County Exec candidate Susan Hutchinson (and to a lesser extent Ross Hunter) have made some approving comments about governance reform. Governance reform refers to a whole class of proposals that involves the merger of various transportation agencies to introduce operating efficiencies. The most well-known of these is the Rice/Stanton proposal, which would have created a transportation super-agency responsible for roads and transit in a four county area (King, Pierce, Snohomish, Kitsap). The 15-member board would be a mixture of directly elected members and the Governor’s appointees. This proposal, and others like it, is a terrible idea.
For clarity, I’ll focus on the Rice/Stanton proposal, but many of these arguments apply to other reorganization ideas:
- If it ain’t broke… Sound Transit rail projects should be the main effort for the long-term sustainability of our transportation system, and at the moment it’s running its domain pretty well. I’d hate to have them take their eyes off the ball to work out organization trees instead of focusing on tunneling under Capitol Hill on schedule. Moreover, with bus operating budgets completely unsustainable and promising immediate poltical pain, the temptation to raid the rail capital budget could sink the whole project.
- Low-information elections: I’m a firm believer that we vote for too many offices in this state. Low information elections are decided by a combination of ignorant voter guesswork and shadowy, moneyed interests. The two most salient regional entities of this type are the Port of Seattle and the Seattle School Board, and it’s been some time since anyone has said anything good about how those are run.
- Invested Political Leaders: I consider myself neutral in the Monorail recriminations that are still ongoing, and don’t want to fight that battle here. However, one lesson of the whole sorry experience is that in a crisis, nothing substitutes for major political leaders invested in the success of an agency. The monorail didn’t have that and it died. Sound Transit has a federated board and it survived its infancy.
- The state both interferes more and contributes less. 2007’s RTID was correctly seen as an attempt by the State to get the region to pay up for roads that are strictly the State’s responsibility. Merging responsibility for roads into a regional entity simply formalizes this abdication of responsibility. Moreover, the Rice/Stanton structure gives the governor 40% of votes on the board. Given the execrable transit record of both Democratic and Republican governors in this state, you can be sure those 6 commissioners would be a solid vote for pouring asphalt to solve any problem.
- Dilution of pro-transit voters. This is my primary objection to various proposals to extend Sounder to one outlying city or another. Sound Transit’s majorities are not so large that it can afford to buy off another chunk of mostly rural, habitually anti-transit voters, who will complain that all their money “goes to Seattle” even when subarea equity requires that it doesn’t. Pierce Transit is at 0.6% sales tax out of an authorized 0.9%, which is all you need to know about their electorate (which is not to diminish the passion felt by many transit activists down there).
The more I reflect on it, the more I realize what a lucky accident the design of the RTA was. Subarea Equity was an attempt to appease the parochial instincts of most voters, and criticized for preventing adequate rail investment in the Seattle core; what it’s actually going to do is make sure that ST3 funds aren’t swallowed up entirely by the effort to get to Tacoma and Everett. Another fortuitous aspect is that there’s no initiative process at the RTA level, so the agency isn’t as vulnerable to any quack who wants to launch a recall campaign whenever there’s a setback.
Let’s not mess with Sound Transit. They have work to do.
King and Snohomish are somewhat alike, Pierce and Ketchup are sorta alike, but King and Ketchup should not be under one supergroup.
Not to mention that we already have a transportation “super agency”… The Washington State Dept of Transportation. Local transportation agencies were created as a direct result of WSDOT not providing adequate local service.
That’s a fantastic, simple, true argument. Thanks.
WSDORF- Washington Department of Roads and Ferries
I agree with Martin. In reality, ST is narrowly focused on building and operating a rail system, with some regional bus lines to provide service during a multi-phase expansion program.
However, even after all that, the agency will only provide a small percentage of the total regional trips made. That’s not a criticism, just an observation. So either ST becomes the decider/provider for roads, buses, et-al for the rest of the region, or gets sucked up in another super agency holding their purse strings. Both scenarios are bad for ST.
ST becoming the super-power sounds good, until the votes needed to feed the majority interest of roads and buses gobble all the funding up, or raid the coffers of ST taxing and bonding authority – not to mention the behind the scenes deals that are surely to play out.
On the other hand, if ST becomes a very junior partner of an RTID type agency, nearly the same result occurs, with decision making based at a different HQ, by all the same players and interests.
It seems to me that the PSRC is well positioned to take on more of a coordinating/master planning/system recourse allocation role than it is currently mandated to do under federal law, but fall short of the traps mentioned above inherent with super agency status. Having a PSRC revenue stream in place to fund their visions would be a first step.
Interesting that Kemper Freeman also embraces governance “reform.”. And Ted Van Dyk. And John Stanton. And John Niles. And, just about every anti-rail activist out there…
Don’t forget, Fred Jarrett has also been pushing this wacky concept in Olympia for years at the behest of rail opponents.
It’s dumb to expect another Port of Seattle would equate to more accountability and transparency.
I think you make a fair point in the interim. But many cities in the world do super-agencies for transit. For instance, Transport for London. It’s inevitably the future. But in the interim, it makes sense to separate jurisdiction to shut up the likes of rai-and-mass-transit-haters.
I disagree – super-agencies are not inevitable. Just because several of them do exist does not mean that they should. London has plenty of child agencies and contractors to make things run on the ground. TfL serves as the head, and does the thinking; the sub-agencies do the walking. London is also a bad example: TfL handles no regional transit whatsoever. Regional bus service is private, and the rail system is privatized (poorly) under the disguise of being National Rail.
New York’s MTA does a better job of it, acting as the liason to the state while delegating all operations to individual agencies (NYC Transit, Metro-North and Long Island railroads,, L.I. Bus, and a sizable bridge and tunnel authority).
This, however is not necessarily ideal, especially in our region where commuting patterns are anything but well-defined. At this point, the current system works: ST runs regional transit, and each county has it left up to themselves how to run their bus agencies. Now that fare integration is rapidly becoming a non-issue, a super-agency is no longer really necessary, unless getting state funds really becomes a problem.
The New York area is so enormous that the MTA doesn’t even cover all of the transit: there’s also PATH, NJT, CDOT and Amtrak among the *trains*, plus Suffolk County and other buses.
The only real mega-agency for transit I can think of is New Jersey Transit, with responsibility for the majority of trains and buses throughout the entire state. It has been criticized for inability to keep all its parts running as well as each other or in sync, so it is perhaps an argument against super-agencies. But it does get funded, and it does show how a superagency will have to end up: as a government department, like WashDOT. If the state legislature isn’t ready to fund transit properly, superagencies are not your friend, and the MTA is dealing with this right now in NY.
London’s also gigantic. Transport for london has four rail agencies: London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Rail and London Trams. Add to that the buses and dial-a-ride and there’s six transit-only agencies.
There are two ways to spend transit money: consumption and investment. Consumption provides immediate service, whereas investment builds out infrastructure for the long term. Both of these are important — we need service now, and we want better service in the future. Right now, Sound Transit is the primary agency for transit investment in the region (apologies to Rapid Ride and various other small-scale projects).
The problem is that investment spending is politically fragile. Any project that does not provide immediate benefit is a tempting target when times get tough. Thus, it is crucially important for ST to be politically independent during this stage, when so little of the planned infrastructure is in place.
I would be more inclined to support governance reform in 15 or 20 years, when ST2 is complete and the region’s infrastructure is more mature. I don’t think I would ever support combining roads and transit, since those interests are so diametrically opposed…
Jarrett is perhaps the most effective rail and transit proponent in the race for Exec, a leader from a district in East King County where that used to be hard. He’s battled prail haters like former Senator Jim Horn every step of the way, and won. That means more than the easy support of the Seattle candidates.
Don’t forget that.
Hilarious! Thanks for the laugh, Marge.
Fred Jarrett has been consistent in only one thing: trying to second-guess the decision to run light rail across Lake Washington. Which flies in the face of 30 years of planning and consensus. His notion of an eastside-only rail line – disconnected from Seattle – is politically popular within the eastside chattering class. But from an engineering and fiscal perspective, it’s disastrous.
Big surprise that a politician takes the advice of a wealthy kingmaker businessman over some lowly engineer!
The only way Fred Jarrett can achieve this goal is to re-shuffle the governance deck. When you can’t win under the current set of rules, change ’em! It’s a time honored trick…
I’m not saying he’s a bad candidate. I just think Jarrett is wrong on light rail across Lake Washington, and on regional transportation governance. The average voter isn’t going to make their decision re. the next county executive based on these obscure issues.
After ST2 is done, won’t Sound Transit have something like 200k daily riders just on the light rail? Throw in the buses and commuter rail, and you get something like 250k. And Metro will inevitably lose some ridership to the light rail, leaving it with, what, 350k daily riders? Of course, ST will still have a much smaller operations budget, having effectively cherry-picked the most profitable routes with the most concentrated ridership.
Metro’s ridership will probably be higher due to population growth, something that’s baked in the cake of the ST numbers.
Got a link to that 200K number of ST (st2) riders for LINK? Seems a bit high.
Try 280,000.
A simple search on the ST2 page gives you the projections:
http://soundtransit.org/Sound-Transit-2/Transit-Plan-Summary.xml
286,000 for Link, 358K for all ST2 service.
Anonymouse, here’s what somebody (maybe Ben?) posted a year ago in response to your question:
Firstly, transit travel is measured in passenger-miles, not boardings; it’s the miles on transit that provide the quantifiable benefit. If somebody gets on a bus at James and travels to Westlake, for instance, the public benefit is negligable. If a transit patron leaves his car behind for a trip from Bellevue to the Seattle cbd, for instance, the benefit is greater.
Under the 15-year plan passed last year, according to the regional model, rail accounts for 60% of regional passenger miles.
The 2030 annual totals:
ST Link: 0.7 billion
Sounder: 0.2 billion
STEx bus: 0.1 billion
Others: 0.5 billion (combined KCM, CT, PT and ET)
3-county total: 1.5 billion total annual
.9 billion is 60% of 1.5 billion
Even by 2020, with only the first phase of Link extensions completed, rail would be providing over 40% of the annual passenger-miles.
The numbers from Sound Transit getting 60% share of transit passenger miles should be audited for reasonableness by an objective outside team, and probably nobody reading this Blog qualifies.
Here’s my shot, and I was looking for trouble: The Sound Transit report in the ST2 Plan document (Appendix C, Table 3, page C-4) of the 2030 light rail network carrying 88.5 million boardings for 646 million passenger miles implies 7.3 miles per boarding which is higher than the average for light rail in America (4.6 miles) and higher than for any other west coast light rail system, according to U.S. DOT statistics in the National Transit Database. Also higher than for the average heavy rail system in America (5 miles). So I see ST light rail trip distances as likely biased high, and thus the passenger mile calc and proportion would be biased high.
I’m not sure where the non-ST passenger miles on buses in 2030 come from, but the implication of the ST domination claim is that non-ST bus miles per boarding drop considerably between now and 2030. I’m calculating the miles per boarding dropping from 4.7 miles now to 3.7 miles per boarding in 2030 according to the stats above. Possible, I suppose, as the Metro bus network becomes a rail station feeder network. But again, if the drop is overstated, it biases the ST passenger mile proportion as high.
The only U.S. metro region west of the Mississippi that beats Seattle now on transit market share for work trips is San Francisco Bay Area. I wonder if anybody thinks the Puget Sound region now has a shot at catching up over the next few decades, four-car Link trains versus ten-car BART trains, etc.
Or will we drop back to the level of all the light rail cities like Portland, Denver, Salt Lake, Dallas, Sacramento, San Diego …..?
Link’s capacity is not significantly less than BART’s and puts any other US light rail system to shame. And contrary to popular belief, Link does not take resources and money away from existing bus service (ala Portland). Metro and other agencies are cutting routes because their funding from sales tax is plummeting or has plummeted, not that Link has taken money from them. It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it doesn’t make it true.
First off the ridership in Portland and San Diego isn’t bad they are #5 and #6 respectively for US light rail system ridership. They would be about middle of the pack if you combine both rapid transit and light rail.
Second once U-Link is up and running it is very likely Seattle will beat both Portland and San Diego in light rail ridership. We may even beat Philadelphia in ridership. With the full system build out there is every chance Seattle might be #1 for light rail system ridership in the US though I suspect LA will stay ahead of us since they are expanding their system at a fair clip. SF may also stay ahead. It is entirely possible if ridership of the full system beats projections that Link might pass BART ridership though I think that is somewhat unlikely.
Yes, however, Portland’s ridership per mile is around 2400 people per mile while San Diego’s is around 1700 per mile. When link is built out to the extent of ST2, it will have ridership around 5200 per mile, or so the projections say. The LA system would need to add around 150,000 riders to stay ahead or at the level of Link and SF Muni would need to add 130,000 riders or so for the same result.
Anonymouse, you also make one other big mistake with your assumption: long-haul bus and rail service is most definitely not “more profitable.” In terms of farebox recovery, shorter trips with lots of stops within an urban area are by far more cost effective. Why do you think your Metro bus stops almost every other block? They don’t do that for speed and reliability…
That’s true. There’s a balance, however, in terms of more riders from each seat being filled repeatedly throughout a trip versus more riders just because you have a much bigger vehicle. When you have a 4-car light rail train, one driver can transport many, many more fare-paying passengers. And really what you need to look at is riders per revenue hour, not per mile. Since light rail generally goes much faster than buses, it can stop much less frequently (distance-wise) and have just as many boardings per hour. Or more, because the trains are much bigger.
I’ve supported the idea of transit agency consolidation for quite some time. The current regional transit structure here is a mess: you have no fewer than 5 agencies all providing service, some of which overlaps, some of which doesn’t. The fare structure is extremely confusing to riders (read the fine print on the back of a Sounder or Link ticket if you don’t believe me). Frankly, it seems like there’s too many agencies with a vested interest in protecting their own turf and worrying about their portion of revenue from any given rider, than focusing on the seamless regional connectivity. And that’s the way the system is designed.
In my perfect world, I would combine ST, KC Metro, Pierce Transit, Community Transit, and Everett Transit into one regional agency to provide bus and rail service. There would be a regional fare zone system covering all three counties, and the agency would have one administrative body that would provide representation from each of the counties in a similar manner as what we see with ST today. There would be a form of subarea equity similar to ST’s current setup, to ensure that say, communities like Sultan or Spanaway don’t lose their service.
It seems that every time this is brought up, transit supporters immediately think it’s an agenda to hijack transit money for roads. Coming from the likes of Stanton, Niles, and Kemper Freeman, maybe it is. That’s why transit supporters need to take control of the discussion and focus it in a way such that agency consolidation occurs, but in a strictly transit-only framework. This agency would not be involved in road planning/building, but obviously should be required to work closely with WSDOT where warranted. I think we need to look more towards the benefits of reduced overhead, volume-purchasing power, and better customer service through fare and schedule harmonization.
Politics is far too involved in our current structure, and I think a regional superagency would help dilute some of the micromanagement and protectionalism we currently see, especially in King County. The county council should not be debating bus routes … rather, this should be done by those in the know (e.g. transit planners). I think that forcing county governments to relinquish some of this control will help improve regional connectivity, and at the same time, focus efforts to where there are the most riders.
To the point regarding pro-transit vote dilution, why can’t the RTA boundary still be included in such an agency? Even though one agency would run/build the service, I don’t see why that would preclude certain geographical regions of areas served by the agency from voting for additional capital projects.
The current system is broken. There’s mass confusion with link light rail starting … people don’t know if they can transfer to buses, aren’t sure if their passes are valid, etc. These aren’t the kinds of things riders should have to worry about when they want to try the new $2.1B system. Keep us out of your intra-agency revenue protectionism Metro and ST! We just want to ride the rails!
As mentioned above, most large cities have a super agency. This is yet another area where there’s nothing special about Seattle that precludes a similar concept.
Thoughtful commentary, Ryan.
But there is one simple solution to the problem you rightfully identify: ORCA.
It’s not going to be instituted overnight. But the process of converting the current mish-mash of fare media to a one-tap transit debit card is underway.
Problem solved!
I agree with both Mark and Ryan. Let’s be careful to differentiate between administrative integration (a bad idea for all the reasons mentioned here) and operational integration (of which we need as much as possible!). ORCA is a huge step in the right direction. But I like the idea of separate local transit agencies. With diffused administrative hierarchies the only damage that transit opponents can do in any one initiative amounts to a transit version of whack-a-mole. Put them all together and they could bring the whole house down.
Yes, I do like operational efficiencies, but keep in mind that in the case of ST they don’t actually operate their own buses – they contract that out to Metro, so operationally things are actually more integrated than they appear.
Also, this region is fairly diverse (transit wise) compared to some of these other cities that have mega-agencies. Having multiple smaller transit agencies in some cases will allow for better tailoring of the service to the need (and/or tax base).
And someone is really going to have to explain to me why someplace like Everett would ever sign onto Gov Reform. Co-mingling their local taxes for ET with all the funds in King County and letting it all be controlled by a meg-agency in which they only have a minority voice? Yeah, sure, they are really going to love that up in Sno-County.
I would really like to see ET merge with CT! For people who live outide Everett and need to go to Everett, it can be a real hassle since Everett Station is the main transfer point. I could make a few suggestions to make it better. Swift is a positive sign for both agencies. I read on the ET site that they are proposing a new bus route that connects the naval base, Everett Station, EvCC amd the Naval Exchange in north Marysville! I wonder what CT thinks of that? Marysville is NOT in ET’s service area. It could prove quite useful for me though:).
“Mass confusion?” I wouldn’t say that there is anything like “mass confusion” out there regarding fares. Yes, people were slow using the TVM’s the first day, but people are always going to be a bit slower when they do something for the very first time.
And maybe if people are “confused” they should try reading some of the info that is provided. For example, on the back of my Link ticket from Saturday it says, “Valid for face value, non-special service only, on CT, ET, Metro, and PT. Valid for face value on Sound Transit ST Express bus and Sounder commuter rail services. Etc, etc, etc.” That seems pretty clear to me.
I did run into one very confused out-of-towner on Link on Saturday however. This poor kid bought a Link ticket at the Westlake Station so he could go down to the stadium district and catch the Monorail to Seattle Center. He literally had no idea where he was or which direction he was headed, but a transpo mega-agency with a common fare structure isn’t going to do anything about that level of confusion.
There was definitely mass confusion today at Mount Baker, with a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing trying to buy Link tickets. First, they said they “wanted the light rail but it only gave tickets for the Sound” and also the sign said that Link goes to the airport but there’s no option for SeaTac on the TVM because that station’s not open yet, and so they were quite flustered. I guess that’s mostly just a problem that ST needs to solve by having more detailed explanations at the stations for first time transit users.
We can only do so much. There will always be clueless people walking around, stumbling into things they don’t understand.
I didn’t try to buy a ticket all the way to the airport because I had no need to take the shuttle, but buying a ticket from Westlake to Tukwila was incredibly easy — I can’t imagine how anyone who has ever used an ATM or a parking kiosk would ever have any trouble with that at all.
However, the people next to me on Link were going to the airport and they had little shuttle tickets that they said were easy to get. Their only question was what to do with the ticket once they got on the shuttle — but if that is any sort of “big problem” then who cares because Airport Link opens in 5 months anyhow and the shuttle goes away.
This is a non-issue that will go away as people get used to the system and actually start to read the info that is already provided.
“The current regional transit structure here is a mess: you have no fewer than 5 agencies all providing service, some of which overlaps, some of which doesn’t.”
Which is exactly why Sound Transit was created in 1996, to better plan and operate regional transportation, which wasn’t being provided by the local transit agencies because their main obligation, rightfully so, is to provide local transit to the taxpayers in their districts. Having a regional authority provide regional trips and build regional transit infrastructure protects the local transit agencies and frees up money for local service.
What I would like to see is a regional organization (maybe ST) that would help coordinate the efforts of the local transit agencies, to insure that services are integrated. This would include harmonizing the fare structure, providing unified traveler information and marketing, and making transfers between agencies seamless. However the governing authority of the local agencies would remain local. I think that it is quite possible to greatly improve the coordination of the various transit agencies without governance reform.
One idea to get some of the benefits of Governance Reform without actually having some of the problems would be to combine some of the back-office functions such as legal, accounting, purchasing, payroll, etc. Also maybe combine things like coach orders to get volume discounts. Essentially have the 5 local agencies join forces in areas where economies of scale come into play.
That’s basically Ross Hunter’s position. You get into hairy issues on which taxes are paying for what, but sure.
Well there are also the practical problems of what to do about Everett Transit and Metro which in theory get some of the same economies of scale by using the back-office functions of the Everett City Government and King County Government. That said in the case of Metro I’m told it is still more theory than practice and Metro still does many thing separate from the county, it doesn’t help that in some cases the county department in question is a bit of a mess.
Still standardizing equipment a bit and doing joint orders for everything from bus stop signs, to coaches, to tires, to fuel shouldn’t be too hard. Sharing orders probably won’t save much money for Metro as they are already quite large but it would help the 4 smaller transit agencies.
I would love to see something like 511 for the Puget Sound Region. Right now the information is scattered among separate websites/phone numbers for the different agencies. Also as part of that, a unified, per-route way to get Rider Alerts by RSS and email/SMS.
We do have 511 and it’s run by WSDOT. Currently, it only provides highway, ferry, and weather info with connections to Amtrak and airlines.
PST. Puget Sound Transit.
Or just leave it at Sound Transit. If we combine anything, I want Sound Transit to preserve their branding. I just think their livery and marketing is too cool – by far one of the best looking transit agencies I’ve ever seen.
Speaking of “governance reform,” we were surprised to see that Seattle mayoral candidate Joe Mallahan thinks that King County Metro should be spun off as an independent agency, see http://www.friendsofseattle.org/2009-voters-guide-primary-election/mayor-seattle/joe-mallahan#Questionnaire_Transit.
What do readers of this blog think about his proposal?
It struck us as another well-intentioned but ultimately ill-conceived effort to improve transit service by focusing on governance reform. Metro already was an independent agency—from 1958 (it gained authority to operate transit in 1972) until it was merged with King County in 1994, and Joe Mallahan hasn’t explained why he thinks transit riders would benefit from Metro becoming an independent authority again—a radical proposal for which voters should demand a compelling explanation.
Honestly? Mallahan doesn’t appear to understand any part of the system he’s proposing changes to. I think he’s throwing out ‘ideas’ in an effort to make uninformed voters interested in ‘change’.
In addition to Ben’s comment, something to keep in mind when mayoral candidates talk about Metro: It’s a county agency.They won’t have any control over metro’s structure or organization.
Therefore it’s a case where it’s free for them to say whatever they want, knowing full well there’s nothing they can do about. The same uninformed voters will think “here’s a guy thinking outside the box” but not know what he knows: it’s an empty promise.
That’s true but the City and the Mayors office are a huge player when it comes to negotiations with ST and Metro. Things like negotiating payment for the RFZ, purchase of the bus tunnel, operation of SLUT, ROW for the First Hill streecar are some big ones. Seattle is the 800# gorilla when it comes to transit in King County and the dominant player for the entire region. Seattle can, and did, run a fine transit agency all on it’s own which would pretty much devastate everywhere else unless the City plays nice with it’s neighbors.
What Mr. Mallahan doesn’t explain is how turning Metro into an independent agency would improve transit service. Just reforming the governance model or making changes to the management structure mean little if it doesn’t result in quantitative improvements out on the street. What we need is elected officials who will encourage Metro to make comprehensive improvements to the bus system and officials who will be bold enough to allow Metro to implement things like transit signal priority and feeder networks for the new light rail lines.
A lot of this talk about “operational efficiencies” or “unified management” is just so much sand in the eyes. The big cost in providing bus service is actually providing the bus service and it’s not as though nobody has ever tried to dream up a clever idea to short-circuit that expense before.
It’s not like other businesses. Consider General Motors. GM was formed from companies that made alternators, tires, engines, chassis, coach work, actual cars, etc. When these guys got together they really achieved economy of scale, didn’t need sales forces, could ship direct, had guaranteed buyers for higher production levels, etc.
That doesn’t happen when you join two transit agencies together. Considering as how they’re all owned by the public and don’t compete for customers, there isn’t any economy of scale or route or schedule you couldn’t achieve by simply having two separate agencies coordinate what they’re doing. The biggest expenses are bus drivers and fuel, and the only way to change those is to change where people live and work.
When you create a “superagency” in transit, the chances are pretty good that you’re just adding another layer of management at the top. This is different from, say, a regional effort to save the environment, because transit agencies as we know them are not dealing with new problems, while saving the environment is a new challenge for our society.
In general, talking about “governance reform” is just an indication that the speaker doesn’t really know how to make the existing governance work. Not exactly what you want to hear from a candidate for King County Executive.
The main problem with consolidation for me is that people outside of King County don’t want nearly as much transit as we do, so either King County will end up with less transit or exurban and rural areas will end up with higher taxes for transit that they will never use. I don’t necessarily think that Sounder extensions to outlying areas are bad for this reason though; those areas could easily set up their own taxing authority to pay for capital and operations cost for that part of the line and not have to become part of the RTD.
I’m for an elected board for ST. And the governance proposal at the top level appears to give us that. However, in it’s present form it looks to me like a hijacking of the mass transit money for highways. So I won’t be working to pass it.