Final results for last month’s King County roads and transit election at the precinct level were released yesterday. I compiled the results into an interactive map with numbers for yes votes, no votes, voter turnout, and number of registered voters. I also overlaid current Metro and Sound Transit routes on the map, using a solid dark line for all-day service and a wide white line for peak-only service.
Hover your mouse over or tap on your area to see how your precinct voted.
Check the data for your map, Oran, I found a precinct with 133% turnout.
SNO-VALLEY with 750 registered voters and 277 ballots counted.
I saw that. Can’t do anything about it today as I’m traveling.
Apparently the data for registered voters in the precinct map does not match the number of registered voters in the e-canvas results file. I’ve corrected the map to use registered voter count from the same source as the results. The map should reflect that within an hour.
I’m shocked to see that my precinct voted NO (just by 1 vote, however).
Metro should feel pretty safe cutting the 3N terminal loop and route 19. Look at the map, those precincts voted NO.
Interesting results from Skyway/Rainier View neighborhoods: Metro wants to cut the Prentice loop off of the 7, but those precincts voted YES. Skyway is actually going to get better bus service after the cuts, but those precincts voted NO.
Talk to your neighbors much?
Getting one or two more folks to vote shouldn’t be hard if they know the margin of loss in the district was just one vote last time.
I should’ve done more about the folks next to route 19. I take that bus to 28th and Blaine regularly.
Why did every single city except for Seattle and Vashon (weird, I know) reject this measure? Only a handful of cities even contain any blue. And downtown Bellevue and its surrounding areas are mostly red. This is a bit concerning. What did the Transit Now and ST2 map look like? Should we be concerned that ST3 won’t pass?
The Pro-ST3 campaign won’t be managed by Metro, which should give it a chance of passing. I know that managing political campaigns isn’t–and shouldn’t be–one of Metro’s core competencies, but the pro-Prop 1 campaign was either non-existent or completely inept.
Part of it was the timing too.
KC was really forced to put this on the ballot now as opposed to in the fall in order to stave off the first round of cuts. The problem with these special, one topic elections is that turnout tends to be lower in the more urban districts, whereas the more conservative (and older) voters tend to vote no matter what. The result is that the average voter participating tends to be older, more conservative, more rural, and less affluent. That translates into more “no” votes.
If KC had run this same Proposition in the fall it would have passed. Or if they had run a smaller, transit only Proposition, it still might have passed. But run it in a special election in the Spring, bundle it with roads, and nearly double the tax burden, and……. Well, we all know what happened.
But blame your state Senate – they are the ones that painted Metro into this corner.
What Lazurus said. Might precinct voted 87+% yes, but only a bit more than 15% showed up. Lazy kids.
The configuration of King County is so weird. Wish Seattle was its own county, like the City and County of San Francisco. Makes much morel sense and would avoid duplication of services in some instances.
http://www.kcgop.org/blog/king-countys-prop-1-need-know/
http://www.eastsideta.com/docs/METRO%20Is%20Unfair%20Final%20Nov%20%2018.pdf
Simply put, Seattle gets more service because it has more riders. As the proportion of transit users is much higher in Seattle than the suburbs, it is impossible for any service plan to allocate both according to ridership levels and tax revenues at the same time. This has always been a source of tension of Metro, and Metro’s actual allocation of service has been a delicate balancing act between these two goals.
It should also be noted that people do not live in a vacuum and want bus service wherever they travel, not just where they live. I don’t have exact numbers, but I would be willing to bet a lot more Eastside and South King residents ride Seattle buses than the other way around.
The Eastside Transportation Association seems to ignore the fact that Seattle/Shoreline riders are paying a greater proportion of Metro’s operating cost through farebox revenue than the eastside riders.
Who cares. If that really is the case (which I doubt it), people are paying for the pleasure to live in the suburbs. They also get the benefit of both transit service and reduced congestion. They’re coming out far and away ahead even if they never take a bus.
Here’s a challenge…a thrown gauntlet if you will…to STB.
Take each of the points raised in the KCGOP blog and discuss them in a post.
It’s an intentional false choice that’s set up. Metro gets criticized for either giving too little service to the suburbs or running empty buses in the suburbs.
http://www.eastsideta.com/docs/METRO%20Is%20Unfair%20Final%20Nov%20%2018.pdf
However, nearly 60% of all transportation tax revenue is spent on transit.
So, 60% of the gas tax money is spent on transit?
1) Highways receive a lot of money out of the general fund, in addition to transportation taxes. Transit, generally, does not.
2) Highways get a much larger subsidy from the feds than transit does.
3) Most of the expensive highways in our area have already been built, whereas the expensive transit lines are still under construction. Please don’t fall into the mic fallacy of judging the capitol costs of building light rail lines against the ridership numbers before those lines are even built.
However, nearly 60% of all transportation tax revenue is spent on transit. Only 40% is spent on state highways and streets.
An outright lie based on their use of only gas tax revenues and related fees.
Witness, for example, the graph at the bottom of page 1 of their article:
http://www.eastsideta.com/docs/METRO%20Is%20Unfair%20Final%20Nov%20%2018.pdf
Their claim is that people that walk or bike contribute no tax revenue. This assumes that people that walk or bike pay no property taxes, or don’t pay property taxes as part of their rent payment. It also assumes they don’t buy anything subject to sales taxes.
If they want “tax equity” the easiest thing to do would be to triple the gas tax rate and eliminate property taxes and sales taxes that go to roads, and make those taxes the only source for transit and pedestrian projects.
“Most of the expensive highways in our area have already been built, whereas the expensive transit lines are still under construction.”
This. We’re building the transit lines that should have been built in the 1960s and 70s, at the same time as the highways.
Doesn’t pass the sniff test. Metro’s Operating budget is about 700 million a year, and Capitol budget about 250 million a year.
SDOT’s budget alone is about 400 million a year. There are 38 other cities in King County spending large percentages of their municipal budgets on roads. And on top of all the city spending, WSDOT liberally peppers the area with billion dollar widening projects and multi-billion dollar interchanges.
The only way I can think of to produce numbers like that would be to examine only the King County budget, or to cherry pick your tax sources to exclude the City DOT road spending. Over the 90’s and 00’s, King County embarked on a campaign to offload their road spending onto newly-incorporated cities, and it has largely been successful. Apart from a couple failures, like the South Park Bridge, Rural king county just doesn’t have much in the way of road needs, and most of their major arterials are State highways. But Metro still serves the entire county, not just unincorporated areas.
Overall, Prop 1 got about 46% YES vote. Redmond and Mercer Island stand out as suburbs that had stronger than average support for Prop 1. It would be interesting to identify the suburban precincts that voted in the 46-50% YES range.
Well, take my own precinct on Kent East Hill…47-2985.
It’s a dense (for the suburbs) area of apartments, condos, and smaller plot homes.
It voted something like 30% yes, even though we have multiple bus lines serving the main roads that bound this precinct.
That’s because out in Kent, the buses are crap. The only transit mainstream people use there is rush-hour service to downtown via Sounder, which would be unaffected by the proposed cuts. Even with the 158, 159, etc. slated to be eliminated, who cares – Sounder is faster anyway.
Yes, take it to Pasco. Isn’t that where you think the “Next Seattle” should be built?
Mercer Island stands out as a surprise as 1) A wealthy, conservative, suburb and 2) poor Metro service to begin with. My best guess is the threat of tolling I-90 is pushing the rich people out of their McMansions and onto public transit.
asdf says without supporting data:
“The only transit mainstream people use there is rush-hour service to downtown via Sounder…”
I challenge you to stand and observe Kent Station during rush hour.
Then tell me what buses are being used, and how full they are.
The Eastside and S King County mostly approved ST2 but that didn’t include a car tab tax.
https://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/oranv.i2l9bamc/page.html?secure=1#10/47.4550/-121.8398
Dang, 43-1992, what’s the matter? Do the buses disturb the plantings in the Arboretum or something?
43-1992 is the Broadmoor gated community, which is a reliable anti-tax vote.
As I’ve said many times…people have voted over and over and over again for one thing and one thing only when it comes to transportation…Traffic Congestion Reduction.
ST2 and ST1 and the monorail were all presented as offering an option to long highway travel times and a fast regional system for getting all around Puget Sound (not just to Downtown Seattle).
What was presented in Prop 1 had no focus or single purpose…it was just saying “we need more money to not do what we promised to do so many times before”.
Bullwinkle, that trick never works. Roads demand will always adjust to fill the demand available for free. Start talking tolls and “now we’re talkin'”. As in DBT doesn’t cut it. Nobody is willing to pay the marginal cost of building that bypass. 520 bridge; looks like demand exceeds what was projected. Ever rising tolls are met by even greater congestion. $10 to cross Evergreen Point at peak anybody? My guess is yes for lots of people on transit and lots more in their Euro Luxury sedans. Should we give the Tesla owners a free pass?
Were Sound Move and ST2 really sold as congestion relief anyway? I don’t remember it. It’s better to think of it as congestion avoidance (for those who choose to take transit).
Turnout was incredibly low in Federal Way on the NE Tacoma border where I live, but it’s interesting to see that the people who live *on* the bus lines in our neighborhood voted against in higher numbers than those who live nearby but not on the lines.
That seems to mean that those who bothered to vote don’t see any value in the bus right on their doorstep.
For some people, having a bus go through their neighborhood is actually considered a negative value. It’s simply a noisy diesel engine to listen to and one more obstacle to navigate around when trying to drive. I realize that for people that actually ride the bus, these objections are tiny, but for people that don’t, there’s not much else to go by.
I can see that point of view. Some of those long articulated buses, such as the 71, rattling through quiet narrow View Ridge neighborhood streets every half hour, especially on a Sunday morning. This type of buses should only operate on arterials.
I live in Federal Way less than a mile from NE Tacoma. Only 37 people in my precinct voted yes, while 85 voted no, which means I have to go yell at my neighbors. It’s incredible how few people see the value of a bus route going by their house. In Pierce county, it’s extremely unlikely for even 1 bus to be within walking distance. In Twin Lakes around where I live, between Metro and Pierce Transit, there are 7 routes within 1.2 miles.
Yeah, it would be interesting to see ridership in Twin Lakes. Because, yes, we somehow manage to get access to two different systems, and I do regularly see waiting at the stops. Obviously there’s enough demand for the buses. I’ve been looking at bus routes right now. For my current needs, it’s a 14-minute drive or a 90+ minute bus ride. If I wanted to travel into Seattle, the most logical route would start with a drive/walk/bike ride to Twin Lakes P&R or drive to 348th P&R or the Federal Way Transit Center. For those without a car, the tax is that the bus to those locations are double what it would take to drive (or in the case of Twin Lakes P&R, it would be faster to bike or jog versus taking the bus). So even if I needed the bus, it would be hard to go car-free.
Route 8 goes right by my front door, its heavy, noisy diesel buses rumbling so vigorously that the floor vibrates, the monitor on my desk shakes, and the pictures rattle on my walls. I have ridden it once, ever, that I can recall; its direct impact on me is almost wholly negative. I voted for Proposition 1, was disappointed that it failed, and will vote for the Seattle property tax measure, but when I think about the actual impact of having Route 8 go away, my first, emotional reaction is more that it would be a relief than that it would be a loss. If someone living next to a bus line were less interested in public transit or simply didn’t spend much time thinking about the big-picture consequences of the service cuts, it’s easy to imagine how they might see voting “no” as the choice which benefited them most.
I have a similar experience with the Route 8 in terms of the personal impact to my home, although I do take the #8 sporadically, if not regularly. I also voted yes on Prop 1 because I believe in the big picture reasons for why we need the network and am a daily user of other buses in the system, and will almost guaranteed to vote yes on the city property tax measure because of my belief in the transit network. (I say almost because I of course will want to read the details before committing myself for sure).
There is a slightly perverse part of me that would enjoy the noise, vibration, and pollution reduction from the cutting of two routes passing in front of my house that use diesel buses and accelerate up the hill in front of my house. Ideally almost all urban routes would be electrified, but I know that is an absolute no go in the current political climate, and likely the same case even in a much better political climate. I recognize that I bought in fairly urban neighborhood and that the bus routes pre-dated my purchasing of the home, and that the bus network is an important part of a metropolitan city and region.
This map may be useful for folks gathering signatures for initative 118.
If the vote was restricted to just the portion of King County in the Sound transit district would it still have lost? I know that at the moment the ST district has nothing to do with king county metro — but there’s no reason it couldn’t. Didn’t Pierce county create a transit district to make its vote pass?
Instead of improving service in just Seattle, I think we should see if just matching the sound transit district would be a viable option.
Another way to question this is How would the numbers have changed if the Far eastern precincts which receive no Metro service, were removed from the calculation?
Since they have almost no population, the change would have been tiny. Look at the size of those “precincts”!
“Didn’t Pierce county create a transit district to make its vote pass?”
PT had already done that, and then shrunk it again to an area that doesn’t take in all the ST turf, but includes a portion of the Gig Harbor area, and it still failed.
Keep in mind it failed by less than 500 votes. We were really close to fully restoring our bus service.
Pierce Transit and Community Transit are transit benefit districts distinct from the counties, so PT was able to shrink its boundaries. Sound Transit is something similar. Metro is a county department, so it can’t serve some residents and not others. (That doesn’t mean it has to run a bus to every hamlet like Skykomish and Carnation, but it has to generally benefit all county residents.) Switching to the PT model would mean replacing Metro with a new agency, which is as complicated as it sounds.
The large red blocks already have no Metro buses, or very few. That’s probably why they’re so heavily no; Metro is basically irrelevant to them. But at the same time those areas have very few people, so the fact that they look large on a map is misleading.
Those areas also contribute to the costs, though, as they also make use of vanpools, park and ride, and Access.
That’s how Metro is serving them. Although Access only covers a certain distance from regular bus routes.
I’m loving the mapbox action here, thanks for putting these together Oran. I didn’t realize King County would provide precinct level numbers. Good for them.
Second the mapbox action. TileMill is so fun to use. :)
I’m impressed by the results in Shoreline,Vashon, and Mercer Island, and deeply disappointed in both South King County and, in relative terms, West Seattle.
The biggest concern about a city-only measure is the displacement of low-income people into South King County, but if that’s also the area least interested in transit then there really is only so much we can do.
Assuming a city-only measure can see the light of day with “Mayor” (in apparent name-only at this point) Murray trying to squash I-118 before it even makes the ballot.
Truly shameful work on his part. He never deserved to Mayor, and this just solidifies that fact.
Link? I haven’t heard about this…what’s going on?
I tried posting a couple of links but they got either canned or just didn’t go through. Either way, check Slog for posts from yesterday about it.
There’s going to be a post about this shortly.
Good. I heard about this and am very concerned about what Murry is going to try to do. I’m worried he’s going to try to do something fancy and end up tanking “Plan C” and failing to get through whatever his proposal is.
I’m disappointed in parts of West Seattle too. I’d have to look at it further, but I think at least one of the areas had service cut, so there might have been some anger there, though it’s hard to get more service if funds are cut so I’m not sure of the logic there. It might also be like RossB says below–some of these areas just aren’t that dense, and it seems as if the densest areas voted yes.
I’m concerned about what Murray is going to propose, and I hope it isn’t something that he thinks will please everyone, but will end up either pleasing no one, or, if it passes, not helping very much. I hope I’m pleasantly surprised.
Many South King County commuters see very little value in Metro service, and the vote didn’t have anything to do with Sound Transit service that provides relatively fast commuter links. So the pro-proposition vote is limited to people who use slow, local bus service, which tends to skew the pool older and poorer, two reliably anti-car-tax demographics.
I’ve spoken to quite a few voters in my precinct, which went 82% No.
There is a bus route that serves part of our town, and service is going to be cut significantly. But it’s so infrequent, and so circuitous, even before the cuts, that Google directions usually show walking the whole way is faster than taking the bus for trips under four miles. I’m not aware of anyone who rides it by choice… people who have options drive, bike, or walk.
The natural constituency for the existing service level is limited to people who cannot drive, bike, or walk, and that’s a very small slice of the electorate. I’m honestly surprised it got as many votes as it did.
Speaking as a WS resident who voted for it, I suspect, and one can check comments on the WS Blog as proof, that we’ve got quite a few anti-tax, anti-government spending fuddy duddies who disliked the proposal.
East Coast Cynic, we sure do. And they can come up with more reasons not to vote for this or any other tax, too.
Sorry, that was me. I forgut and posted under the name I use on the West Seattle Blog. I wasn’t trying to be a sock puppet! Please fee free to remove my posts though.
Disappointed that there weren’t more yes votes in Kenmore.
Not surprisingly, the areas where there were yes votes in Kenmore and Lake Forest Park were along the corridors where buses with proposed cuts run (308 and 306).
I wonder if it is possible to overlay this map with a density map. My guess is that there is a very strong correlation (much stronger than transit service). People in high density areas tend to support transit, even if their transit isn’t especially good. Magnolia is a good example. Central Magnolia has decent service (although, like most buses serving Seattle it spends way too much time trying to get downtown) but it failed there. Meanwhile, Eastern Magnolia, which has similar service, passed just fine. The difference: density. The other little spots in Seattle where it failed have low density too. Same with the Eastside, is my guess.
This was a very flawed election. It was at the wrong time, with the wrong tax(es) and the wrong mix of roads and transit. But people in dense areas voted for it because they will vote for anything related to transit. People in scarcely populated areas voted against it for much the same reason. It failed in the swing areas for the reasons mentioned (bad tax, bad mix, bad timing).
I’m genuinely curious who the 20 or so ‘yes’ votes are out in the Cedar River precinct.
Maybe they drive from Hobart to Maple Valley and then take the bus…
More likely they drive to Issaquah for the 214 or 218. Perhaps even Mercer Island (drive as far as possible, but don’t pay for parking downtown).
That looks like an Obama/Romney map.
True, that. Which reminds me of an interesting article I read about Joe Biden’s humorous film with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss about not getting to drive the Corvette off the White House grounds. He said — and Bill Clinton was quoted as feeling the same way — that one of the worst parts of being a high-ranking US Executive officer was that he can not drive himself. Anywhere really.
So it might have been a good thing had Mitt Romney won the Presidency. After all he’s used to being driven around by the 47 percent. He wouldn’t miss taking the wheel; being Master of the Universe for REAL would more than make up for it.
This looks too much like the Pierce Transit prop 1 map.
It looks like the area south of Graham St voted for the 60 restructure that will bring them service for the first time.
By which I mean they voted No in order to get the restructure.
I can’t imagine that was their thinking. But I suppose you had your tongue stuck in your cheek.
Is it a good idea to publish this kind of data? When the precincts have as few as 48 (ken 33-0592) or 100 votes (Stevens) we’re getting close to down to individual voters (did bob down the street vote yes or no).
I am critiquing the county elections here, not Oran or STB.
M-V 05 3461 had just 29 votes.
You wouldn’t know who actually voted though, since they’re mailed. It isn’t like you’d see them at the polls. Although I guess if they lived in an apartment building where they put their ballot out for the mail carrier to pick up, you’d know someone from your building voted. Or if you put the ballot in an open mail tray at work.
Although I guess if someone told everyone they were voting (but not which way) and was encouraging others to vote, then you’d know that that person at least voted. But you wouldn’t know how they voted unless everyone voted the same. 29 is a really low number though.
Hi, I’m really sorry about this. The two posts from West Seattle Since 1979 are me–it’s the name I use to comment on the West Seattle Blog and I had been commenting over there and had cleared my cookies and forgot and wrote in the same name I used there. I’m really sorry about this and will not be offended if someone wants to remove my comments, but I wasn’t trying to be a sock puppet.
Votes have been published at the precinct level for generations. It’s part of the oversight that helps make voter fraud rare. If you aggregate to larger levels, you can stuff ballots at one polling station without much chance of being noticed. But when there are only a few hundred voters in the precinct, an extra hundred votes is easy to spot.
Stuffing ballot boxes is one thing, but 28 votes is not “stuffing”. Those should be aggregated up there to at least a few hundred.
But precincts in theory each have a similar number of voters (like legislative districts, county council districts, etc). This is why some precincts are much larger (geographically) than others. So while only 28 people in that precinct voted, there are likely hundreds of voters in that particular precinct.
While compiling info for an ST2 precinct map, I’ve seen Snohimish County Elections redact precinct level results in such cases.
I don’t think there’s as much liability as with Census data, where you definitely know who the Asian person living on the block is. I’d imagine most people are fairly anonymous with their votes when it comes to elections, on the other hand.
Yes, unless someone was the only person in their precinct to vote and you knew that they voted and no one else did, I don’t know how anyone could tell from these results. In the first place, you probably wouldn’t actually know who voted, since it’s mail only.
The comment above was from me. See my explanation on other posts. Sorrry about that.
The combined transit and streets car tabs yet marketing it as a mainly transit preservation vote was clearly a bad idea. It appears as though the NO areas voted they way that they did because they thought it was funding only transit and not the streets that they use everyday. Perhaps if the tabs were only for transit (say between $30 and $40) and were lower, it could have passed.
When will someone point much of the blame towards bad ballot proposition development and bad campaign strategies?
They also didn’t like car-tab taxes, and expecially flat-rate car-tab taxes. And overall they’d probably rather have the roads for free, so yes on the road but no on the tax to pay for it — let the county pay for it out of its general fund.
Some comments I read from NO voters said that t they didn’t believe the 40% would be spent on actual roads that cars drive on–they thought it’d go towards bicycle lanes, bus lanes, bus bulbs, or sidewalks.
That is an entirely reasonable conclusion for a Seattle resident.
BTW please stick to a single handle. To do otherwise is a violation of the comment policy.
People that like roads are not going to vote for transit to get road funding, since everybody knows road funding will find a way to happen, one way or another, anyway. Transit funding is a different story.
I’d venture a guess that the pro roads group are by and large also the “no new taxes” group. Roads are a God given right, like breathing the air, which you shouldn’t have to pay taxes for. To be somewhat fair; the rational is that taxes are already high enough to pay for “important things” like roads so stop with the special taxes for roads and put a ballot measure together to fund DSHS.
“Road funding will happen anyway” is an assumption that’s failing around Washington, as one jurisdiction after another makes plans to let pavement return to gravel, leaves washed-out roads closed, and reduces maintenance levels for existing roadways.
The way the State funds roads is becoming like Bellevue funds bike lanes. Small expensive stretches that connect to nothing. Like HOV lanes across 520 that sink into the funding at the Seattle shore.
Martin, it was entirely inadvertant. Please see my explanations above. I had cleared my cookies and typed in the wrong name. I’ve apologized above several times and apologize again.
No worries. It’s pretty clearly an honest mistake, not a sock puppet campaign.
I’m not surprised at the results in my district (43) – 80% to 90% YES.
I am dismayed at the turnout: 40% to 50%.
I filled out my one-issue ballot on the day I received it, and dropped it in a mailbox on my way to the bus stop the next morning. There was nothing difficult about it.
In a “normal” election Seattle votes would overwhelm the rest of King County. I think it’s good that the upcoming election will put Seattle transit back in the hands of Seattle voters. They will approve it. Then they get to evaluate what value it provides. No hiding behind King County revenues. I think it will work out best for all parties involved. Seattle is no longer the back water city that required METRO to bail them out. The challenge, especially for “everything for everybody” Seattle will be applying service hours based on market demand instead of “ffree for all”.
It would be great to remove the large parks from the map and leave them gray, and maybe other non-residential areas as well (though maybe there are a few residents in what are supposed to be purely commercial and industrial areas?). It’s a lot more trouble I know, but would be really useful. It might be possible to import the Seattle parks GIS from data.seattle.gov and then overlay it easily, though I don’t know anything about mapbox.
Also there a some precincts with zero votes and zero registered voters, which are misleadingly colored as deep red, and ought to be even easier to filter than parks.
I actually removed the parks layer from the basemap as I didn’t want it to interfere with the color of results.
I tried removing areas of precincts using King County’s parks GIS data and the result just looked weird, like an outline of Seward Park peninsula surrounded by a colored area in water or long strips representing trails cutting across the county. It didn’t help much with removing the big red sparsely populated area.
A more appropriate way of representing what you want is a cartogram, which distorts the area in proportion to population. That way, the large rural areas get compressed in size.
The precincts are styled based on the number of yes votes. Originally I had precincts with zero yes votes transparent but then I discovered a precinct that was all No votes that wasn’t showing up. A limitation in the styling language means I can’t filter precincts with no yes votes but has voters to color deep red versus not showing precincts with zero voters. Such cases must be removed directly from the data.
TMI but thanks for the explanation and all the work. It’s easy for people who know the area to dismiss the anomalies. Like I know very few of the squirrels in Bridle Trails State Park actually mailed in their ballots. Overall the take home message was Seattle YES; everyone else, HELL NO. This wasn’t a close election.
I took a look at some of the geographical data and it is kind of dumb the voting districts extend so far into the water in some of those places, I think it was just laziness or a desire to simplify the boundaries for faster processing or something. Or there is some expectation of near future lowering sea and lake levels, massive trends towards house boating, or infilled shorelines with new regrade projects, and they will have saved themselves the trouble of redrawing the districts.
Cartograms are neat, but have the problem of looking completely ridiculous…
It’d be easy to clip out the water portions. I just wanted to quickly get a map out as soon as the data became available.
The reason this went down to defeat. It was the CAR TABS. Dont fund Transit with CAR TABS
Most liberals need to learn something dont fund transit with CAR TABS…. What a big mistake
to be doing I 118 …. You should push for a re vote and put Seattle CAR TABS back on the
ballot.
They raised and spent $690,000.00 you should of heard something… Did you
hear the YES side tuck down the NO Side Yard Signs. Bad Carma for the YES
SIDE
@lazarus Metro was told that April was the best time for them to hold an election. I think that a “roads only” measure would have passed. As for “transit only,” I think a balanced measure would have passed, which includes answers to many of the claims that opponents made and reasons why suggestions that groups such as the Municipal League and others made to shore up the revenue side. Lastly, while the State Senate was the last to contribute to this, it was the County Executive (Sims, then Dow) that said to preserve service rather than, as other agencies in the region did, start trimming in smaller doses as the economy tanked.
@ Elbar I agree, Seattle would be better off with its own county, or at least the west side of a north/south line drawn through Lake Washington. Both sides could then have their own bus system, for instance!
The timing of the opening of U-Link, last I heard about February 2016, should be helpful to Metro, whose cutbacks (if they end up all happening) would be in full effect by the previous September (2015) if nothing else changes.
@asdf I agree with you, but I wish that tangible evidence was published – and published regularly – to prove that gas taxes alone don’t fund all of the road preservation & maintenance, expansion, parking, etc. that is paid disproportionately based on miles driven, fuel efficiency (if applicable, given electric vehicles), etc.