All posts by STB Editorial Board

[April 1st fun’s over, back to our regular programming. – Ed.]

Martin recently participated in a forum for employers about Proposition 1, the ballot measure to maintain Metro’s current service levels and fund road maintenance. Towards the end, one attendee asked the panel, “What are the reasons people are giving for voting against this? It seems like a no-brainer.”

That attendee was exactly right. That we should keep bus service hours at least at their current levels is such a blindingly obvious requirement for an economically robust, environmentally clean, and socially just region that it seems tedious to write down the reasons why. However, to summarize: transit is open to people of nearly all incomes and abilities; is better for public health than car use; levies few externalities on others; uses less precious road space per person; and provides a refuge from accident deaths, air and water pollution, and the perils of road users texting while driving. It is critical to the operation of our most economically important neighborhoods and a crucial discriminator for our economy in the global competition for talent.

As  Metro’s ridership grows to record numbers along with our region, and cars continue to make less sense, the demand for transit will only increase. Clearly, a cut in the taxes we pay for transit (a No vote allows the $20 tab fee to expire without replacement) is moving King County in the wrong direction. Moreover, Prop. 1 frees King County from the hostage situation where the legislature will not let us save Metro without also approving massive, sprawl-inducing, climate-altering highway expansion.

The arguments against this vote – both sincere and insincere – simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

• Metro has already made significant efforts to reduce its budget hole – including winning concessions from its unions, raising fares three times, cutting low-performing service, and cutting back in places where it shouldn’t, like cleaning bus stops, security, and customer information. In fact, the transit-hostile state legislature was so impressed with their measures that Metro was the only agency to win temporary authority for a $20 license fee to avoid cuts two years ago.
• Although a vehicle license fee and sales tax would not be our first choice, they are the only option for the County; moreover, a low-income license fee rebate and low-income fare will largely blunt the impact on low-income car owners and leave low-income bus riders significantly better off.
• Predictions about the future are hard, and while cuts might not be exactly 17% if Prop 1 fails, they will still be on a large and unacceptable scale.
• A needed restructure of the route network is easier to execute when service is growing — which allows new service patterns to coexist with the old, build their own constituency, and prove their worth — then when cuts force everyone into a defense of what they currently have.
• All of our transportation modes are subsidized, especially when they get into trouble. For starters, the sales tax exemption for gasoline is a huge giveaway to drivers (over $650m per year statewide) paid for by the rest of us. To single out a sustainable form of transportation to pay its own way makes no sense.

Proposition 1 is indeed a no-brainer. The high-level principles are clear, and the tactical arguments against are nonsense. We urge you to vote yes before April 22nd, and to donate your money or time towards passage.

The STB Editorial Board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Matthew Johnson, and Frank Chiachiere.

[UPDATE 11:11 am: April Fools’, obviously! If you would like to know what we really think about Prop. 1, here’s our actual endorsement. The title above is altered if anyone is in any way confused.]

STB staff writers are free to take whatever positions they’d like, and many have done so by arguing forcefully for the passage of Prop. 1 to maintain existing service levels.

However, in the opinion of the editorial board, buses are not the future of public transportation. Newer technologies are on the horizon that will not only be cheaper to operate, but will actually turn a profit. It makes no sense to double down on a tax structure that will one day be irrelevant.

I’m referring of course to Personal Rapid Transportation, or PRT. Imagine a vehicle that delivers you with no wait from where you are to where you want to go. This vision is possible with just a little leadership from our elected officials.

We can’t help but notice that Prop. 1 gets us no closer to the future. In fact, it dedicates valuable taxing authority to ephemeral service hours when we could be using it to make a permanent investment in transit.  The Editorial Board is disappointed to learn, via a public records request, that not a single councilmember from either the City of Seattle or King County has visited Morgantown, WV.  Had they done so, they’d find a shining example of the kind of transportation that could revolutionize our Emerald City. It’s one of many ways in that Morgantown is a city Seattle should emulate.

Moreover, if bus service is worth paying for then we should all chip in to pay for it. The King County Council’s low-income car tab rebate and new low-income fare are a huge giveaway to the working poor from scarce transit dollars. Unless we nip this sentiment in the bud, they’ll expect that the legislature actually tax them less than their job-creating, hardworking bosses when PRT comes up for a vote.

The desire for a stopgap is understandable. But King County voters should keep their eyes on the prize and demand a solution to our transit problems that won’t be obsolete in five years. Vote no on proposition 1.

The City Council Committee on Taxi, For-Hire, and Limousine Regulations will hold its penultimate meeting tomorrow to discuss draft regulations to legalize and regulate new Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) such as Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar. In addition to adding 50 new taxi licenses, the draft legislation would regulate TNCs by imposing annual licensing fees, requiring vehicle inspections, specifying insurance standards, requiring state approval of GPS-based fare calculation, and imposing stricter driver requirements. Many of these regulations are welcome developments, especially clarification of the currently-murky insurance standards. But the core of the legislation — limiting each TNC to 100 drivers unless they hire currently licensed for-hire drivers — is terrible policy.

This is an issue very important to STB because TNCs reduce the need for car ownership, which builds the market for transit and restrains the cry for parking that threatens to strangle our city’s growth.

A healthy transportation system is redundant. Walking, bikes, transit, Car2Go, TNCs, and taxis provide a robust set of options that have different strengths and weaknesses, and cover for each other when one fails. For example, TNCs are at their best when transit is at its worst, supplying extra capacity on nights, weekends, and in between urban villages (such as Queen Anne to Fremont, or Wallingford to Capitol Hill).

Seattle has an exceedingly low number of taxis, with no new licenses being issued since the early 1990s.  What taxis we do have are not popular with the public, with only 10% of those surveyed for the City’s own study ranking taxi service as very good (compared to over 70% ranking TNCs in that catagory). We don’t care, in principle, if the market fills the demand for taxi-like services with TNCs or conventional taxis, as long as regulations allow one or both to satisfy demand. In practice, however, TNCs are bringing innovation to a stagnant sector, 21st century prerequisites like GPS tracking, smartphone dispatching, estimated arrival times, dynamic management of the supply of cars, and cashless payment.

The unfairness of the current taxi regime should not be a reason to effectively shut TNCs down. Instead, Seattle should relax or eliminate taxi limits, along with the Rube Goldberg system of leasing agents, separate dispatchers, and artificial scarcity that only raises the costs of market entry. Taxis should be freer to innovate and compete, and already we are seeing attempts to bring taxis and for-hire vehicles into the 21st century through apps like Flywheel.

We urge the Council to let innovators innovate, and to produce regulations that answer safety concerns while letting TNCs thrive.

The committee meeting is Thursday (1/30) at 2:00pm in Council Chambers. A vote is expected on February 14th. The STB Editorial Board is Martin H. Duke and Matthew Johnson.

Here are STB’s endorsements in some less prominent races. For an introduction to our endorsement approach and our picks in statewide, King County, and Seattle races, see yesterday’s post.

Bellevue Council Position 2: Lyndon Heywood is a political outsider and novice, but has demonstrated a thorough understanding of walking, biking, and transit’s importance over car dependence. Incumbent Conrad Lee, on the other hand, presided over some of the most unproductive years in Bellevue city council history, largely thanks to the majority’s unwillingness to move on light rail.

Bellevue Council Position 4: Steve Kasner’s experience as a community leader will provide a useful balance on the council. He’s been supportive of light rail and rightly critical of opponent Kevin Wallace, who actively pushed for multiple bad light rail alignments during East Link planning.

Bellevue Council Position 6: Lynne Robinson’s statements on the campaign trail reveal a thoughtful critique of the Bellevue Council’s wildly misplaced priorities. Although it’s too late to truly fix Downtown Bellevue’s station placement, it will be useful to have someone on the council that knows what mistakes to mitigate and will avoid similar errors at stations further East.

Issaquah Mayor: Fred Butler has been a productive and enthusiastic member of the Sound Transit Board. We are always impressed by local politicians that deeply want rail to serve their jurisdictions but have the maturity to realize that they are not first in line.

Federal Way Mayor: Jim Ferrell has rightfully criticized incumbent Mayor Skip Priest’s tantrum about low Sound Transit tax revenues, where he backed a Republican-led legislative attack on Sound Transit. We can think of no less constructive response to a setback in a project of great significance to South King County’s future.

Federal Way Council 4: Jeanne Burbidge has a long record of participating in key regional transit organizations and is well-versed in the issues that transit faces. Her views on parking, development, and Link alignments are not particularly STB-friendly, but in a Federal Way race her expertise is enough to earn our endorsement.

Kirkland Council 1: Jay Arnold’s pro-density positions are courageous in a suburban race, and his history with groups like Futurewise is remarkable. His fearless support of accessory dwelling units, cottage housing, and microhousing deserves your support.

Kirkland Council 7: Incumbent Doreen Marchione has some good work on bike trails and supports a new TOD hub in Totem Lake.

Lake Forest Park Council 1: Hilda Thompson‘s issues page is impressive for a race in a small suburban community. It comes out strongly for transit, pedestrian infrastructure, and — most notably — a variety of housing types to accommodate a wide variety of potential residents. She has worked for STB all-stars Patty Murray and Jessyn Farrell.

Lake Forest Park Council 7: John Resha is well versed in transit issues having recently served as council staff liaison for Regional Transit Committee.

Mukilteo Mayor:  Jennifer Gregorson retains our endorsement from the Primary. Her urban planning background and Cascade Bicycle Club endorsements are very promising signs.

State Senate 26th District Special Election: Nathan Schlicher We generally don’t endorse generic Democrats against generic Republicans: you don’t need us to tell you that the former will create a friendlier picture for transit, although both state parties are equally bad about highways. However, this race is important for control in the finely balanced Senate, and the coming few years demand a flurry of legislative action for both the bus agencies and Sound Transit.

There is cause for concern that an undivided legislature will simply result in a terrible highway package coupled to a band-aid for transit. However, we don’t believe this battle is already lost. With Mary Margaret Haugen no longer in charge of Senate Transportation there is an opportunity for real progress on transit issues. Finally, in the coming years we need revenue authority for Sound Transit 3, and it is inconceivable that a Republican Senate would approve it.

Here are Seattle Transit Blog’s 2013 General Election Endorsements. As always, these endorsements are meant to entirely depend on a candidate’s positions and record on transit and land use, and generally looks for a clear difference on these issues beyond the generic Democrat-over-Republican default preference on transit. We also only endorse in contested races. The current Editorial Board consists of Martin H. Duke and Matthew Johnson.

Today, we cover the statewide, King County, and Seattle races. Part II, with races in smaller cities, will come later this week.

King County Executive: Dow Constantine has been an excellent and uncontroversial Executive, the single most important office for transit. He has made a good start on steering the Metro battleship in a better direction.

King County Council District 1: Rod Dembowski has had a great start on the Council’s Regional Transit Committee and deserves another term.

King County Council District 5: Dave Upthegrove has been one of the more transit and environmentally minded members of the House. For a suburban politician, he is remarkably disinclined to pour more asphalt as a solution to transportation problems.

Seattle Mayor: Not much has changed since we endorsed Mike McGinn in the Primary Election. He still has a strong record of backing aggressive transit improvements and allowing more people to live here, even if he has a recent tendency to attach new conditions to development. Meanwhile, Senator Ed Murray’s record in Olympia doesn’t shed much light on Seattle issues, nor has the campaign produced detailed policy proposals. When he has done a deep dive, as with subarea equity and cycle tracks, the results have been mildly disconcerting. Under the circumstances, we see no reason to abandon an incumbent with whom we agree almost totally.

Seattle Council Position 2: We reiterate our support for incumbent Richard Conlin, who has been the strongest advocate for environmentally sustainable growth on the Council and the source of insightful critiques on the Sound Transit Board. Kshama Sawant is not particularly focused on these issues, and when she does address them slips all too easily into anti-developer rhetoric. She evidently views housing affordability as a problem of insufficient subsidy and regulation rather than insufficient supply. We recognize that some of you are going to vote for Sawant based on her social justice agenda — which is obviously your prerogative, and not something we’re considering here. Just be aware that you’ll be retiring the most unabashedly pro-density member of the Council.

Seattle Council Position 4: Sally Bagshaw is one of the better members of the Council on transit issues and is facing an unserious candidate.

Seattle Council Position 8: Mike O’Brien is solid on transit and not operating under the illusion that Seattle has to cater to cars at every opportunity.

Seattle Proposed Charter Amendment #19: NO. In principle, we believe that voters must evaluate too many elected officials, and moving to districts would help alleviate that. However, in a district-based scheme the power largely lies with whomever draws the districts. When the number of districts is also a variable, the potential for gerrymandering is immense. In this case, prominent figures on the YES campaign include anti-transit, anti-bike businesswoman Faye Garneau; and John Fox, a housing activist who opposes everything Seattle Transit Blog stands for. We can only assume that these figures are competent enough to back a measure whose district lines will advance their political interests, which is reason enough to vote no.

Initiative 517: NO. The latest Tim Eyman-related offering will continue to abuse the initiative process to thwart responsible budgeting. The initiative system is a tool to gut the transit system, not to build it, and we’d like to make it harder for that to happen in the future.

Advisory Vote No. 6: MAINTAIN. The Legislature repealed a special retail sales tax exemption for telecommunications services. Expanding the sales tax base is good economics and brings more revenue for transit. Another $2m per year, by our estimate, for Metro won’t solve everything but it helps. Vote to maintain, confusingly, in order to eliminate the tax break. This vote is advisory but a clear signal that the voters are behind the legislature will encourage more actions like this.

King County Executive: incumbent Dow Constantine emerged four years ago from a strong field. He has governed with such proficiency and diplomacy that he has not drawn a serious challenger for this incredibly important position. He has gradually steered Metro towards a better set of policies, although there is a long way to go. His appointments to the Sound Transit Board have been basically sound.

King County Council District 1: Rod Dembowski impressed us in the scuffle to be appointed to this seat last year, and he has not disappointed in office. Although his time there has been short, he already chairs the Regional Transit Committee and is bringing organizational energy to it.

King County Council District 9: Shari Song or Reagan Dunn. Reagan Dunn has been an active and productive voice in the fight to reform Metro’s route structure, eager to make Metro’s dollars go farther by eliminating ineffective service such as the infamous Route 42. While the Council probably needs more route-reform yes votes than revenue yes-votes, we can’t bring ourselves to endorse a Councilmember who will likely oppose more resources for transit. Shari Song will support more revenue, but hasn’t given us any indication that she brings any particular transportation expertise or correct positions on Metro reform.

Seattle Mayor: STB has already endorsed Mike McGinn for mayor.

Seattle Council Position 2: Richard Conlin has been the most consistent voice for the public good of density on the council while his colleagues serve neighborhood special interests.

Seattle Council Position 8: Mike O’Brien hasn’t been as deeply involved in transportation issues as we thought he might, but he remains a fairly reliable vote for better transit, less emphasis on cars, and more housing in Seattle.

Bellevue City Council 4: Steve Kasner presents the strongest challenge to incumbent Kevin Wallace, who not only delayed East Link planning with wacky proposals like the Vision Line, but is now claiming credit for creating a collaborative compromise. With more community leadership experience, Kasner is also not likely to carry all the conflict-of-interest baggage that Wallace is knee-deep in when it comes to light rail.

Bellevue City Council 6: Lynne Robinson makes for a worthy opponent against Don Davidson, who presided over much of the council’s shenanigans when it was fighting Sound Transit. Robinson has earned endorsements from all three of the council’s pro-rail minority and has supported keeping East Link accessible to neighborhoods and employment centers.

Mukilteo Mayor: We can’t imagine that transit is a very big issue in Mukilteo, and in an outlying suburb alternative transportation often means bikes. Jennifer Gregorson earned Cascade Bicycle Club’s endorsement and has a recent Urban Planning degree from UW. These are excellent indicators of a leader ready to enact environmentally sensitive policies.

STB’s Editorial Board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Bruce Nourish, and Sherwin Lee.

Seattle Transit Blog endorsements are primarily a function of a candidate’s transit and land use policies, and on those merits Mayor Mike McGinn is simply unassailable.

He has pushed for greater investment on all transit fronts. He initiated a badly needed update to the Transit Master Plan, sought to fund it through a $80 vehicle license fee, and used the TMP to open up the possibility of a Sound Transit 3 package in 2016 rather than 2020 or 2024. He has leveraged Seattle’s voracious appetite for transit to accelerate the entire region.

He has routinely produced the most aggressively pro-density proposals every time the subject arises. A city that enacted the Mayor’s proposals in full would create a better life for transit riders; more people, jobs, and activities well-served by transit; better public health and safer streets; greater housing supply and a more politically powerful Seattle; and a more environmentally sustainable future.

Of course, the Seattle City Council has not fully enacted the Mayor’s transit and land use proposals, often delaying and watering them down while not stating clear policy objections. Although critics suggest this means the Mayor is ineffective, this is a dynamic common to most Council-Mayor relationships. Moreover, we fail to see how electing a Mayor with a weaker pro-transit and pro-density reputation will increase the political potency of the positions we share.

Regarding those mayoral alternatives: Peter Steinbrueck, in addition to flirting with anti-rail rhetoric, displays strong anti-density instincts, consistently favoring replacement of a big building with a small building, and a small building with empty space. Councilmember Bruce Harrell has a poor density-and-transit voting record on the Council and continues to emphasize cheap and easy car access as a policy objective. We are hopeful that Senator Ed Murray would make a good mayor, but Olympia politics is so far to the right of Seattle that is difficult to discern where he stands on the real fault lines in City politics. He has not yet embraced the aggressively pro-transit and pro-density positions that would move us to abandon an incumbent with whom we agree almost totally.

Mayor McGinn’s first election victory was widely viewed as a fluke. He deserves an unambiguous mandate from the people of this City and a second term as Mayor.

The STB Editorial Board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Bruce Nourish, and Sherwin Lee.

Last Friday, we wrote about a proposal by the University of Washington for a major upgrade to the section of the Burke-Gilman trail that traverses the UW campus. Community support is a component in considering TIGER applications, so the STB Board would like to throw our support behind this application, and urge readers who care about safe and effective pedestrian and bike infrastructure in Seattle to do the same, by filling out the form at this page.

There are multiple reasons for our support:

• The current trail is inadequate, obsolete and under-designed for its current level of traffic. Trail users are particularly poorly served by the multiplicity of (largely non-wheelchair-accessible) connection points and unsafe road crossings. The UW proposal solves those problems.
• These problems will only increase with the opening of University Link in 2016, as the light rail station to the southeast of the university, and anticipated property development to the west, increase demand on this regional active-transportation highway.
• This TIGER funding cycle represents the best (and likely the only) way to fund these improvements in time for the 2016 opening of University Link. Before the station opening is the smart time to perform this unavoidably-disruptive construction work.
• This section of the Burke-Gilman trail is of regional importance, connecting all of northeast Seattle and the northeastern suburbs to the five-year interim northern terminus of Link Light Rail, the region’s transit backbone, and to the UW and downtown Seattle, two of our regions’s biggest travel demand centers.

We strongly urge the United States Department of Transportation to consider and approve the University of Washington’s Burke-Gilman connector proposal, and for our state and federal elected officials to support and advance it however they may.

STB’s Editorial Board currently consists of Martin H. Duke, Bruce Nourish, and Sherwin Lee.

The editorial board was pleasantly surprised that all seven sets of answers to our questionnaire for King County Council District 1 were all “correct” in terms of subjects that unite the pro-transit coalition. No one refused to answer, or opposed more funding for Metro or Sound Transit. Although most candidates have their flaws, none strike us as a complete disaster.

Nevertheless, based on their survey responses, and conversations with various people we trust, Shoreline City Council member Will Hall is the best candidate for this position. Not only are his policy positions solid, he has experience in political office, and people who have observed him in his day job as a Snohomish County planner (and Puget Sound Regional Council staffer) have been impressed with his progressive viewpoints and technical expertise on our issues. This grounding would be valuable on a County Council that often reacts to whoever screams the loudest.

Executive Constantine will nominate three candidates for the County Council. The other standout in the field is real estate attorney Rod Dembowski, who has solid views, and is well respected in Democratic Party circles, but has less of a track record on urbanism. But Hall is the strongest choice for transit.

You won’t get a chance to vote on these candidates anytime soon, but you can let the Executive and your Councilmember know what you think about them. The King County Council is the single most important body for determining how transit operates in Greater Seattle, although it receives far less attention than the Seattle City Council.

For all those last minute voters, below is our election endorsements cheat sheet. Full writeup can be viewed here.

U.S. Senate

U.S. Senator: Maria Cantwell

Washington State

Governor: Jay Inslee

Initiative 1185: No

Supreme Court Position #9: Sheryl Gordon McCloud

County

Pierce Transit Proposition 1: Yes

C-Tran Proposition 1: Approve

Washington State Senate

District 10: Barbara Bailey

District 41: Maureen Judge

Washington State House

District 21, Rep. 2: Marko Liias

District 27, Rep. 2: Jake Fey

District 30, Rep. 2: Roger Freeman

District 34, Rep. 2: Joe Fitzgibbon

District 36, Rep. 1: Reuven Carlyle

District 46, Rep. 2: Jessyn Farrell

District 48, Rep 1: Ross Hunter

District 48, Rep 2: Cyrus Habib

City and Other

City of Seattle Proposition 1: Approve

City of Kirkland Proposition 1: Approve

Proposed North Highline “Y” Annexation Area: Approve

Proposed West Hills Annexation Area: Approve