Yes, if you want ST3 to see the light of day, to get that chance to vote YES on ST3 and bring among other things to our region:
- Light rail spine to Everett and more transit service to Paine Field
- More, better light rail for the Tacoma area
- Subway to Ballard
- More express bus service
Your comments to legislators are necessary to make Sound Transit 3/ST3 happen – go to https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/5128 for SB 5128 and for https://app.leg.wa.gov/pbc/bill/1180 for HB 1180. Important to please sortie off comments at both links. Not everybody can be in Olympia operating forward, putting transit first and being ready to stand up for transit in person. But all of us can, will and should make our voices and positive volume felt down there.
Ultimately, who speaks first, speaks the truth and speaks boldly will win. We’ve learned Republicans are giving ST3 a “warm reception” according to PubliCola – lets keep it that way. Go get ’em!
A few details… SB 5128 would allow an MVET of up to 1.4% and a property tax of up to $3.60/$1000 per assessed value. HB 1180 would allow an MVET of up to 0.8% and a property tax of up to $0.25/$1000. Let the finance nerds start figuring just how close to Ballard, Everett, and Tacoma each of these would get us!
And someone at your link has a good response to the “warm reception” tweet:
Well maybe it’s time some of us stopped thinking of Republicans as anti-transit hordes…. ;-)
Maybe it’s time a single Republican signed on as a cosponsor of one of those bills.
Hey Seattleite;
I get your frustration but I doubt seriously a Republican can go that far. The GOP base (which I’m not a member of) would spin up in angst and discomfort. The Freedom Foundation would spin up. A certain SoDo-based pundit would have a field day. Many angry e-mails from Walla Walla, Vancouver and the Ocean Shores would gripe.
Let’s just be grateful for any and all support we get instead of demand more, more, more. Keep it positive.
What support? If a Republican won’t break with his or her caucus to get an ST3 measure to the floor and then vote for it than their behind closed doors support is meaningless.
Seattleite;
ST3 will get to the floor. Republican votes for it are meaningful and we’ll get it – because the Republicans of the Bellevue area & Snohomish County are gonna have a lot of explainin’ to do otherwise. That’s all we have a right to ask for in my opinion.
We Republicans, we don’t cosponsor everything as there’s only so many days in the state legislative calendar to get bills through. I am an acute, agitating minority of Republicans who even think transit is a top priority – and even then not involved in the legislative process.
Ultimately, I also don’t see how demonizing Republicans first helps us at all. I don’t. Let one of their more crazy members – e.g. Rep. Scott – step out of line and we’ll pounce at that point, if we have to.
Joe, if a Republican Senator can’t “go that far”, then how is this going to work. Why do you think that East Side Republicans would give a fig for ST3? They’ve got all the rail they need, and WSDOT is picking up the bill for their new HOT lanes already. We here on STB have spent the last two years trying to think of some really useful new project for the East King subarea and pretty much come up bupkies.
I personally think that LRT from Kirkland to Eastgate via the existing trackage from Hospital to South Bellevue and diving right through Factoria would be a winner, but ST has ruled out crossing the wetland. I guess the rumble of a train every five minutes or so would push the wildlife over the edge. Cars every two seconds? Not so much.
So there is really no reasonable way to spend $3.5 or so billion on the East Side. But that’s what it will take to get your train to Everett; $4.5 billion on the East Side to get your train to Everett via Paine Field. The truth is, the Redmond/Microsoft Borg could finance the extension to downtown Redmond itself without the frou-frou of “subarea equity”. And, like Seattle’s subway needs, probably ought to.
Upshot: don’t depend on those East King Republican legislators to jump ship and support ST3. After all, their constituents just voted about 3 to 2 against a relatively small tax to maintain bus service that would have lasted five years. And you expect them to vote for a much bigger tax to support bus service that will last a lot longer? Not gonna’ happen.
That was 2014 eastside voters. 2016 eastside voters are a whole different beast.
Exactly Dale.
It’s the type of package, not the size that matters. What suburbanites want is an alternative to the freeways because that’s where they’re getting stuck in traffic and it adds an extra half hour or sometimes hour to their trips, and it’s objectively where 75% of the congestion is. They don’t see Metro as making much difference because the local routes don’t go where they want to go, and are infrequent and slow. The express routes get stuck in the same traffic the cars do, they’re only compatible with a 9-5 downtown job when 75% of suburban workers don’t work downtown, and the surcharge would mostly go to local routes anyway.
Yes Mike, and what we should do is real simple – and you can thank Anandakos for igniting the idea: Tell the road bullies if they want their 4-lane or more highways, there must be HOV/bus lanes during rush hour.
We also need to realize state legislative Republicans represent a base that for the most part sees transit as a progressive issue. It’s going to take a while to turn that around and make it clear if Republicans want the Governor’s Mansion (and therefore appoint Board & Commissions members among other glories) then we Republicans need to win in the suburbs & get more of the metro vote. We can, via supporting transit being run cost-effectively.