Politics “Drive Until You Qualify”
posted by on June 15 at 13:16 PM
The new sound bite from Republicans who support sprawl is “Drive Until You Qualify.” It’s their clever way of defending roads expansion and catering to exurban development.
Supporting the $904 million on I-405 expansion in this November’s regional transportation plan (the same plan that Seattle voters must vote for if they also want to expand Sound Transit light rail) GOP King County Council Member Reagan Dunn told the Seattle Times:
The I-405 project, especially, will improve traffic for people who must “drive until you qualify” for affordable suburban homes, said King County Councilmember Reagan Dunn. “The benefits are real. It will help young people; it will help our future,” he said.
His point is: People can’t afford to live (“live” meaning big houses, big yards, two car garages) in the city and so, to provide affordable housing we have to provide roads for them.
It’s a clever bit of demagoguery because it plays to the truth that yes, housing is becoming more and more expensive in Seattle. However, the GOP solution is a Catch-22. The more you drive people out to the ‘burbs, the more you keep Seattle from addressing its housing and transportation crisis, because suburban development takes dollars and developers away from transit and in-fill density.
I argued in my column this week that anyone who fills in the bubble for 50 new miles of light rail this November thinking they’re voting for the environment is also filling in the bubble for sprawl and environmental degradation.
Dunn seconds that point by making it clear what the $17 billion ST/RTID package is really all about.
I know what it's about.
It's about the Sierra Club not supporting it.
I'll be voting NO on RTID. I want to vote YES on ST2, but if they force a combined ballot, as they have, I will have to vote NO.
However, there is a very real demand for single family housing that density does not address within city limits. While what you mentioned is a problem, it doesn not hold a candle to the fundamental problem of people directly associating the American Dream with a single family home and its accoutrements, i.e the picket fence and the front yard, the dog and the 2.3 children.
The problem is bigger than roads allocation and density infill, and addressing both of those does not address this bigger problem.
I'm with Will...for a change.
They need more "dense" single family homes. Non-detached or semi-detached narrow homes should be zoned in the entire "single family" zoning we have now, as most of San Francisco is. Then after a long time you'd see dense housing that people can raise children in.
If Roads and Transit gets voted down, people will say "that didn't pass because transit was too big" and the pavement lobby will a second ballot with more roads and no transit. No one, not a single paper except maybe the stranger will say "that didn't pass because people don't want new roads."
It's definitely a "cut-off your nose to spite your face" situation to vote no because you don't like the highways, they'll get built eventually one way or another, let's try to get these people to pay for some trains while they do it.
As the Stranger polemics machine cranks up into high gear to lead the next great crusade, seems like an appropriate time to ask - what percentage of the road lane expansions included with RTID are HOV lanes? HOT lanes? Could we get a tiny serving of this data next time we're being prompted into a fury about the latest sprawling outrage? Thx.
It's ineresting how "right to home" is replacing "righ to life".
But, see, Andrew, it's not that simple for people. Part of the AD myth is kids playing and dad BBQing in big front yards, which is impossible when homes are squished together and the front yard's a few feet wide by a few feet long.
In SF, My boyfriend's son played in our backyard where we did barbecues. We had no front yard.
I have no real comment on roads or the transit. . .I hate traffic and expansion and I love the woods and nature. However. . . I am one of those people who can't afford to live. . .and I am not talking about a big ass house. I am looking for a small dumpy house. I don’t dare look for anything much bigger then 1000 sq ft or something that has a 2 car garage. That would be dreaming around these parts. If I want a house I can afford, which is around the 300K range, than I have to go live in Everett. . .or Marysville. . .or further. . .yet I work in Bellevue. There is no way I can afford a house. . not even a condo anywhere near my work.
So build some damn roads and lots of transits I say. . .then I don’t have to sit in 2 hours of traffic to get from my dumpy little shack to my work.
It is totally ridiculous that you can't get anywhere in this damn town and the houses are unaffordable. I don't have the answers but I'm a frustrated citizen just trying to get by each day and have shelter. . . something needs done by the people we elect for the job.
the american dream is stupid if it cant be attained without screwing the area you wish to achieve it in
the american dream needs to change.
Big deal if they can afford a house in the exurbs. If they live out there, they have to own a car (let's say $300/month), put gas in it ($50/tank) either as a new expense, or an increased one, pay higher insurance rates (going from Pleasure Use to Commutes 10 Miles or More can up your insurance by a third) again as a new or increased expense, and they're going to face increased health care costs, since they can't fucking walk anywhere and become fatasses.
And please, please, please can someone fucking explain externalities to these fuckwits?
The housing bubble will totally pop soon when those arm loans from 5~10 years ago start to reset. It'll start out in the sticks, and move slowly back to the city. Within 5 years houses in wallingford will go back to $400K, and shit in greenwood will be like $250K.
Anyone who thinks that the housing has reached a new, permanently more expensive price level probably bought yahoo stock in 1999 and you should sell them your house right now.
You might wonder, have the likes of Josh Feit and Erica Barnett come down against this November's single ballot measure because they've made the tough, shrewd calculation that, if this measure dies, the state legislature likely will come back with something better?
No, and to even consider such a possibility is to misunderstand the way the puritanical mind thinks…
Any dispassionate person would look at these positions and say that there is no chance in hell that any of these groups will get what they are holding out for. Any student of history can point to countless examples of where hard-liners ended up only undermining their own cause.
And yet none of these arguments matter to the fundamentalist. The fundamentalist is simply constitutionally incapable of compromising. To try to compromise with a fundamentalist is a bit like an antelope trying to negotiate with a lion. The only two choices in the face of fundamentalism are (A) to surrender or (B) to vanquish them.
Transportation fundamentalists like Josh and Erica are no different, and those of us who actually want to do something about sprawl and climate change have to understand that these people are ultimately just as destructive as the Tim Eyamns and Kemper Freemans.
Josh,
Politics is about compromise. If we want to tax the people that don't live and commute along the I-5, 520, and I-90 corridors, we're going to have to give them something.
ST2 does jack for those people. Most of RTID adds HOV lanes and access to improve the carpool and bus options for them, giving them a reason to chip in $125 a year.
If uncompromising environmentalists succeed in disrupting a fragile coalition, I fear it will lead to a return to this region's default of building more roads. Even in a best case scenario, the added one or two years of delay, combined with construction inflation, yields substantially less rail service than what it is available this year.
irl, I make 24k a year full time and live on capitol hill and go to school full time. Why is it that I can afford to have a studio apt and put money towards my 401k and have a good time?
life decisions. thats how.
I'm all for the light rail, all for metro expansion, all for not owning a car. I don't own one. I don't want one.
However, I also don't own my home. I'd like to, but the condo boom (which I'd be in the market for) and its prices make the 'drive until you qualify' my only option if I was really intent on buying. I don't want a 2000 sq foot place w/ a yard and a garage. I want a condo. But as a professional (MA) in social services here, I can't afford to buy where I live.
That's fine w/ me. For now.
You can't just dismiss 'drive until you qualify' as a republican soundbite. If I was committed to buying now, I'd have to.... drive until I qualified. And I'm an urban liberal guy.
Just sayin...
12. Housing and rental prices didn't go down after the dot com crash, despite the obvious decrease in demand. What makes you think they'll go down after the housing bubble bursts (if it hasn't burst already)?
Hello Big City folk ,I'm a vet, who is out of the army now with a disability, and my only income for now is a GI-Bill and Rehabilitation. I'm finally able to go to college now because I can and want to.
I chose a place to live out here with a two car garage, because well I have two vehicles one since high school that still runs great(15 years) and another that I bought with a lot of money, because well I had a lot of money while in the army. I get out see and now I have some money that I saved and earned and decide "hey i'll lease this house in the Burbs because I like it" I have the big screen T.V. because I earned that. My fuckin Dream is beyond all this , bought right now I'm going to learn a new skill in the civilian world, and live in this place because I and my girlfriend can afford it together, and if I have to,because I can, maybe I can use my VA homeloans and buy the frickin place. Thats life.
And I don't feel one regret about it, except that the War was a stupid Idea. For once maybe we can agree on something Big City folk.
Oh and by the way maybe I will help you defend the great valleys and lands that are vacant in this country because that is where I come from.
But for now get off our backs about living in the burbs and the "American Dream" you so hate.
Man I can't wait to go back to Big Sur. you people need to lighten up.
wheres my meds?
Oh I forgot to mention I agree with Josh about the Sprawl thing.
how was the dotcom crash related to real estate prices gomez? ill tell you how. people stopped speculating on stocks and instead on real estate. Post dotcom crash people wanted idealic solid investment such as real estate without the actual means to purchase it. This has given rise to short sighted and foolish loan options that will destroy the person taking the loan if their real estate doesnt shoot up beyond the interest charged.
Well lo and behold the amount of buyers has gone down and it is harder to sell a house now. Supply, Demand, you know the rest. The real problem is that not only are there people who speculated using these loans, there are real people who actually wanted to live in the home for a long time (hence the rise of the 50 year mortgage)
I lived in the Bay Area until 2003, so I can see exaclty what happened.
also i dont think housing prices are going to go down in any meaningful way, but they will not outpace other investments. In fact I encourage sprawl because it will reduce the cost of living in the city as more and more people try to find cheaper housing. The best part about it sprawl is that it is somewhat elastic in relation to distance to jobs and the difficulty (read as time of travel) of getting there. the sprawl will be limited by these two factors.
Drive till you qualify my ass. It is the developers who want RTID. It will give them new roads into the Cascade foothills in the three counties. Will they build less expensive homes for lower income folks to "qualify" for? HELL NO they won't. They are going to put of seas of McMansions. This is going to be really pricy, high-profit margin sprawl.
And it will be paid for by Seattle taxes. There is a huge net outflow of RTID taxes from Seattle to roads in East King County. It isn't the less-well off who benefit: it is the McMansion developers - PERIOD.
That is why Dunn likes it; he's pandering to his base.
Interesting that Dan Savage should salute the eloquence of Andrew Sullivan today. I was about to do the same thing.
Sullivan's a brilliant writer, and in his recent book "The Conservative Soul," he really captures the essence of the fundamentalist mind. Sullivan makes a compelling case that Christianists and Islamists and Marxists and all the other -ists have everything in common, even though their views may be in polar conflict. What they are about is not so much their particular causes as it is their approach to their causes.
Reading Andrew Sullivan has truly opened my eyes to fundamentalism in all its flavors. And one of those flavors sadly is transportation puritanism. Fundamentalists like Josh and Erica here are to be feared more by mass transit supporters like myself more than they should be feared by sprawl supporters like Reagan Dunn. I mean, if you were a Palestinian aspiring for peace and prosperity, wouldn't you despise Hamas?
the problem with the mcmansion is this; who will buy them if they arent less expensive than current housing?
and if someone moves out there whom has large income they are vacating a house to move there.
I think we need more housing period and nuts to the people who have to drive.
cressona, your vendetta against josh and erica is stupid and not even entertaining. At least my vendetta against charles isnt long winded either.
I have no real comment on roads or the transit. . .I hate traffic and expansion and I love the woods and nature. However. . . I am one of those people who can't afford to live. . .and I am not talking about a big ass house. I am looking for a small dumpy house. I don’t dare look for anything much bigger then 1000 sq ft or something that has a 2 car garage. That would be dreaming around these parts. If I want a house I can afford, which is around the 300K range, than I have to go live in Everett. . .or Marysville. . .or further. . .yet I work in Bellevue. There is no way I can afford a house. . not even a condo anywhere near my work.
So build some damn roads and lots of transits I say. . .then I don’t have to sit in 2 hours of traffic to get from my dumpy little shack to my work.
It is totally ridiculous that you can't get anywhere in this damn town and the houses are unaffordable. I don't have the answers but I'm a frustrated citizen just trying to get by each day and have shelter. . . something needs done by the people we elect for the job.
Why are we still having this conversation?
Every urban planner in the world knows that road expansion solves nothing in the long term. It's called the Black Hole Syndrome: Too much congestion, expand roads, easy commute for a while until more people move out to the suburbs because of the easy commute and then the congestion returns, expand roads, etc. This cycle can be completed in as little as a year and certainly in five. Ladies and Gentlemen - freeways don't solve the problem. I give you Los Angeles and the 101, the Ventura Freeway, the Pasadena Freeway, the Harbor Freeway, and the Mother of All Traffic Nightmares, the 405 (the San Diego Freeway), which at rush hour moves about a mile every 20 minutes.
I know housing prices are unaffordable, and that's a huge drag. So are the alternatives, but here how we solve the problem - we stop buying! Watch those prices start to tumble. Economics 101. When you go to the market and chicken salad is $12 a pound what do you do? You go with the tuna until the chicken salad comes down in price. We have to take a lesson from our parents and grandparents (those who survived the Depression and WWII) and stop being fucked by the marketplace.
Bellevue Ave: cressona, your vendetta against josh and erica is stupid and not even entertaining. At least my vendetta against charles isnt long winded either.
Let's see here. Vendetta, stupid, not entertaining, long winded. Bellevue Ave, you've made an excellent case. Now let me ask you this, is it worth it to kill $23 billion of light rail for the sake of killing a $900 million expansion of I-405?
DOH! sorry for the double post!
Dud on ChHill addressing me. . .I amnot a single person so a studio is too small for me and my family. Been, there and done that studio thing so I could live in Totem Lake and be near my job.
I'm not a student.
I glad you can do what you do but I am not you.
As I said I don't have the answers all I know is I can't find a decent affordable place to live and I can't get to work in a car or on a bus without going to ridiculous amounts of inconvenience.
I have to go now and can't sling remarks back and forth so dont' talk to me no mo'!
peace out
DOH! sorry for the double post!
Dude on C-Hill addressing me. . .I am not a single person so a studio is too small for me and my family. Been, there and done that studio thing so I could live in Totem Lake and be near my job.
I'm not a student either. I glad you can do what you do but I am not you.
As I said I don't have the answers all I know is I can't find a decent affordable place to live and I can't get to work in a car or on a bus without going to ridiculous amounts of inconvenience.
I have to go now and can't sling remarks back and forth so don't talk to me no mo'!
peace out
DOH! sorry for the double post!
Dude on C-Hill addressing me. . .I am not a single person so a studio is too small for me and my family. Been, there and done that studio thing so I could live in Totem Lake and be near my job.
I'm not a student either. I glad you can do what you do but I am not you.
As I said I don't have the answers all I know is I can't find a decent affordable place to live and I can't get to work in a car or on a bus without going to ridiculous amounts of inconvenience.
I have to go now and can't sling remarks back and forth so don't talk to me no mo'!
peace out
its time to adjust your expectations and desires in life irl. then things will be affordable once more.
I dont know. I'd vote no on the principle that I don't use 405 or public transit.
id take 1/24 the cost if there is a real benefit though. Im not so self righteous that I can't take a little lumps with the sugar.
bahaus is right to a certain degree, you stop fueling the fire by being stupid consumers. you dont NEED to own a house, you dont NEED to own a car, and you dont NEED to commute to work through all manner of traffic. You simply choose to so i wont have pity for the burden you place on yourself with desire.
gee... aren't train tracks sprawling out to hither-an-yon, ya know, be sprawl? Aren't all transportation corridors, by defination, sprawl? Sprawl isn't just low-level strip-mall buildings and row after row of single family housing, but the infrastruture (roads, buses, airplanes, trains, cars) needed to reach the buildings.
As long as people will want to move to the PNW (and they will until Mt. Rainer blows-up, then and only then will the housing/job market will dry up) then we need to plan for tomorrow. People need a place to work and a place to live and a place to shop... and the ability to get from here to there. That is reality... reality should not be voting to punish those whose transportation needs/desire differ from ones own.
actually we should vote to punish people whose transportation needs differ from our own if it means paying for something we don't use.
How is an income tax, sales tax, etc tax across the general population fair if it's only car owners, and public transportation owners that actually use freeways and roads. sure the economy rests on roads but make an exemption for commercial and industrial cars.
car registration taxes and road tolls for transit.
and funnily enough if the majority of car owners wanted to vote in those taxes that i dislike i'd go along with it until i could find a loophole in paying it.
So, uh, Bellevue Ave...what do you eat? How did it get to your plate? Via a magic carpet ride? Nope...on a truck on a road. Same goes for the computer you may be using to read this. RTID includes freight access projects.
Something similar could probably be said for the paycheck you earn - you probably wouldn't be earning it if someone along the way hadn't decided to build some infrastructure that allows you to earn it.
So, yeah, you can talk all day about how these projects don't concern you, but I'm gonna hafta differ. We're stuck in this together one way or another.
the problem isnt commercial or freight vehicles causing traffic congestion is it? it's people commuting to work. therefore the solution is to make those that cause congestion pay for congestion. or make their working lives suck so bad that they will do something about it.
i realize that roads are vital to the economy, i just dont think that a solution where the people who create the problem get bailed out by me, so they can perpetuate the problem.
20. Sounds to me you're basing your belief on whatever economics books and articles told you rather than actual reality.
Everyone, to a person, that I knew who moved from Seattle well after the crash said that the housing prices did not fall at all after the crash.
You're gonna have to show me some correlative data. And unfortunately, I'm not going to consider a slight decrease valid proof of your claim that prices will drop (a drop is a substancial decrease, not a slight decrease), so if your claim is wrong in that regard, you may as well come out with it.
Josh and Erica support more density as long as it is not on Pike and Pine.
an economics book wouldnt have told him that unless the crash is so gigantic that it would make houses half their value. if that kinda real estate crash happened, i assure you, there would be far worse problems in our economy than that.
Bauhaus -
Why do I get the feeling that you're one of the people behind the "hey, let's not buy gas next Wednesday and they'll have to drop the price" movement?
massXsit -
How did the condo boom make it so you can't afford to buy a condo? To the contrary, if they hadn't build a bunch of condos the price would be ever higher than it is now.
Granted, a lot of the new condos are too expensive, but an increase in supply of expensive condos isn't going to increase the price of cheap condos (unless they're building expensive ones out of cheap ones)
Gas boycotts are dumb because people need gas to earn a living and survive. there always an incentive for people to cheat when prices get lower so in effect they might reduce the short term price for a microsecond before neccesity kicks in
i think a better way to look at this is "what do i really need to be happy" and then start limiting your spending from there. if less people felt a neccesity to own a home that outpaces their needs, or a car that takes them 4 miles to work or wherever, myriad things, then there might be a change in how they were priced. again as teh prices fall there would be people who would then cheat and benefit from it, but then again if youve changed your frame of mind to live without those things, you wont miss it.
I didn't read an ecomomics book or two, I got a PHD in economics from UC berkeley.
Externalities is elitist talk for Bads.
Seriously.
In Economics, you have Goods and Bads.
We rarely talk about Bads. We mostly talk about balancing Goods.
But pollution, sprawl, global warming - all Bads.
Or, as I like to call them ... CONSEQUENCES.
No, building 1500 new miles of road won't help with congestion - FACT. No, building 1500 new miles of road will not improve local pollution - it will make it WORSE - FACT.
Time to realize that Global Warming is TODAY. Not tomorrow. Not Soon. NOW.
oh, and think of the water demands of the McMansions that RTID will create - and the pesticides for their lawns that will run off the hills into the water cachement area. Plus the roads the developers will make SEATTTLE pay for once they're built.
Going to be a lot of dead salmon.
All paid for by Seattle, which is REDUCING impacts on Salmon.
RTID is a very bad idea.
The legislature will decouple ST2 and RTID if it fails - they know the polling shows that people support ST2 and not RTID, and they're trying to pull a fast one on you.
Did you really Andrew.
How is the real estate market THAT elastic? For that to happen you're either predicting a huge drop in demand or a huge increase in supply.
sure the ARMs will hurt the rubes that bought them but that doesnt make a huge market segment that would create that kind of drop in demand. What % of current mortgages are ARMs in our area?
Nor are you counting on other people speculating on this eventuality either. You don't think that theres a whole host of new buyers, and new financial isntruments lined up to scavange the remains?
I'd also like you to figure out where the homes with ARMs currently are located. Are they really in Ravenna and Capitol Hill or are the mcmansions in north seattle and outlying areas?
Will, how is Seattle going to be paying for all of RTID?
RTID is funded by MVET.
Seattlites don't drive big expensive suv's right?
Well except for all those Seattlites I see taking 520 and I-90 east in the morning in their SOV's.
But everyone else bikes right Will.
@42
If you get that feeling and carry it to its natural conclusion - that I am one of those people - you'd be mistaken.
I would never propose not buying gas on a Wednesday in an effort to reduce its price. That's re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. No, I propose not buying gas until the price/gallon has fallen to what one considers a fair, affordable price. Furthermore, since oil is largely imported (and largely imported from places not to friendly with us), my solution? Sell the car.
@30 - Right here, in Wallingford, one BLOCK from Gasworks Park - with a view of Lake Union and Mount Rainier and all - you can get a 2BR condo for less than $300K.
And then take the bus or bike along the Burke-Gilman or use the parking spot under the building to drive a hybrid Toyota to work.
Choices.
House on a ridge in East King County - dead salmon, more pollution, more sprawl, less wildlife.
Condo in Seattle near a giant park, walk to schools, near grocery store, tons of small parks, great views, less pollution, zero sprawl, more wildlife.
Choices.
Global warming is NOW, kidlings.
Exactly, Will.
That's the question: What kind of world do you want to live in?
What do you want Seattle to be or become?
Do you want to continue to scratch the itch or do you want to do something that will make the rash go away?
@49 - Wrong. MVET is paid for by the hot sports coupes and Beemers we in Seattle buy. Heck, we tend to own MORE cars per capita than you slackers in the suburbs.
We just don't use them to drive to work all the time like you do.
The main impacts of MVET will be in the rich cities - like Seattle, specifically those of us who can frickin afford to buy houses here.
So, another one of your precious incorrect statements punctured ...
Tell me, why do you hate salmon so much?
@52 - unlike you, i actually talked with many senators and state reps about this.
If we kill the combined ST2 and RTID, when they KNOW the polls show we like the ST2 in all the areas and we don't like the RTID, they will split them back up.
But, live in your fantasy world. Elections have consequences.
Building more roads will spread the itch, not make it go away.
Will in Seattle - Please take a moment and call almost ANY legislator and ask them if they plan on decoupling RTID and ST. Really, call Frank Chopp, Mary Margaret Haugen, Chris Marr, Fred Jarrett, Judy Clibborn or even Ed Murray. You'll get a reality check. For better or for worse, ST can count on one hand the number of friends they have in Olympia. ST's scorched earth lobbying efforts on governance this session sealed their fate in being able to regain ballot independence. Meaning they can't. ST locked that door and threw away the key themselves. If you want to vote no on RTID/ST because you think the RTID sucks - fine, but DO NOT have any misconceptions that ST will come back anytime soon. That's a fantasy and you WILL NOT see light rail for decades.
seriously - call Judy Clibborn. better yet, call the governor - she's the one who handcuffed these two in the first place.
Also, it has become harder to borrow. so there are fewer buyers available. And interest rates have gone up, so it costs more borrow the same amount, meaning fewer people can afford the same amount as could a fewer years ago.
Percentage of mortgages that are arms is not as important as the number, since prices are determined at the margin. If one house on the block goes for $1mn, do you think every single house on the block would go for $1mn if they all went up at once? That's why even a small number of foreclosures will drive down prices. if .5% of the houses in our region went into foreclosure prices would drop considerably. Combine that with all the construction, and you'll see huge price decreases. Explain how you would speculated on houses going down in price. You can't do a long put option on homes. The very idea, "I want to buy the right to sell you my house at this price in 5 years" will DRIVE DOWN home prices.There are definitely people who will buy houses when the price goes down, but since it's next to impossible to speculate on falling home prices without selling (which drives prices down further), they will be people who want to live there, not speculators.
ARMs could be for any house, it doesn't have to be a mcmansion. The guy who bought the house next to my mom's in wallingford did an arm, as did the guy across the street. It'll take longer for home prices to go down in Ravenna and Wallingford than it will where the new construction has happend (which includes capitol hill to some extent, and SLU to a much larger one).@55 - you have no idea who you are talking to, do you?
Read what I said, I have talked to them.
Sorry I missed Chris' fundraiser - I did TWO of the PAC interviews of her for both her first job and two for the Gov job.
My version of reality is the correct one.
Nice try, tho.
I'll have a chuckle about it after the election in October.
P.S.: that's when people actually vote, not November.
you don't drive your cars to the suburbs Will?
Who are all those people I see on I-90 and 520 going east in the morning?
They are killing the Salmon Will.
@59 - I used to. I used to drive from Ballard (hint, great place to buy a home with a yard for less) to Issaquah and to Crossroads and to Kirkland and to Redmond and to Bellevue.
But now you can take a bus there.
Building more roads won't help.
Will-
You misread my intent.
I agree with you.
@61 - ah. sorry, it's just it's like trying to discuss things with global warming deniers, after a while you start assuming people are in denial.
Now, the question we need to be thinking of is, given that we have gone partway to doubling local transit with the Transit Now package we voted in - and, yes, people who drive do support transit, especially if you can increase the frequency of transit, and we have the agreement to extend ST LINK to the UW, should we be pushing for the 520 bridge to have bus and HOV lanes once it's built (exempt from tolls) or should we get Microsoft to finally pony up and build light rail to their campus?
Solutions are now - because global warming in now.
And that means building transit where the density supports it. Where it doesn't require $20 per trip subsidies (cough Sounder cough) but where it even pays for itself (cough Seattle cough Bellevue cough Redmond cough).
Will just proves the point that if you go far enough to the right you'll meet the fundamental nuts on the far end of the left.
Will represents the Pat Robertson of the left. Intolerant of other lifestyles, incomes, family size, transportation choices.
He has it made up in his mind that people living in the "suburbs" all want 5 bedroom houses, like limited transit options and hate the environment.
Pat thinks that gays rape kids and will destroy the fabric of America.
Will pretends to be a progressive. But he is just as intolerant and elitist as the fundamental right.
The Democrats used to be the party of the middle class. Now people like Will lecture the middle class and tell them they should all be able to afford $2,000 per square foot in downtown Seattle. And if they don't, they will destroy the world like the gays.
Will how many airplanes have you been on lately? What is your CO2 footprint? Do you know?
You live in West Seattle right? Seattle's very own little suburban development.
@63 - really ... nope, if it's MVET driven then only if they have cars that are expensive.
I'm kind of guessing H1-B people don't have expensive cars.
And, rick, you make my friends laugh. You have no idea, do you? And, yes, I do know - I'm way below the median in my carbon footprint, even with the air travel I do.
I live in Fremont, sucker.
Harder to borrow my ass andrew. If that were the truth then why did the financial insturments that created this bubble exist? to make it easier to borrow money.
also, the % of homes that sit in the ARM quicksand does matter in two ways. The greater the % the greater the price fluctuation later on. to just say the fact they exist and the bad things they entail will lead to lower prices is useless. its a matter of how much it will drive prices down. a 500k appraised house going down to 400k matters very little who can only afford 250k.
Im not talking about shorting houses, im talking about people waiting for bottom before they buy again. just like you.
Location does matter for the home values just as you state in relation to the volitility of prices in some neighborhoods vs. another. and thats why this idea you're gonna buy your way back in closer to downtown isn't realistic.
I don't have to take the 545, my ex takes the bus to MSFT, and some of my friends take the bus to Bellevue to work.
Again, show me the link to measureable data from the actual revenue, or admit you just want to build more roads that won't actually make LESS congestion but will line the pockets of the Road Builders Association.
RTID - it's what's for supper. Fire up the barbie, we're cooking it with gas!
P.S.: Trying to sell Seattle citizens on RTID is like trying to tell Australians no worries mate about skin cancer ...
"I'll be voting NO on RTID. I want to vote YES on ST2, but if they force a combined ballot, as they have, I will have to vote NO."
Will in Seattle:
The "they" you are talking about is a big majority of the Democrat-controlled state legislature, and the Governor.
Wake up and smell the Political Reality - "they" aren't going to be going anyplace anytime soon. And, if they do, the political climate is going to get WORSE for the small but vocal "transit not roads" set.
Have you guys figured it out yet? This is as good as it's ever going to get. Once you realize that basic fact, maybe you can start making some arguments which are actually relevant and useful.
Bull, Maurice.
Global Warming is NOW. The politicos are only now waking up to what the voters already know.
The ground has already shifted.
Wake up and smell the fair-trade organic shade-grown espresso.
Markets adapt. Change happens. Deal with it.
Your road-centric universe is but a blip.
"His point is: People can’t afford to live (“live” meaning big houses, big yards, two car garages) in the city and so, to provide affordable housing we have to provide roads for them. "
Josh really needs to emerge from his Capitol Hill bubble some time, and realize he has a lot to learn on this subject.
When two bedroom houses and condos are selling for over half a million dollars in most neighborhoods, it's not the "big house" and "big lawn" and "big garages" people are seeking - it's simply a middle class neighborhood for folks with a kid or two.
Median household income in KING COUNTY is $66k. Tell me how you're going to afford a three bedroom house or condo here given the simple fact the median home price is over $400k.
For the hipster class, it may be cool to get 3 trust fund friends together to buy a $300k leaky shack in Georgetown; but for the average middle income American, they're going to want to have plumbing that works, and something besides an airport across the street from them.
Reagan Dunn is simply acknowledging basic economic reality.
What is particularly disturbing about this "holier than thou" hipster Capitol Hill approach to basic household economics: it's just a gaggle of single coffee-sippers and club-goers trying to pretend they understand first thing about a middle class family with two kids.
Yeah, and I'm sure the mega-church-going family in Bothell can best decide how Josh Feit should live his life, too.
While I applauded the Stranger's "Urban Archipelago" argument a couple years ago, this is going way too far. The whole "I am greener than thou" mini-movement is now based on a bunch of self-congratulatory theories these people got from their own exclusive echo chamber. Not a good way to understand or analyze social issues, and not a good way to formulate public policy.
Also keep in mind: Seattle comprises only 1/6th of the region's population, and 95% of all regional sprawl has already happened.
In other words, my advice to Feit and Barnett would be similar to the advice I give to the fundamentalists on the right: focus on the positives of your argument - urban amenities, and the like - and STOP judging others who don't fit in to your narrow demographic, and STOP telling others how they should or shouldn't live their lives.
If you think all 2.5 million+ "sprawlers" are CHOOSING to live outside Seattle for "the big houses and big garages", try taking their commute some day. (or try interviewing a couple of these selfish evil-doers!)
Great post, Maurice - and one that is almost certain to fall on totally deaf ears here in Slogland.
"Global Warming is NOW. The politicos are only now waking up to what the voters already know."
Ummm...what exactly do the voters know, Will?
All the polling and survey work I've seen shows global warming down near the bottom of the list, and if you poll to ask people whether they are willing to give up their cars tomorrow because they got scared by Al Gore's movie, I would imagine it would mirror the percentage Ralph Nader got in the last election.
If you can prove otherwise, go ahead and do so.
If you cannot, stop making this statements you can never back-up.
You ask the wrong questions, Maurice.
I'm an intuitive person, I feel out these things ahead of time - and it's leaking out at the edges of conversations of everyone in Seattle.
Not just the transit folks or the enviros, but everyone.
While those who know me think I may talk a bit, there are times when I'm in gathering mode, listening and putting it together. Talking to the average person on the street, at the grocery, at a fair, just odd places.
Global Warming is NOW. Most people get that, they just don't know what to do about it yet.
But they do KNOW that building more miles of roads won't make it any better.
Will, shut the fuck up about global warming for a goddamn second. It makes you look like a fucking tool that has no depth.
@ Maurice et al.
The thing that pisses people like me off on Capitol Hill is the idea that people who don't contribute to congestion problems should pay for them. What is wrong with a car registration tax? what is wrong with getting an exemption for not owning a car? What is wrong with
The primary cause of traffic congestion is not an influx of freight and goods over roads. It is in fact people driving to work. Twice a day. (or when theres an accident on one of the two lane jokes) I don't care if they live in Seattle or Bellevue, they are the ones creating the issue they are complaining about.
I understand that houses cost money. I understand people dont want to live in a city. I understand that they can do both living out in Lynnwood. I dont understand why you would gripe about the choices you made and then tell someone else they have to pay for them.
in short; asking for me to clean up a mess that i didnt make, and whose clean up wont benefit me in a direct way or inderectly by reducing costs of living for me
Cool. So vote No.
Think of the kids. Let’s skip the economics and the tangle of politic and move this over to a different school of thought? k?
Does anyone else remember this little thing folks used to call “over population”? It used to be all the rage way back when I was in school… why I heard those folks in China were so scared of it, they made it a crime to have a large family. It fell out of vogue in America to discuss, but some of you older folks must remember those news specials back during the Carter administration?
Not old enough? Oh… seen any recent population numbers? During your life time, they dropped? I am just being curious. But I think the answer is no, not on a global scale. Not perhaps any scale.
Also, and I don’t think its just me, so not just in a bigger realm, but within our shared reality of day-to-day life, doesn’t there seem to be more people around then there used to be? Agreed?
Now, those folks you see: they want kids. Assume all of them, at least one, maybe two of the little carpet suckers. Its a sucker bet that the population will keep increasing during our lifetimes, so let’s say it will, barring some sort of cataclysm, okay. That leaves us, in 25 years, with those kids needing a place to live… any parents want their 25 year old to move in, stay around till age 40, maybe with the grandkids in tow to boot? Or, any for you 25 or 41 year olds out there, you want to live with your parents, with your kid, under the same roof, for the next 25 years or longer? Sounds good? Not to many Americans, but there are selling points: It will cut down on resource use. Economic and environmental saving for the family and the larger society. The tax savings would be there as well. Have I sold you yet? It’s a win-win potential, if you parse it right. There are hard sells: how about: multi-generational households, according to academic studies, could have a positive net benefit on the younger generation.? Think about it.
It’s a lifestyle.
Now that you know where I am at, life style change. Some will, some won’t. All choices are not for all people, as I am sure you can follow…Let’s get down t it.
Houses will be built. A place to live is a necessity, not a luxury. People have to work, it is a necessity, not an activity. Getting to and from work, a necessity, they won’t let people live at work. Owning a car? A choice, a choice that for many people has made for them by the necessity of needing a place to live and a place to work, and wouldn’t you know it? no employer within walking distance of home was hiring and it pays jack shit. That’s the shared reality, for everyone who lives and work don’t sync up just so that they have the ideal, perfect, no work, no guilty, no stress commute.
With all of that in mind, it is obvious that a kid today, a quarter of a century later, will be a 25 year old adult. They will face those same necessities and without more choices than we have today, will be forced to make the same choices we make today.
What I have read about this ballot: like most of the political world, is that there will be a legacy left by this vote… and of course, maybe more roads means more traffic, and maybe more commuter trains means more late trains, or maybe they don’t because no one is using them, BFD. There is a hole in the ozone which will start to shrink if we all just do "the right thing" or maybe not. BFD. Folks in America are smarter then they let on… but, traffic is on the roads now and the weather will continue to get worse, and taxes will always go up. There are neighborhoods where the roads are wide open. What is your experience? And where do you think all those kids are going to live, once you retire?
Well, that’s my two cents. But do vote on this.
in short; asking for me to clean up a mess that i didnt make, and whose clean up wont benefit me in a direct way or inderectly by reducing costs of living for me
"Will in Seattle" pretty much says it all.
You can always count on Will and the like to complain the rail is going to Tacoma and Redmond and Lynnwood rather than Wallingford or Ballard.
Will wants everyone to believe that if we vote rail down it will rise like a phoenix to the ballot again immediately.
I suspect when Will talked to folks in Olympia he talked mostly to Seattle folks in Olympia. His view of the world is one that begins and ends in Seattle. He says,
"And that means building transit where the density supports it. Where it doesn't require $20 per trip subsidies (cough Sounder cough) but where it even pays for itself (cough Seattle cough Bellevue cough Redmond cough)."
OK, Will. I will say this slowly. One of the main reasons you build mass transit is to create dense walkable neighborhoods at transit stops. Not to reward already dense neighborhoods like Fremont that fight battles against QFC.
Sounder costs are high because the system just got built and the railroads are dicks. And if you don't believe that encouraging density on the Eastside is a good idea, then Fantasy is right, you really have gone full circle to the right.
ST 2 is a balanced plan that almost achieves the goal of linking the four major population and employment centers in the region, with the exception of Everett. The board decided to build mainly rail and lots of it rather than being overly conservative. It took two years to involve the public and craft a package.
The RTID is what I call the "Last Road Package" because I will never vote for another. It is a lot of asphalt, although it is 150 miles, not 1500 miles like Josh reported and you repeated. Do the math. I probably wouldn't vote for it either if it stood alone. But it doesn't. And the Seattle stuff in the package is all good and benefits both the surface option and transit. Take a look at the package. Cross Base sucks, but it isn't even planned for years and the funding isn't there. We have years to kill it. And the enviros actually won a lot of concessions on transit mitigation and managed lanes.
Throwing away two years of work on the roads side and two years on the transit side is not a good idea. This region needs to quit fucking around. The fastest way to get more rail is to start building some, not by refining the package.
Ed Murray and his Eastside buddies in the legislature married the roads folks and the transit folks for a reason. They both have strong constituencies and it was feared they would cannibalize each other. That won't go away. Instead, the people who want a new mega-governance commission will be back in the legislature. And there will be no vote on a big transit tax in an election year in 2008. Rail will lose the momentum it is building in this region.
I am not going to roll the dice. What will change this region the most dramatically in the next 20 years is rail. The population of the region is expected to double. They aren't going to all live in Seattle and some may actually drive a car. The RTID stuff mostly attempts to fix pinchpoints.
But rail is what will transform where people are able to live. Imagine a region dotted with dense, walkable, vibrant communities. Affordable housing is a big issue, unless you have a trust fund. People will choose to live in a townhouse in Des Moines near a rail stop if they can afford it. We have an urban growth boundary. We have already decided what is appropriately urban and rural in this region. Building the RTID package is not going change that. No/No is a stupid vote this time.
amen, tiptoe tommy. and will in seattle - for the record - i know exactly who you are. i'm just not that impressed.
One thing that I keep thinking about when I read these postings by Josh Feit and Erica Barnett about these "sprawl generating" roads that will supposedly be built by the RTID: have they ever been to the areas they write about?
I mean, when ECB writes about "sprawl feeding" roads in places like Monroe and Marysville, I can only assume she's talking about highways like SR 522 and SR 2. Expanding these freeways isn't feeding sprawl, it's fixing deathtraps that are mostly within the urban growth boundary.
So I'll ask the question: have these writers ever actually spent some time in the areas that they are complaining about? Somehow I doubt it.
Someone posted: "What I have read about this ballot: like most of the political world, is that there will be a legacy left by this vote…"
Yeah. Twenty billion in long term bonds that our children will curse us for agreeing to. What gets bought with that mountain of festering debt? A constantly-shriking set of "improvements" that are, at best, of marginal economic utility. Oh, and they'd produce a net-negative environmental impact.
And the legislature does EXACTLY what ST wants, this past session, and all those before. For example, the legislature is requiring the ST2 vote this November, despite the fact that the voters in 1996 approved the Sound Move plan that said ST was to have the light rail line UP and RUNNING before any expansion plans would be voted on. ST wanted the second vote well before when the voters in 1996 demanded any second vote be held - and the legislature gave it to them.
ST also was the force behind the bill that linked the RTID and ST2 votes in a single ballot measure. The legislature gave ST that as well.
The light rail line getting built will be next to useless from a region-wide economic perspective. Expanding that particular mode of transit would be a criminal waste of fortunes of our region's future tax capacity. Vote no: the pile of debt it would leave for posterity is way, way too big.
Bob at 49 and others:
Only two-thirds of the RTID revenue would be from the MVET eight-tenths. One-third would be from the entirely inappropriate retail sales tax at one-tenth. The sales tax is unrelated to roadway use. Its use to expand highways is inefficient, as it does not send a price signal to roadway users. It is unfair, as the sales tax is slightly regressive even if it is not imposed on food and drugs. It is also politically risky, as the King County rate would increase to 9.6 cents with the five tenths of ST2 and the one tenth of RTID. Should we use the sales tax to expand limited access highways, bonding against it for 30 years, as Matt Fox points out, in the face of global warming.
The use of the sales tax for RTID may constitute a fatal flaw. The legislature could have given them additional sources or they could have chosen different ones. They had several to chose from.
@80, posits that light rail service for Bellevue in 2025 is going to bring about the rapture: "Imagine a region dotted with dense, walkable, vibrant communities."
What was that the government promised us twenty years ago? You know, that social construct that worked out just like the government said it would? The one where we got our money's worth? Oh, yeah, right --- IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.
It was bullshit, and they knew it.
Pie in the sky when you die.
I'm flattered that someone would post under my name, but the post @83 wasn't me.
What happens to "Drive until you qualify" when gas is $4... $7... $10 a gallon? Because it's only a question of "when", not "if" that becomes a reality, with geometrically growing global demand up against a finite (and eventually decreasing) supply of oil.
Will people be stuck with commutes they can't afford from places that are basically impossible to serve with transit in a cost-effective way?
At $10 a gallon and 20 mpg, it would cost an extra dollar a day for every additional mile you have to drive to work. A commute of 40 miles each way would require $40 worth of gas just to drive back and forth to work. That's $200 a week. $800 a month.
I think we'll be seeing a lot of bargain-priced McMansions in the exurbs at some point down the road. Whether that's a good thing or not is up for debate. Read "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kuntsler for more on the fundamentals.
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