Increased density. Displacement and interruption of businesses. Low incomes. High unemployment rates. Increased noise. Visual Blight. Crime. Will the Martin Luther King Way south neighborhood follow suit and show a resemblance to neighborhoods near Portland’s MAX line? Will crime statistics be far behind?
I thought most people considered increased density a good thing. But high unemployment caused by light rail? Crime caused by light rail? Are you kidding me? I barely even know how to respond to that argument. Light Rail will only increase access to jobs in the city’s core and the University District (the two highest employment centers in Seattle), and having tons of people walking around a neighborhood shouldn’t increase crime. The worst neighborhoods for crime in Seattle are those most isolated. Sure more people means more crime in total, but not on average. The argument is ridiculous.
Next the uncertainty, from John Niles of CETA
Do we want to double the bet on Sound Transit when the 1996 Sound Move Plan is reported in the most recent Sound Transit progress report to be only 50% complete? Is Prop 1 really just a bail out to cover the Sound Transit overruns that are supposedly old news? That would explain the seeming desperation to get Prop 1 passed and double transportation sales taxes beginning in 2008.
See the 50% completion number with your own eyes by clicking on the link at the top of the web page http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/promises-v
s-reality.htm.
Yikes! There’s a lot of misinformation there. But the answer is no and no. John Niles and his friends at CETA are desperate to destroy Sound Transit, and Prop. 1 is their best chance for it. These guys spent years and tons of money to try to obstruct the process, get Sound Transit shut down, and get the car-tabs revenue taken away so they can come back and say “Look at all the trouble Sound Transit is having”. In reality, the trouble ended five years ago after the courts ruled Sound Transit should be allowed to stay and the car tab revenue with them.
Finally the doubt, from Erica “No Mind to Make Up” Barnett:
Prognostications about the future are just that—predictions that may or may not come true. It’s interesting to me that TCC and other environmental groups that support roads and transit assume nothing is set in stone about the roads side of the package (“Sure, we’re voting for roads, but only because we’ll take them out later!”) but are absolutely 100% rock-solid certain that Sound Transit will never be back on the ballot if this fails. Seems like serious cognitive dissonance to me.
Way to pick quotes to paint a specific picture! There is a pretty good chance that the so-called “cross-base highway” will not get built because there is no finally plan for that road. Some of what is in RTID, like the two-lane addition to I-405 and SR-520 assume that WSDOT will cough up money, and that we don’t know for sure. And Erica is forgetting that Ed Murray and others in the state legistlature have forced them onto the ballot this year for the exact reason that they don’t want to have to run their campaigns the same election year as the transit vote. We’ll see whether Sound Transit comes back on the ballot if Prop. 1 doesn’t pass, but I can assure you it will not come back on the ballot next year.
What is the misinformation in what you quoted from me?
Sound Move is just 50% complete according to Sound Transit’s latest posted Progress Report. You copied the web address above for the page from a Sound Transit report that shows this 50% number.
Now, this is misinformation from you: “[T]he trouble ended five years ago after the courts ruled Sound Transit should be allowed to stay and the car tab revenue with them.”
I’m not aware of any threat to Sound Transit’s existence that got into a court decision.
Letting Sound Transit keep its car tabs revenue was a Supreme Court ruling not 5 years ago but less than one year ago, on December 7, 2006. Sound Transit achieved this result by selling some bonds in 1999 before it actually needed the money. The bond covenants committed the MVET to the repayment of those bonds through 2028. It was a Sound Transit financial strategy to retain the MVET no matter what voters decided on the car tabs. The strategy worked.
Selling bonds to tie up a stream of tax revenue is a strategy that ST is likely to use again if Prop 1 passes … that’s how Sound Transit would be able to hang on to all $141 billion of its tax revenue from Prop 1 through 2057, despite needing much less than that to actually build the phase 2 projects. ST is likely to need all the remainder of its Prop 1 taxes for operating & maintaining 70 miles of light rail and the Sounder commuter rail system.
John, claims about what percentage Sound Move is complete, as a whole, are simply ways to massage statistics to paint a negative picture. Link light rail from Sea-Tac to Westlake is more like 75% complete. Sounder is operating and increasing service levels on the schedule put forth six years ago. Yes, we haven’t opened South Tacoma or Lakewood stations, but they’re under construction. University Link has the highest rating in the nation for a new transit project – and is in line for $750 million from the FTA. Construction on that project should start next year – but many of the agreements necessary and nearly all of the property purchases necessary are already complete.
Sound Transit sold bonds in 1999 because the rates were good – saving our tax dollars. Arguing out of one side of your mouth that Sound Transit should build faster and cheaper and out of the other side complaining that they’re taking steps to do so doesn’t make you sound smart – it makes you sound insane.
John’s 50% figure that John found in one ST document covers a period last spring, and it’s not the latest figure. I have it on good authority that John has the August FTA PMOC (Project Management Oversight Consultant) report which states the Initial Segment is 75.1% complete as of July. The actual current number is 81% complete.
John spends many hours mining documents for data that, never mind the context, appear to support his arguments. Such “finds” are of course true and correct numbers; all the other ST numbers out there, however, he finds suspect for one reason or another because they do not support his point of view. Quite a selectivity process he has going there, huh?
It’s amazing – a desperate show of cognitive dissonance. It’s probably a little unsettling for him to see data that disagrees with his personal conclusions, actually.
That still doesn’t change the fact that we’re being asked to fork over pretty hefty taxing authority to a government that has blown through previous budget projections, is years behind schedule on what it promised to deliver in the 1996 vote, and is asking us to expand a system that they have yet to prove they can open and operate efficiently.
And that’s not a paragraph of FUD, even if you’re a supporter of Prop 1. That’s simply stating the risks of this vote objectively.
Not to mention the fact that this could potentially tie up any further ability to raise taxes and invest in other transit for at least 30 years…
So michael… how do you suppose Sound Transit was going to pay for all that concrete when the cost doubled after Hurricane Andrew?
It’s true. People keep bashing ST for over-runs, but a sharp and sudden increase in materials prices hit every major construction project in the region over the last several years. Seattle Schools had their capital budget demolished, and I know of many other large projects (like the federal courthouse downtown) that also got hammered by this. It’s not just concrete that went nuts. It’s most materials.
That’s the unfortunate thing. When this happens with public projects, people assume incompetence or worse. It’s just global economics. See below.
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/biz/construction/