In ten years, it will likely be faster than driving. Certainly more reliable. And since you have one car, the annual impact will probably be about $200. Bridging the Gap, which passed what, two years ago? That hit was about $300 bucks per year, and it’s still a little unclear what we all got out of that. But I voted for it, knowing that “No” doesn’t get us anywhere.
But maybe stuck in neutral is where some folks like to be.
Jeez, not sure where the nasty attitude is coming from, maven. I do think you’ve hit on our fundamental disagreement, though. You say that we have to build something, somewhere. In general I agree — but that doesn’t mean we ought to jump into building anything, anywhere just for the sake of doing something.
The more I look at the anemic nature of the plan, the more convinced I am that this is the wrong thing. And the cost/benefit ratio is just out of whack. Finally, I don’t see how there’s anything contradictory about being pro-transit, but against a poorly-conceived plan that has transit in its name.
When a government agency is spending billions of our tax dollars, you don’t just stop midstream and declare “it costs too much…can we just draw a line somewhere?”
Of course we can, that is how the monorail was finally crushed. I think there is alot of built-up resentment since the original ’96 vote ( the successful, not counting the several before it) that ST is still no delivering on the originally marketed promise ( not the legalese). There is also a large concern that the 520 bridge is still being addressed and we’re talking about a significant amount of taxing capacity to be tied up with the RTID.
I think the monolithic approach, the all or nothing vote is hurting the overall cause. Provide ala carte options. Let Snohomish and North King vote on the extension to Lynwood, East King on the extension to Overlake and Redmon, Pierce…etc etc.
Here’s the letter I just sent to Ron Sims. His public e-mail is
exec.sims@metrokc.gov
I am appalled by Ron Sims’ decision to oppose Proposition 1. As King County Executive, it is the very core of his job to identify serious regional problems like transportation, and build a consensus behind long-term solutions. Political leaders throughout the region have spent years developing the package of road, rail and other improvements in Proposition 1. The measure offers relief to long-suffering drivers and transit riders all over Puget Sound. Sims apparently was unable to use his position and influence to change the package to his liking, and that makes it all the more irresponsible for him to oppose it.
I don’t think he is seriously against the plan. In his heart of hearts he wants a plan even more skewed toward transit (particularly light rail) than this one, but he realizes that anything which would offer more for light rail and less for roads probably wouldn’t pass. Either way,he wins. If it passes, he sighs and says OK, I’ll do my best to do the will of the people. If it doesn’t, they will try again with another vote skewed even more heavily toward light rail, since that is how they read the tea leaves. So all of you light rail enthusiasts and global warming alarmists can have an even more ridiculously expensive and ineffective transportation system. So go with Ron and the Sierra Club and vote NO. This time they are right for all of the wrong reasons.
Who knows? When that next vote comes around we will see how little ridership light rail has and have a lucid moment similar to the last monorail vote and use the money for improved roads, which is what most of us will still be using to get around this place.