News While I Was Gone
For the past few weeks, I’ve been traveling through Berlin, Munich and Prague. My Internet access was intermittent while I was gone, and so—despite my itchy keyboard fingers—I’ve only slogged once in all that time. Here’s some of the stuff I missed and/or wanted to weigh in on while I was gone.
1. The block housing the Bus Stop, the Cha-Cha, Bimbo’s and Kincora has been sold, virtually ensuring that the Pike-Pine corridor will soon be overrun by more ugly, soulless condos—just like Broadway. (For the record, I’m no fan of the cold, monumental glass-walled developments that are currently all the rage in Seattle; density, yes, but not density that will age poorly and discourage diverse, mixed-use neighborhood with thriving business districts. And, as Josh points out, that block is already dense.) If the Cha-Cha and the Bus Stop are on their way out, can Pike-Pine’s anchoring institution, Linda’s, be far behind?
2. The Transportation Choices Coalition announced that it will support the joint Sound Transit-Regional Transit Investment District (RTID) ballot measure, in a press release and an editorial titled “A Road Package Enviros Can Love.” As we reported , the TCC’s support for RTID is contingent on a list of criteria that would, in theory, mitigate the awful-ness of massive road expansion by funding transit and focusing on maintenance, not car capacity. As I’ve written, I have some major issues with the TCC’s accomodationist approach, which accepts capacity expansion as a trade-off for light rail. I don’t accept the premise that enviros have to make these kinds of compromises. If “more roads are OK” is your starting position, where do you end up? Cars are the problem (the vast majority of Washington State’s greenhouse gas emissions come from automobiles), and someone should be saying that. As long as the “lefty” position is “We like cars, we just want alternatives”—instead of “Traffic will never get better, no matter how many roads we build, and we have to accept that,” we’ll never get over our auto addiction. And we need to, now.
3. Nickels’ “Forever Tax” for transportation, as I originally dubbed it, was dramatically reduced to $365 million and nine years, from $1.6 billion and potentially infinite.
4. Former Texas Governor (and my hero) Ann Richards succumbed to esophagal cancer at 73. The recovered alcoholic rose through Texas’s frequently misogynistic political ranks from state treasurer, to keynote speaker at the 1988 Democratic National Convention, to Texas governor—only the second woman in state history to hold the office. Her pointed, often hilarious political speeches thrust her onto the national stage. Among her more famous quotes:
On George H.W. Bush, who Richards felt was out of touch with the needs of poor and working-class Americans: “Poor George, he can’t help it — he was born with a silver foot in his mouth.”
On women’s ability to equal men: “Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.”
On her decision to enter the private sector as a lobbyist: “Life is like a layer cake. You put one layer on top of the other, and whether you frost it or not is up to you. I’m looking forward now to a little frosting.”
On my desk is a picture of Richards and me, taken in Seattle two years ago. She was a tiny woman with huge white hair and a personality that was equal parts honey and vinegar. The world needs more like her.
5. A Michigan state senator introduced legislation that would require every sixth-grade girl to receive the vaccine against two strains of HPV that cause 70% percent of all cervical cancers. The Centers for Disease Control has recommended that all girls age 11 and 12 receive the vaccine, which was approved by the FDA in July.
6. The Congress for the New Urbanism released a report that found (surprise!) flaws in the Washington State Department of Transportation’s analysis of the surface/transit Alaskan Way Viaduct replacement alternative, “including the use of exaggerated estimates of future downtown street traffic and misleading conclusions about the amount of truck traffic on the viaduct.” The study also found that WSDOT did not include accurate transit forecasts in its analysis. WSDOT, which is primarily a highway-building agency, assumes that traffic volumes will continue to increase indefinitely; but increased transit availability and ever-rising gas prices suggest that people will find alternatives to driving alone in the very near future, like it or not. And if that happens, there’s absolutely no reason we need a freeway on our waterfront.
As a footnote, it should be noted that Geroge H. W. Bush actually had a silver foot made and delivered to Ann Richards in the spirit of good will and fun. Source: Kitty Kelly's on the Bushes: 'The Family'