PubliCola reports that projected revenue from Deep-Bore Tunnel tolling has dropped from $400m to $200m over the life of the project, and WSDOT hopes to make up the difference by allocating some recent highway fund distributions from the Federal Government.
WSDOT goes on to blame various ways in which the recession affects tolling income. Although some tunnel opponents will no doubt smell a conspiracy, I’m prepared to give WSDOT the same courtesy I did Sound Transit, and accept their excuse as plausible.
However, there’s an interesting asymmetry in the way our system – local, state, and federal – treats road and transit projects. When ST gets in a revenue bind, the question is what they’re going to cut: what stations won’t get built, how many years to delay completion, and so on. When a highway project runs into trouble, it’s all about where they can scrape together more cash to finish the full scope on schedule.
It sounds like WSDOT has a habitual forecasting problem. Remember this little chart?
http://daily.sightline.org/2011/07/13/wsdot-vs-reality/
The Sightline chart contains tons of errors…. the WSDOT forecasts apply to a system that would contain significant capacity improvements, whereas the “actuals” apply to the existing, capacity-constrained infrastructure.
As an example, the 520 EIS provides a 2030 forecast for an improved corridor with 50% greater capacity (6 lanes instead of 4 across the floating bridge). The purpose of that forecast was to estimate environmental impacts resulting from that added capacity and increased traffic volume. The EIS is not meant to be an official traffic forecast, but more of a sensitivity test.
The other problem with the chart is that it assumes straighline growth between today and 2030… this is not the actual growth rate estimated by WSDOT, but instead, the author’s incorrect interpretation of the data.
All in all, it’s a terrible chart that takes data out of context and makes apples-to-oranges comparisons.
One question I haven’t seen addressed is WHY the revenue projections were cut in half?
Will the tolls have to be lower?
Do they project more people will schedule their trips to avoid higher rates?
Just less trips in general through the corridor?
Or will more people use Surface Streets, I5, and Transit to get where they are going?
If it is the later, what does the State, City, County, whoever plan to do handle the additional loads?
It’s a combination of factors, some of which are certainly more people using surface streets, plus less inflation which makes debt disappear for free.
As for the additional loads, nothing, obviously. This was faith-based transportation planning where the urge to do something, anything, got us a gift-wrapped expensive boondoggle.
TLjr: TriMet did not have to engage in any “public cost vs. effectiveness” analysis with that airport extension line because it was financed via a public/private partnership. That involves a private entity paying for the construction, and recouping costs from system users, advertising etc. Try to follow along. We’re discussing what Sound Transit does vs. all peers that use public money to finance light rail. The peers use FTA grants to pay for large portions of those costs.
Where did that Andrew Smith character run off to? He says says “the federal standard isn’t the only valid one” when it comes to evaluating whether a light rail line is too expensive in light of the public costs. Contrary to what Zed claims, the federal standards of cost-effectiveness have NOT changed.
What other metro area uses different standards of cost-effectiveness than the FTA does? Hint: NONE (well, except Sound Transit, which apparently could not care less about the public costs DESPITE how East Link would not be effective in terms of any reality-based economic criteria).
What different standards is Sound Transit relying on to justify the cost to taxpayers of East Link? Anyone want to discuss that? I don’t think Sound Transit uses any standards, and if it does they could not be valid.
^^^^^ Posted in response to wrong comment from Andrew Smith; see below (where it should have been posted)!
The Federal standards of cost-effectiveness for light rail HAVE, effectively, changed. They were changed fairly recently, so that they would no longer be heavily biased towards long-distance commuters and against in-city commuters; minutes saved was made less important and riders added was made more important. Just to correct your error of fact.
I don’t know of any other changes in the cost-effectiveness standards.
To late for the NorthLink HCT alignment decisions. Link will run up the barren I-5 corridor which is devoid of nearby commuters, has zero TOD potential and no walkshed.
The Seattle Times article says it’s the first two, plus the recession.
“Traffic on Highway 520 has dropped around 40 percent since variable tolls of up to $3.50 per peak trip began Dec. 29…. In the case of the Seattle tunnel, DOT has realized for several months that a potential toll of about $4 at peak times would push drivers out of the tunnel and clog downtown streets. So the state has been studying lower rates.”
This part sounds noteworthy: “Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn bucked the political establishment during the 2009 campaign by insisting the DOT’s original toll scenario was unsustainable, and the latest findings tend to support him.”
The Suburban Times, saying Mayor McBeardface was right about something?
I don’t habeeb it!
This is comedy of errors right?
We add a toll to pay for a new bridge, which we “have to have”.
But in doing so, it’s apparent that we might not need it at all as I-90 and I-405 seem quite capable of carrying the East-West traffic.
And now we’re building a tunnel to alleviate traffic, but we need to pay for it with tolls — which then reduces the traffic and makes it unnecessary as well!
Seems to me that we could eliminate all our problems by just tolling everything starting at $10 a mile. Then everyone would stay home…or move to where they need to be.
Even my non-transportation-geek friends are saying that both 520 and 90 should be tolled, that it makes no sense to toll one and not the other. And these are people who, unlike me, use both bridges on a regular basis.
Or we could just tear down 520 and the Viaduct and be done with it.
I thought that was my line!
“When ST gets in a revenue bind, the question is what they’re going to cut: what stations won’t get built, how many years to delay completion, and so on.”
“Subarea equity” is a policy that the board can revise, yet it refuses to do so. WSDOT is going to use federal grant money to make up the toll revenue shortfall; ST on the other hand won’t even seek any federal money for East Link. ST is planning on selling far more long term bonds than it expected to sell even six months ago. The obvious difference between how Sound Transit operates and how WSDOT operates is Sound Transit ALWAYS revises its financing plans by extending the duration and amount of the local regressive general taxing. Why does Sound Transit only revise its financing plans in that way? Because the board is unaccountable to people. THAT is the “asymmetry”.
Because they know they won’t get it: the project is too expensive for federal funding.
Read this if you want how they allocate money explained:
https://seattletransitblog.wpcomstaging.com/2011/02/15/portlands-federally-funded-rail-system/
Eastlink is way more expensive for fewer riders than the projects ST is going to get federal funding for. UW station alone will carry more than the entire line, the “North Corridor project” is going to get about the same number of riders more riders for less than a third the cost.
First time I’ve heard that . . .
So East Link is “too expensive” for New Starts grants? WTF? Kill it then, and use buses. There’s PLENTY of capacity in the center lanes for more buses, and we shouldn’t be wasting billions on infrastructure that has a negative ROI.
East Link will perform poorly on cost-effectiveness criteria in the grants process, yes. That doesn’t mean it’s too expensive or not valuable, just that it would lose out to other projects when fighting for VERY limited federal dollars.
If it is too expensive for New Starts then why is it not too expensive for taxpayers?
Your question makes no sense unless you want the standard to be that we should only consider building projects that get federal funding.
What if it got a single dollar of federal funds? Would that be good enough? The standard is silly and doesn’t make sense. Not every project needs to get federal money to be a good project, and the federal standard isn’t the only valid one.
“Not every project needs to get federal money to be a good project, and the federal standard isn’t the only valid one.”
Really? Identify one, just one, light rail project that did not rely for a big part of the construction costs on federal money. Every region uses essentially the same standards of effectiveness as the FTA uses when deciding whether to build out light rail.
Also, you say “the federal standard isn’t the only valid one”. What other metro area uses different standards of cost-effectiveness than the FTA does? What different standards is Sound Transit relying on to justify the cost to taxpayers of East Link? Let’s discuss whether its standards are valid.
The FTA changes their cost-effectiveness metrics depending on who’s in the White House.
Hammond: see the link above and read closely the bit about the Portland airport extension.
That was a public/private partnership where individual taxpayers were not on the hook for a penny of the cost. Private entities bore those costs then recouped them from users of the system, advertisers, and others. That’s NOTHING like what Sound Transit is doing.
Andrew Smith says “the federal standard isn’t the only valid one”. Contrary to what Zed implies, the FTA’s cost-effectiveness standards have remained essentially unchanged for decades.
What other metro area uses different standards of cost-effectiveness than the FTA does? Only here, where Sound Transit does not use any cost-effectiveness standards, right?
Anyone think Sound Transit can point to any reality-based effectiveness standards to justify the cost to taxpayers of East Link? Asking that question sure shut Andrew Smith up. Anyone else want to try addressing that issue?
TLjr: TriMet did not have to engage in any “public cost vs. effectiveness” analysis with that airport extension line because it was financed via a public/private partnership. That involves a private entity paying for the construction, and recouping costs from system users, advertising etc. Try to follow along. We’re discussing what Sound Transit does vs. all peers that use public money to finance light rail. The peers use FTA grants to pay for large portions of those costs.
Where did that Andrew Smith character run off to? He says says “the federal standard isn’t the only valid one” when it comes to evaluating whether a light rail line is too expensive in light of the public costs. Contrary to what Zed claims, the federal standards of cost-effectiveness have NOT changed.
What other metro area uses different standards of cost-effectiveness than the FTA does? Hint: NONE (well, except Sound Transit, which apparently could not care less about the public costs DESPITE how East Link would not be effective in terms of any reality-based economic criteria).
What different standards is Sound Transit relying on to justify the cost to taxpayers of East Link? Anyone want to discuss that? I don’t think Sound Transit uses any standards, and if it does they likely are not valid.
“Also, you say “the federal standard isn’t the only valid one”. What other metro area uses different standards of cost-effectiveness than the FTA does?”
It’s not just the qualifications, it’s the fact that you’re competing against projects in other cities. The feds can only fund the top N projects. Just because our project is less significant than one in San Diego or Minneapols, does not mean it’s not worthwhile.
No Hammond, you are the one who knows not of what they are talking about. Both Bush and Obama changed FTA funding criteria when they came in office:
http://news.oregonmetro.gov/1/post.cfm/fta-shifts-criteria-for-funding-transit-projects
Hammond, there is frankly not enough federal money for all the good rail projects out there. Highway bias at the federal level means they’re very stingy about rail projects, whereas even crummy highway projects get money.
The federal government, lately, will typically announce a $10 million dollar program and get $10 billion in applications from cities and states (those are numbers off the top of my head, but somone else can give the real numbers for New Starts, the HSR program, the TIGER programs, the TIGGER programs, etc. — there’re all hugely oversubscribed.)
There are lots of cost-effective projects which simply aren’t *as* cost-effective as others competing for federal money.
So M. Johnson posted a link above, and part of what it says about the new criteria for FTA grants is this:
“In a letter to local governments, Secretary LaHood stated the administration’s intention to change the regulatory framework to “give meaningful consideration to full range of benefits that transit can provide. These include not only mobility-oriented benefits such as transit travel time, but also important economic development, environmental, social, and congestion relief benefits.””
So what is it about East Link that is so much worse than other light rail project proposals in terms of those criteria?
Nobody here seems to have any idea about 1) the amount of New Starts money that has been available over the past couple of years (and that is expected to be doled out over the next couple of years), 2) what the cost of East Link is supposed to be, 3) what makes the competition so much more worthy, and 4) what factors Sound Transit staff considered to be such deal-breakers that they elected to not even try to get large federal grants for East Link.
People say there is not much money available, but they can’t quantify that apparently. Anyone have any, you know, facts?
“Because the board is unaccountable to people.”
And WSDOT is?
[ad hom]
Want to talk about public accountability? Where’s the vote on the DBT? Or any other WSDOT highway project? Meanwhile those of us who want actual transportation progress are left groveling to Kemper Freeman’s constituency.
“Where’s the vote on the DBT?”
Sadly, we lost.
The ST board can’t change the subarea equity rules by themselves, it would take the state legislature or a public vote.
That is not correct, Zed. Under “Sound Move” that was the case, but the new ST2 provisions changed subarea equity to a mere “policy” (as opposed to a legal requirement). Policies CAN be changed by the board.
I don’t think that’s true, subarea equity was written into the law that enabled ST2.
This isn’t that different, other than sub-area equity. WSDOT is grabbing cash not committed to other projects. It’s sort of like if ULink had a funding gap and ST went after north link money or something. If it weren’t for subarea equity you’d see more of this from ST. The one big difference is that the feds give way more money to these roads projects than they do to transit, and that raods projects cost so much more. The I-405 widening is a $14 billion project all told, the AWV replacement is $4 billion-ish, and the SR-520 project is $5-$6 billion.
I guess one other difference is that most of the federal road money goes for new construction, where instead much of the federal transit money goes for operations.
Are you sure? I thought most, if not ALL Federal Transit money went to Capital Projects. I seem to recall that being a big issue when the Great Recession first hit and everyone around the country was having to cut service and raise fares, even when stimulus money was flowing to the same agencies.
Yes, I am sure (I’ve been doing this a very long time, Matt). Very little of it goes to Capital Projects, relatively, not even 20%.
http://www.dot.gov/budget/2011/2011budgethighlights.pdf
I suppose some of the formula grants could be considered “capital” expenses because the money is used for things like buying buses, etc. but it’s not for building new service capabilities, which is what building a new highway is like. Only the capital budget does that.
Then am I just reading this wrong, or have things changed since this article came out?
http://www.thetransportpolitic.com/2010/06/11/reversing-roles-should-washington-cover-operations-costs/
“Since 1998, Congress has banned the use of federal funds to pay for public transportation operations in communities of more than 200,000 people, effectively requiring transit agencies to pay for all of their salary, electricity, and fuel costs using local or state revenues. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has continued to sponsor a majority of costs for capital expenses, including the construction of expensive new fixed-guideway bus and rail lines.”
“Since 1998, Congress has banned the use of federal funds to pay for public transportation operations in communities of more than 200,000 people, effectively requiring transit agencies to pay for all of their salary, electricity, and fuel costs using local or state revenues. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has continued to sponsor a majority of costs for capital expenses, including the construction of expensive new fixed-guideway bus and rail lines.”
http://bit.ly/aQn5At
“One of the unique features of the American transit funding system is that the federal government chips in significant sums each year for capital expenses, such as for the purchase of new buses or the construction of new rail lines, but the law forbids significant involvement in subsidizing operating expenses. This means that local and state governments must find the means to pay for service day-in and day-out.”
http://bit.ly/vyyFM9
LOL, so apparently I’m not the only one who remembers that article from News Roundup.
Dang you’re fast.
You’re using confusing “capital expenses” and “capital projects”.
This is what matt said:
If a bus is a “capital project” to you, then we will have to disagree on what the word “project” means. The money goes for new buses, fixing buses, new lights in the stations, new signs at stops. Those are capital expenses, but they are not “capital projects”, and are a part of operating (at least to my mind), not construction.
Certainly fixing a bus is not a capital project…
My wife’s been blabbing again eh? :/
Andrew, do you consider those things Operations?
“I guess one other difference is that most of the federal road money goes for new construction, where instead much of the federal transit money goes for operations.”
Yes, obviously fixing buses is. I’d say buying light bulbs is, too and even buying buses is. I’d say buying new bus stop signs is, too.
It’s certainly nothing like building a subway line or a rail line, which more like what building a highway is.
If you consider buying buses and other equipment to be operations and not capital, I guess we just have different definitions of the words. *shrug*
Well, consider it in context, please, Matt. You are making strictly semantic argument about a single word when the importance of what I said was the distinction around “construction”. If you think buses are “construction”, then I think most people will disagree with you. If you think repairing buses and lightbulbs are “construction”, then I might think you were being pedantic for its own sake. If you don’t like the way I used “operations” then replace it with “non-construction expenses” in your mind.
I’m guilty, too, obviously, but no where on earth does everyone jump into the weeds more quickly than commenters do on this blog.
I consider buying a bus to be an operations expense, and buying a train to be a new construction or expansion expense.
Buses just wear out too fast for me to consider them long term investments. I might consider the Bredas long term capital investments, if it weren’t for the expensive refurbishing they required mid-decade, and the fact that the frames are now falling apart.
My personal cutoff point is 25 years. If it doesn’t last 25 years it’s just an operations/maintenance expense.
Andrew,
You’re right that this is basically a product of the DBT swimming in sea of federal highway dollars, so that $200m really isn’t a big deal. It’s really a federal problem that things are this way.
I’m not sure that’s how I’d characterize it. WSDOT gets a bunch of discretionary federal money, sort of how the PSRC gets a bunch of discretionary federal money. Through some process, they decide to allocate the money to projects. When they don’t have enough money for one project, the take it from another project.
This is in a way, a silver lining for urbanists. If WSDOT has to spend more money on DBT, then they have less money for exurban projects. As long as this keeps sinking WSDOT and not Seattle taxpayers, we should be pleased with this result.
Doesn’t this absolutely destroy the argument that user fees pay for roads? It also demonstrates that the tunnel is an economic disaster.
The tunnel costs around $2 billion. Tolls were supposed to provide $400 million, only 20%. Except that when drivers were supposed to pay 20% of the cost of the road, most of them elect not to use it all. It’s not worth it to them to pay 20% of the cost.
So why are we building it? Aren’t there more valuable transportation projects for the $2 billion?
Well, obviously there are more valuable transportation projects than the DBT. But the DBT never *had* any economic justification. It’s not *there* because of economic justification, it’s someone’s political payoff (please do figure out whose, if you can).
It was rejected by the initial environmental screening as being clearly inferior to multiple other options… and revived by a backroom deal in Olympia when the shallow tunnel ran into trouble. This is a matter of public record!
The shallow tunnel actually was a reasonable idea with decent arguments behind it, whether or not you approve of it; the deep bore tunnel is objectively inferior in all ways.
How did the I-405 Widening get up to $14 billion?
Even taking into account the difference between Budget an YOE dollars, that sounds steep. We were looking at only $4.5 billion for the GP lanes in 2000.
It was $11 billion in 2002, I don’t know where you got your numbers.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2004039449_danny28.html
Ah, I see the problem Andrew.
This is where one has to be careful quoting directly from the news media, especially Opinion pieces.
I like to go to the source documents, and since I was on the I-405 Corridor Program Citizens Committee, I have them… well, if not in my head, at least close by. Even the pre-EIS documents, which don’t always make it out to the public, unless they came to every meeting.
Since Mr. Westneat is noting that it’s 2002 dollars, that means he’s using Budget dollars.
The $11 billion figure is for Alternative 4, which was 3 GP lanes in each direction, and NO transit improvements.
The Preferred Alternative was Alternative 3, 2 lanes in each direction plus major improvements to the bus service.
The GP lanes were costed out at $4.5 billion, and the various improvements to build the ‘BRT’ portion came to about $1 billion more. The HOV to HOV direct access ramps were a major portion of that cost, since they were planned at all the major interchanges on 405. There were additional improvements to the arterials, which had Alternative 3 coming in around the $7 billion mark.
I’m all for adding fuel to the Road$ Bonfire, but we need to be accurate, or at least reasonable with the numbers we quote.
Jim Cusick
I don’t know anything about your numbers. $10.9 billion in 2002 dollars is what WSDOT has on its site, if you have a problem, take it up with them:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/I405/corridor/faq.htm
I-405 Corridor Program
and transit improvements:
The transit and pedestrian budget is more than what’s being spent on the freeway. And a good chunck of what’s being spent there is going toward HOV and transit improvements. That’s how we get to $14 billion.
Your absolutely right Andrew, I will have to take it up with them, since this dollar amount conflicts with what is in the FEIS.
I’ll find the page with the cost matrix on it.
The $10.9 billion amount sounds suspiciously like the CEVP numbers, or the ‘best guess at YOE’ dollars.
I’ll post when I can get you more detail.
Jim
Okay, I found it.
First, download this PDF:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/NR/rdonlyres/94750214-9ECD-4643-97AF-1F3AE6C6B754/0/0Summary.pdf
Then go to page 9 and look at Table S-1: Preliminary Alternative Costs Summarized by Mode
This is what was used in the decision making process, although this table is in year 2000 dollars.
I’ll have to dig around in my Final EIS documentation to see what was presented there in 2002.
Jim
Why don’t we emulate London and toll the surface? If we don’t like surface traffic, make it cheaper to travel underground.
Armageddon was predicted for London as a result of tolling but in fact the city core is operationally working better than before, by all metrics, with no noticeable economic impact. Key point: public transit in the London tolling area is functioning noticeably better.
Whoops, forgot to provide a cite for my claims about effects of London tolling. Here it is:
Road Pricing: Lessons from London
So, where would you put the toll gates?
Anything that starts with I, US, or SR?
Well, if we still lived in the 19th or 20th century tolling gates would be quite annoyingly dense, actually impractical. However, Seattle is synchronized chronologically within a few hours of London, so we’d do what London does, rely on cameras.
I would put the tolling gates at the ferry terminal, the ship canal, Lake Washington and I-90. I don’t know how many ways there are to get across I-90 but there are only 9 total entrances on the other three sides. With electronic tolling that would be very logistically difficult at all.
Here’s how London handles ingress:
Map of Congestion Charging Zone
Describing the paths into London’s charging zone as intricate is an understatement yet the scheme works well.
Notice how London integrates transport? Public transit and private vehicles are treated as members of a single system.
There are several points on the south end of Seattle where the number of through roads is relatively small; it would be completely technically viable to toll “the peninsula”.
“Why don’t we emulate London and toll the surface?”
Because we don’t have enough legislators willing to do so, or enough voters demanding it.
Well, yes, that’s a gobstopper as the English would say. We don’t live in the world of facts here, rather prefer to live in our imaginations.
London recognizes that in our factual world of the urban context, treating public transit and private vehicles as separate, unrelated problems is simply unworkable. Vehicles regardless of their contents are packages needing delivery, with more or less urgency, and the only way to run a proper delivery service for these packages is to bring them into an integrated logistics system, one that has among other key features the notion of cost versus priority.
I don’t expect my purchase today to arrive via Federal Express tomorrow at 10am for the same price as it would 3 days hence. I don’t expect that I can saunter into a Federal Express regional center, dump loads of packages onto the conveyors without having to think about costs and yet still see Federal Express perform with the usual efficiency. Yet this is how we expect our streets to work, here in the world of fantasy referendums and spineless not-leaders. In London– part of a seemingly more data-driven country– it’s plain to see what happens when we acknowledge facts: things get better.
The tunnel design is unfinished because it’s not part of an integrated system. Using the Fedex analogy, it’s as though Federal Express bought an expensive additional set of jet aircraft but also announced that we’re free to ship packages via the remainder the fleet and have them delivered for us at no cost. We might call this stupidity, but it’s actually failure of leadership, our politicians dropping the ball when it comes to telling us hard truths.
…or the transit system to handle the mode change?
I’m in favor of more tolling, but you can’t just use the stick.
There may not have been a conspiracy to cook the projections for tunnel tolling revenue, but it doesn’t take a conspiracy. Given the history of traffic projections for this region it’s clear that WSDOT wanted this freeway built, just like they’ve wanted so many others built, and have used traffic projections as part of their argument to get it done.
Between this and the outright lies the tunnel supporters pushed about the impact of the surface highway and its traffic on the waterfront, it’s abundantly clear that committed freeway-builders have foisted an expensive project upon us that’s opposed to our values, desires, and interests. For shame.
For shame indeed, on US too for not “throwing the bums out” in the last 4 local elections – nearly every single incumbent was re-elected at the City Council and WA legislative and Senatorial elections over the last 4 years, and a large majority of them bought into this monstrosity hook, line, and sinker.
[ot]
The issue is not incumbants. It’s what the particular officeholders vote for and what their values are. Throwing all the bums out will not help if the new crop is worse, incompetent, inexperienced, or dependent on their unelected staffers.
Not just a large majority went for the tunnel, but an overwhelming majority, including virtually every politician in the state who wasn’t named McGinn or O’Brien.
You’ll recall that they were circling the wagons last year, outdoing each other in public displays of angry frustration over delays on the DBT. When they were cornered and forced to subject their highway to a vote, they finally got *reallY* pissed off and put together a masterpiece of a campaign that readily steamrolled over any and all objections. Under the sunniest of buzzwords, they promised something for everyone (bikes! transit! cars!)
Anyone who asked annoying questions–like whether a tunnel under downtown was necessarily the best way to spend the next two or three billion in regional transportation dollars–was slyly painted as an anti-progress, process-obsessed bike nazi.
They probably guessed that there wouldn’t be much of a price to pay for it at the polls, and they’re probably right.
I think the writing has been on the wall for a while, with SR-167 HOT lanes under performing expectations, with SR-99 SDEIS showing 50% of vehicles diverting around the tunnel, and a mismatch between long term VMT growth in the Puget Sound and actual growth. This doesn’t surprise me in the least, in fact I was expecting something like this to come out of WSDOT SR-99 expert review panel.
As Martin points out the most surprising part is that WSDOT is able to back fill a $200 million dollar gap like it’s nothing.
“As Martin points out the most surprising part is that WSDOT is able to back fill a $200 million dollar gap like it’s nothing.”
Shows that there’s too much highway money around, doesn’t it.
Part of Tge toll revenue problem is the number of tax exempt vehicles in the Insane Tunnel of Debt.
Kill the Tunnel.
Do it now!
Yeah, right!
In the long run, the gas tax is the best possible toll.
It’s cheap to collect (collection cost is 3% of revenue vs. about 30% of revenue for toll collection costs even with electronic tolling)
You cannot divert around it, so no impact on local roads
It creates incentive for fuel efficiency, which saves energy and reduces pollutants
I thought one reason for the current mania for tolls was that somehow the politicians thought it was easier to impose tolls than to increase gas taxes. But now we read that they aren’t willing to increase the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll, are reducing the tunnel toll, and promising that the 520 toll will rise lower than inflation. Doesn’t sound like tolls are a panacea at all.
I agree with using tolls to manage congestion.
But otherwise, for funding roads, just raise the gas tax! Please. Just do it.
It’s not an either/or. The gas tax is a disincentive to burn gas. A toll is a disincentive to use certain roads. Both have considerable revenue consideration.
That reminds me that I need to check and see how traffic on the Narrows Bridge compares to the single-bridge no-toll era.
Better than raising the gas tax,
STOP BUILDING NEW ROADS.
While the anti-car crowd thinks this is a way to punish the evil car owners, it would only be siphoned off to create new road-only infrastructure with the convenient excuse that if people didn’t want more roads, they wouldn’t buy more gas.
Use the existing gas tax to pay for maintenance only, and put a votable plan out there, with funding sources, just like Sound Transit did. Twice, in fact.
In the long run, everyone will stop using gas cars, so in the long run, it’s not the best method of tolling.
+1. TLjr has it exactly right. Gas tax is the best way to internalize the externalities of gasoline consumption, and VMT taxes and tolls are the best way to internalize the externalities of road travel.
Gasoline consumption isn’t even strongly correlated with vehicle weight, let alone with miles driven.
Toll the West Seattle and Ballard bridges since these are the communities for which the tunnel is being built.
It’s my understanding that most traffic coming from the south actually exits downtown. So no, those same users from West Seattle will not be using the tunnel, most will be using the street grid. The tunnel was ostensibly hawked as a boon to trade, to the Port and to revitalize the waterfront. It was never about the communities nearest to it. If so transit funding would never have been slashed from the budget.
Yes, the beautiful sleight of hand that Port trucks will be able to use the DBT, even though they won’t.
We can’t punish West Seattle and Ballard for “using the tunnel” if in fact some of their vehicles don’t use it. West Seattlites going downtown will exit before the tunnel. Those going to UW or Lynnwood would just as likely switch to I-5 before the tunnel to avoid the surface streets in north Seattle. That leaves just a few people going from West Seattle to northwest Seattle.
Traffic from the north is more likely to use the tunnel, as people all over north Seattle from Ballard to UW use 99 to get to the airport or south end during peak times or just to avoid the potential of I-5 traffic.
So the debate opens yet again along the same predictable pathways – one side says we shouldn’t build, the other that we will find the money. I personally find the military budget to be an ATM as there is so much one could cut in it and fund practically everything else we need for years. We don’t need a $600bn military budget after all so let’s raid that part of the federal budget. Of course, the military-industrial complex will raise a shout but these things can be built where there’s way and a will. Am sure that will happen here.
Tolls are not working on the 520 and they won’t work on the tunnel project. In saying so, this is not an argument to cut either project. We still need the tunnel and we still need the new floating bridge. We just have to find alternate ways of thinking in terms of raising revenue to fund both. My hope is that Senator Murray can come through for us on the transportational committee of the Senate.
Lower tolling projections are no more disastrous to the tunnel project than Sound Transit’s over inflated ridership projections are for Light Rail and Express buses. At the end of the day, given how tight funding is everywhere, marketing is key to getting many of these things started. The tunnel project is also about how can we create a waterfront that is lively and inviting. Moving people and freight is also a huge part of it. I am sure we will find that tolls are not going to get the project built any faster or with adequate funding but until WSDOT comes around with a taxing bowl, I don’t think we should be overly concerned at this point in time.