The Seattle Times has article of how prop 1 fared around each district. I’m not suprised that it faired so poorly in places like West Seattle or Sammamish where not much if anything was being built. But I am suprised it did badly in places like Federal Way and Auburn, where both rail and roads were planned. What this says about how a transit-only vote would fare, we have to wait and see.
My concern is, if we bring a transit-only vote next year to the whole RTA district and it doesn’t pass, it will kill rail transit for decades. So will it pass? It’s not obvious either way. I don’t want to argue about the sampling accuracy of the Sierra Club’s poll any more, since I’ve already upset a bunch of people, but we can agree on this from the poll: clearly, the transit was more important than the roads for single-issue ‘yes’ voters. They asked the question “What was the main reason why you voted yes? Because of the road projects, or the transit projects, or both?” and 35% said transit, only (!!!) 11% because of the road projects, but 54% because of both the transit and road projects. Now, the question they didn’t ask to the “both” pollees was “if a transit-only package were on the ballot would you have voted ‘yes’?”
On the other hand, taxes were the major problem for ‘no’-voters.
Still 35% is encouraging, and if even Prop. 1 with roads passed in the 43rd, let’s bring a transit-only ballot to at least Seattle in 2008 to extend the thing to Northgate. We’ll get a huge progressive turnout for the presidential race, and that would be sure to pass.
What do you guys think?
I agree, we need to get it right back on the ballot.
Agreed. We need a smaller package sent to Seattle only so that it has the best chance to pass, but anything larger pre-2009 will have trouble. Once the initial section of light rail opens there will be a lot more interest from the region as a whole. Also, if a smaller measure does not pass, it will not be as negative for when we try again for a larger measure.
Agreed. Smart leadership at the city/county/Sound Transit level would do that. However, Gregoire is talking out of both sides of her mouth. Don’t think she wants an ’08 vote.
I want to get light rail on the ballot ASAP… but, I reluctantly think Gregoire needs to be cautious, because if Rossi’s in the governor’s mansion next year, the closest thing to mass transit we’ll be seeing is BRT or something as equally crappy.
I am just keeping my fingers crossed that some effort isn’t put forth that curtails the (apparently) funded and designed University Link.
How is a Seattle-only package possible while respecting subarea equity?
Any plan that respects subarea equity will look a lot like the plan that people just voted down, so there’s no point in scaling back. And it’s unrealistic to expect Sound Transit to jettison subarea equity and ask the rest of the taxing district to build a Seattle-only plan. A Seattle-funded plan would have to be hybridized into the ST system, and the monorail effort shows what’s likely to happen with an entirely Seattle-only plan. Politically speaking, the only viable plan was the one that people just said no to.
All we can change is the timing of a vote, how the rail investments are funded, and how fast the system is built.
2008 is a bad year, because “governance reform” of Sound Transit is in the air, and if that happens we’ll be lucky to get University Link. (We’ll be lucky to get it anyway–it’s quite possible that downtown to the airport is the sum total of rail that will be built in our region.) The best thing to do is wait out 2008, work to save University Link and Sound Transit as a regional agency, and put together a better rail package for a vote in 2010 (not 2009, which is another off-year.) By November 2010, we’ll have an operating system from downtown to the airport, and hopefully people will be clamoring for more. But they’ll want expansions fast, and those expansions have to serve every part of the region.
So what we need is a system funded by progressive taxes that expands the system everywhere as quickly as possible. For taxes, we have to stay away from MVET and sales taxes, and income taxes aren’t going to happen. What we need are tolls, a regional carbon tax with a rebate to make it more progressive, a tax on businesses and developers who invest in projects along rail lines (as in Portland), and maybe even a property tax surcharge on expensive homes.
As for the plan, we should keep the existing long-term plan that has existed in one form or another for 20 years, create a long-term revenue stream, and then prioritize lines within each subarea according to ridership and build the long-term system in ongoing phases according to priority until the thing is built. I’d like to see a billion-dollar annual revenue stream, with $200 million being spent in each subarea each year. Each subarea would choose what part it would fund according to its own priorities, but the region’s needs would be met by sticking to an overall regional plan. Vote yes on that, with a permanent revenue stream, and then we don’t have to vote again.
No one is going to die on the barricades for subarea equity.
I think if Seattle pays for the extension to Northgate, it’ll be built in Seattle and paid for by Seattlites and thus okay.
Seattle Times expect more roads
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2004005751_nexted11.html
I agree that sales taxes completely suck and are totally regressive, though I’m not against MVET taxes.
The problem with MVET is that the tax revenue stream is more volatile than that of a sales tax. This means that bonds secured solely by an MVET are of lesser credit quality, and therefore have higher interest costs.
The MVET is politically controversial, and from a financial perspective, it shouldn’t be the first choice either.
Yeah that’s a good point. One of the reasons the monorail was such a disaster – we’ll wait on ben to tell the rest of that story when he gets back from france – was because of the MVET.
controversy is a good point, I wounder how much the MVET doomed Prop. 1?
I think the biggest reason people were against the MVET taxes back when I-695 passed is the formula the state uses to compute it. The state uses a straight line depreciation method which actually decreases your car’s value at a much lower rate over the years than what the actual market depreciates it at. I don’t really know what a better solution would be and I will try and dig a link up showing the current MVET formula, but that reason is one of the major reasons people don’t like that tax and voted against it in the past.