Um, how do we even know that, if the roads/transit package is voted down, there would be a follow-up light rail vote at all. The general public and the relevant officials would probably read a defeat of the roads/transit package as a death knell for expanding Link in general, a la with monorail when the Green Line got voted down.

Keep in mind what kind of context would involve voting down this package. Things don't necessarily work the way you think they will or the way you would want them to.

Josh this is your most insightful post of the year.

Make no mistake, Ron Sims is no longer a light rail fan. He didn't come out against Roads and Transit because of the road projects, he came out against it because of the light rail projects.

He is fine with most of those road projects (Christ his 2004 plan proposed $2 Billion for I-405 and only $500 for 520). He just thinks we should pay for them with a toll and not an MVET (you tell me which is more regressive).

It is the light rail he doesn't support.

Here are some choice paragraph's from his Op Ed.

My favorite is the attack on I-90 light rail - saying light rail on I-90 will make a North Bend resident's commute in their SUV to Seattle take longer. What?

This man has lost his transportation marbles.

“The retrofit of Interstate 90 for light rail will slow express-bus service and increase commute times to Issaquah, Sammamish and North Bend.” Ron Sims

Oh and by the way, Ron Sims signed the agreement to retrofit I-90 for light rail. It was called R8A and he was a huge champion of it. Was…a huge champion of it.

More from Road Warrior Ron
Even if on schedule, 60 percent of new light rail won’t open until 2027. Light rail across Lake Washington is at least 14 years away. The Northgate extension is 11 years away.

Projected light-rail ridership to Bellevue and Overlake is lackluster because of indirect routing. Traveling from Capitol Hill to the Microsoft campus via downtown Seattle and Mercer Island is slow and cumbersome. To the south, we have different inefficiencies. Light rail would connect Seattle to Tacoma (already served by faster Sounder Trains) and run along Highway 99 (where last year’s King County Metro “Transit Now” tax increase is ramping up bus-rapid-transit service).

I am speachless

What I am getting from Sims is that if we did things his way, if we vote this down now, we can expect another vote... to Northgate.

Then we can all enjoy busses (sometimes WITH hov lanes!) for the next 50 years while every other major city enjoys expanded rail systems.

Then we can watch with jealousy as Portland becomes the great Cascadian city.

Fantastic.

What do you want Sims? Who are you?

Ron Sims is going through a mid life transportation identity crisis. He doesn't have a clue what he actually believes in.

He was babbling on about telecommuting on Dori yesterday. Uh, that has been around for 20 years Ron.

Oe thing I can glean from his senseless muttering is that he doesn't support light rail anymoore.

At first I thought the Sierra Club wrote his Op Ed for him. Upon a 2nd reading, I think Rob McKenna, Jim Horn and Kemper Freeman were at Ron's keyboard last weekend.

Reagan Dunn for 50 miles of light rail.

Ron Sims against it.

Kathy Lambert for the biggest bike lane expansion in our region's history.

Ron Sims against it.

Shawn Bunney for $50 million of investment in non motorized projects in Pierce County.

Ron Sims against it.

Rudderless, Road building Ron. What happened?

Look. The thing is none of this construction would start for years anyway. Sims doesn't disagree with light rail in general, he disagrees with how it's going to be implemented. He believes that it's an intra-urban form of transit, not really reasonable as a suburban commuter line. Plus I think he thinks it should go over 520. And I think he's right. Remember: Seattle to Tacoma is take about ~90 minutes.

I don't think he's got a problem with light rail itself; just the way it was implemented.

Ron Sims is for extending taxes for 30 years to build sports stadiums for millionaire, wife beating, dead beat basketball players, but not for building a world class transit system.

Ron how is your new, shiny 700 stall downtown county parking garage doing in reducing global warming?

Josh,

Why don't you just ask him? His email address is

exec.sims@metrokc.gov

He usually responds to email quickly.

Btw, you guys's posts show an almost religious faith in the power of your God, Light Rail. I mean who would want to discuss these things reasonably? Who would want to see everyone as anything other than with us or against us.

Shuuuun the non-believer. Shuuuun.

john

nice try in defending Ron.

So we should build a regional light rail system, that A. doesn't connect the region B. doesn't reflect commuting patterns and C. has lower ridership.

you make no sense

Can you point to a light rail system anywhere in the Nation that would look like that?

MAHMUDIYA, Iraq — On bases big and small south of Baghdad, the scrambled reality of war has become routine: an unending loop of anxious driving in armored Humvees, gallons of Gatorade, laughter at the absurd and 4 a.m. raids into intimate Iraqi bedrooms.

This is Iraq for the 3,300 soldiers of the 10th Mountain Division’s Second Brigade, and many have bitterly come to the realization that it now feels more like home than home will.

No other brigade in the Army has spent more days deployed since Sept. 11, 2001. And with only a few weeks to go before ending their 15-month tour, the soldiers here are eager to go. But they are also nervous about what their minds will carry back given the psychic toll of war day after day and the prospect of additional tours.

Heartache can be heard in the quiet voice of Specialist Gerald Barranco-Oro, who at 22 is on his second tour of Iraq and will leave for home without two close friends who were killed May 19.

There are other losses, too: for fathers like Staff Sgt. Kirk Ray, 25, whose 2-year-old daughter screams when he calls because “she doesn’t know who I am”; and for those who must detach to keep going, like Specialist Jesse Herb, 20, who casually mentioned recently that the ceiling above his bed was dented with the bone fragments of a lieutenant who shot and killed himself there a few months ago.

“Every day I wake up,” he said, “I see little pieces of his head.”

Ron's position is pretty clear to me. Light rail from UW to the Airport is the last segment he wants to ever build in this region.

Break this to Erica slowly, but Ron's transportation future is full of more, slow, smelly, stuck in traffic, unreliable Metro buses.

The beauty of being part of a "no" campaign is that all you need to have in common with your comrades is your desire to say "no" to the proposal of the day.

The lousy part of being on the "no" side is that you're stuck with allies who don't agree with you on anything else. The Cascade Biker Boys and the Sierra Club are stuck with the following allies: Kemper Freeman, Phil Talmadge, Tim Eyman, Ron Sims. Ron may or may not support any more light rail construction. The other members of the Sierra Club Posse are all rail opponents.

The Sierra Club also has picked up some enemies: anyone involved with Sound Transit chief among them. If Prop 1 fails, there will be no easy 2008 light rail vote. There may be a vote on a smaller King County-only light rail system. That's the political reality here.

Thanks everyone. For the last couple of days I was wondering if my copy of the Times was different from everyone else's.

Ron Sims is opposed to any light rail system that might actually get built in the next 20 years, so for all intents and purposes he is an opponent of light rail.

And even if the Sierra Club gets its coveted ST2-only vote, we can expect Sims to be opposed to it.

Accepting the ST2/RTID compromise just looks better and better, doesn't it?

Maybe a King County-only light rail system makes more sense.

Maybe population density and growth patterns in Snohomish and Pierce Counties don't support light rail outside of Everett and Tacoma.

Maybe that enormous expenditure (an open-ended tax, with no end in sight, and a sales tax at that) isn't the best way to go. Ron Sims is the guy who lost for Gov in '04 while pushing an income tax, after all.

I think Ron is right about one thing, when he talks about a toolkit - there is no magic bullet in transportation, and there never has been. Rail is great for people who live close to it or can drive to suburban park-and-ride lots and take advantage of it, but if you talk to Metro planners, you'll hear that even if we build all the light rail lines proposed in ST2, we'll *still* be carrying 75% of trips, or more, on everyone's loathed smelly buses. So you can spend billions and billions and billions to build light rail, with no guarantee the trains won't smell, by the way, or you can try to do more with what we already have. Or you can do some of both (and yes, I know ST2 includes more money for bus service). I don't know why Ron picked now to stand up, but I'm proud of him for speaking his mind.

John,

Light Rail is a great deal for King County. Tax funds from the other two counties are spent here to get the line built out, so that they can eventually reach the other counties.

A line only intended to serve King County residents would have to be funded by just King County, resulting in less reach. And that's leaving aside the losses in construction inflation as the plan is extensively re-worked and sent again through Seattle process...

I don't care what Ron Sims says or does. No way should the transit package have been joined at the hip with this road-building package. The legislature is trying to force us to vote for something we don't want (road building by one government) to get something we do want (trains from ST).

That is abusive, likely unconstitutional, and it earned by no vote. Don't tolerate this kind of BS.

It is obvious what Sims wants -- he wants to implement congestion pricing, and he wants a smarter transit package paid for by the congestion pricing. See the King County report on tolling. That's why he is not jumping to a conclusion that light rail should immediately come back to the ballot alone. If it came back immediately, it would still have the same weaknesses as the light rail plan he just criticized. Who knows exactly what will happen if RTID fails, but political reality is that the legislature, Gregoire and the regional electeds will need to come forward with a Plan B, otherwise they will face voter frustration. Sims appears to be prepared to come forward with a comprehensive Plan B, not just a proposal to finance light rail. Given his leadership on global warming, I bet it will be a pretty darn good plan.

John you don't get it. On the board facts are not discussed only the bashing of anyone that doesn't buy into this vote for any reason. It's interesting that Martin brings up the inflating costs as a reason to vote yes but refuses to make a case other than we will be the last city to have light rail. This plan which the advocates' pr company has dubbed as "the good" does almost nothing for congestion, adds GHG and induces more sprawl. TTI estimates that congestion costs us $1.4 billion per year and the tax bill for ST2 and RTID will be $600 million per year in 2009 and no one claims even a 10% cut in congestion. ST's own numbers indicate that 74,000 transit riders will be added by 2030 for $23 billion dollars. This is about .005 of total trips in 2030.

Ron has seen these ST numbers for 15 years and maybe the urgency of GW made him finally say enough is enough. He also knows that ST is lying about the costs and the time it will take. They just quietly added 7% to the UW tunnel. They said it was because of increased building costs - so one would assume ST2 also just increased in price. But we must build light rail because...

Josh Feit: The pro-transit crowd that is opposing the measure…

I remember an interview several years ago with Mark Sidran. He said he supported mass transit but he didn't support the particular line in question. I forget now if he was talking at the time about Central Link or the Green Line.

And I realized then, it's all too easy for a politician to keep saying, "I support mass transit," "I support mass transit," but every time an honest-to-goodness, actual, concrete mass transit project comes along, they say, "But I oppose this particular project." It's the best of both worlds for a weasely politician. You can claim to be a mass transit supporter while always opposing mass transit.

And really, this is where the Sierra Club Cascade Chapter is. Let me make the case that they are not a pro-transit crowd, in spite of Josh Feit's description here, and even though they may portray themselves as such, like when they say want a vote that "Gives us Sound Transit light rail without the albatross of highway expansion tied to its neck."

Some of us joint ballot supporters had been pointing out how disingenuous this claim is, that the Sierra Club's leadership isn't really interested in saving Sound Transit 2. Their alternative plan for light rail is a kind of "divide and conquer" approach made up of little, surface, mini-lines that by themselves do little for residents and would delay the promise of a regional system for decades.

Back to Ron Sims, though...

What's remarkable is the kind of classic anti-mass transit rhetoric that Sims is engaging in. He isn't just making the "albatross" argument. He really doesn't like light rail, except in very limited applications, for reasons that fall right in line with the Tim Eyman/John Niles/Henry Aronson view of the world. It is as if Ron Sims has willfully forgotten everything in "Why You Build Mass Transit 101."

But here's where the Sierra Club crowd shows its true stripes. Instead of saying, "While we agree with Ron Sims that this proposition should be defeated, we disagree with Ron Sims's broader arguments against light rail." But you haven't heard any of that. Instead it's been, "You tell 'em, Ron. You're our hero, Ron. Speak truth to power."

Actually, in this sense, the Sierra Club is being consistent because they have engaged in much the same anti-transit rhetoric.

And then consider the practical result of this ballot measure's defeat. The Sierra Club and The Stranger can talk all they want about sending a message to Chris Gregoire and Frank Chopp and about what Gregoire and Chopp should do. (The Lou Dobbs crowd that killed that immigration bill said the same thing: "We've got to send Congress a message that this bill is amnesty.") But Gregoire and Chopp answer to the whole state, and until light rail is running and gathers its own constituency and we've really changed the facts on the ground, there's no reason for them to bend over backwards for light rail. (To follow the analogy, let's see how see how long it is until another immigration bill appears in Congress. And let's see how much of an improvement it is for those "no amnesty" folks.)

When you get right down to it, the Sierra Club leadership are an anti-transit crowd. Perhaps, for some of them it is inadvertent. The human dynamics that make them believe what they believe are just too powerful for them to realize what they're saying. At least Tim Gould was consistent enough to oppose monorail too. Hey, if you're going to oppose regional mass transit, then you might as well oppose in-city mass transit as well.

I have to admire Ron Sims for using one of the trendy political weasel words: "toolkit." (Can anyone guess what other politicians have used this word?)

Yeah. It’s because there aren’t a lot of other things it includes – it’s not a toolkit. Principally, it relies on a single technology – rail.

Actually, the $10 billion in Sound Transit funding includes money for express buses and commuter rail, although I'm pretty sure it's a relatively small amount. And the RTID includes all kinds of money for HOV lanes and ramps. I don't know what it adds up to, but it's got to be well into the hundreds of millions.

What I'm saying is, Sound Transit and RTID are implementing a toolkit to combat congestion. That toolkit combines light rail, road building, congestion pricing (though Ron and the Sierra Club have put their blinders on about this component), and Ron's favorite, buses. Maybe he's pissed off about the HOV lanes because that would actually constitute an upgrade over the usual crappy bus service Ron is used to presiding over.

(Simply as a regular Metro rider, I don't exactly have the most positive association with the words "Ron Sims." And here he wants to kill light rail so he can offer us even more wonderful conventional bus service experiences.)

BTW, I'm going to put on my lame Dan Savage impersonator hat here, but whenever I hear a politician involved with a transportation project talking in broad terms about how it's going to reduce congestion, I know they're not quite being sincere. The only proven way to reduce congestion in a metropolitan area is for the job base to dry up and the place to become a crappy place to live. Mass transit provides a desirable alternative to congestion.

All the Prop. 1 opponents are quick to laud Ron Sims for his sincerity, but his talk about reducing congestion -- plus the weasel language like "toolkit" -- indicates otherwise.

...

Oh, on the hypocrisy front, I remember with the monorail campaigns, Ron Sims and Tim Gould and the other monorail foes were going on and on with this precious argument that monorail was one technology too many. They would say, oh, it's just too complicated to do another mass transit technology when you're already doing one. Of course, never mind that major cities mix all sorts of transit technologies. So let's get to the scorecard:

1. Ron Sims when it was time to kill the monorail: Toolkit bad.
2. Ron Sims when it's time to kill light rail extension: Toolkit good. Ignore existing toolkit.

Y'know, we're all quick to ascribe political motives every time Dino Rossi or Chris Gregoire or Greg Nickels or Peter Steinbrueck decides to blow his or her nose. Well, Ron Sims is a political animal too, and there's got to be some political motive for this turnabout, because his purported reasons for his newfound opposition just don't add up.

It's one thing to have a change of heart. It's a whole 'nuther thing to be a flip-flopper.

But this isn't even just flip-flopper territory. This isn't like a Republican presidential candidate suddenly having an epiphany that abortion is a sin. This about-face on Ron Sims's part is a broad repudiation of a whole range of principles that Ron Sims purportedly has long believed in: the whole point of light rail, the effectiveness of light rail, the deferred gratification aspect of light rail. Suddenly, he decides light rail just takes too long to build?

Just go through that op-ed he wrote and there's just point after point after point where you can't help but wonder, "If that's your belief, where was that belief for the last x number of years?"

Anyway, perhaps some of you commenters out there can clue me in on Sims's motives.

Arty @2:

Make no mistake, Ron Sims is no longer a light rail fan. He didn't come out against Roads and Transit because of the road projects, he came out against it because of the light rail projects.
He is fine with most of those road projects (Christ his 2004 plan proposed $2 Billion for I-405 and only $500 for 520). He just thinks we should pay for them with a toll and not an MVET (you tell me which is more regressive).
It is the light rail he doesn't support.
....
I am speachless [sic].

Yeah, as bill @4 noted, it was as if Jim Horn and Kemper Freeman had taken control of Ron Sims's brain. But you know what leaves me equally speechless? The effusive praise for Ron Sims's coming out that is coming from the Sierra Club crowd. Either they're not reading what he's actually writing, or they really are anti-transit themselves.

As I've maintained for a while now, there is some undeniable component of the latter. By the same token, I think at least some Sierra Clubbers do sincerely view themselves as pro-transit and would vociferously reject Sims's arguments if they were coming from Tim Eyman or Jim Horn.

I'm reminded now of the scene in "Borat" at the rodeo where Borat sings the national anthem but with provocatively anti-American lyrics. At some point, the audience realized what was going on and turned on him. But here, it's like our Borat, Ron Sims, has gotten through the whole song and has been welcomed with warm applause. The crowd was just too dumb to ever realize they were being punk'd.

Cressona back on the job?
Ron just can't carry the water for the bs of Sound Transit anymore. He's been lied to by PB, Bob White, Paul Bay and the rest of the RTA/ST crew. You think he believes they just made a 300% error in ST1?

Cressona said:

"What I'm saying is, Sound Transit and RTID are implementing a toolkit to combat congestion. That toolkit combines light rail, road building, congestion pricing (though Ron and the Sierra Club have put their blinders on about this component), and Ron's favorite, buses."...

... whenever I hear a politician involved with a transportation project talking in broad terms about how it's going to reduce congestion, I know they're not quite being sincere. The only proven way to reduce congestion in a metropolitan area is for the job base to dry up..."

so which is it? Is RTID/ST2 fighting congestion or is that just bull?

Ron sees it. This plan won't do much and cost a fortune.

Whatever: Cressona back on the job?

Sorry, whatever. My line of work has absolutely nothing to do with any of this stuff. And I am ever so happy for that.

If Seattle just can never get over its Hamlet phase and decides that it's going to be another 20 years, if ever, until we can get light rail to Northgate and the Eastside, then at least my line of work offers me the option of finding a job in some other city.

Anyway, whatever, I do agree with you that Sound Transit's initial phase, and the Sound Move ballot of 1996, had a lot of charitable estimates (i.e. lies) built in. Not to mention the Sound Move measure of 1996 was significantly scaled down from the 1995 measure. And doesn't that give us a lot to look forward to if this one goes down to defeat?

I am voting for it because of those annoying radio ads with the cash register noise and the old biddy complaining about the cost.

Sims is now against light rail because he wants to be governor and he can't get elected statewide just sucking up to King County lobbies that live off the Sound Transit cash cow. His witless boosterism of a badly flawed transportation non-solution has always been about sucking up to the local money holders. (Remember how he fell over himself butting into Seattle politics and campaigning for an SLU streetcar to flatter/fatten Paul Allen's obese wallet at taxpayer expense?)

"Ron Sims is going through a mid life transportation identity crisis. He doesn't have a clue what he actually believes in."

Bill, if you knew anything about Ron Sims, you would also know his entire political career has been a perpetual midlife crisis. We should seen the writing on the wall in regard to Prop 1 when he did everything humanly possible to piss off rural dwellers with the Critical Aeas Ordinance, and city dwellers with that special interest-driven attempt to turn Boeing Field into SeaTac2. Never mind the fact the Port of Seattle had just spent billions and a decade to complete the third runway at SeaTac International.

If I were to psychoanalyze Sims, I would say his childish spoiler effort this past week had less to do with a "fireside chat" with his wife, and a lot more to do with serious political suicide. Simms has been irrelevant for years, and this last gasp was really just an attempt to release himself from purgatory, and join the other ghosts (Jim Horn comes to mind) in the political graveyard.

I just wish Sims had put himself out of his own misery years ago. Atrophy can make even the most talented people do the stupidest things.

Same goes for Sierra Club leading the charge against light rail, led by Metro bus planner (and notorious crank) Jack "eddiew" Whisner. Eddiew knows that when light rail operation begin,less than 2 years from now , his crappy buses will be even less popular than they are now. In many ways, this final Sims/Whisner "fuck you" represents a dying breed of rubber tire zealots " the same people who brought you the automobile and...wait for it...and ghg emissions. Yeah, the Sims/Whisner/Sierra Club plan pencils-out in theory. But the reality of the situation remains the same: most people don't want to get on your shitty, slow buses.

I will thank Ron Sims for one thing: exposing the Sierra Club activists for the frauds they are. Nothing like rallying around a fading anti-rail politician to bolster your credibily. Way to go, guys.

"I don't think he's got a problem with light rail itself; just the way it was implemented."

John th Apologist: leave the idiotic spinning and nuancing for Karl Rove. Can your arguments get any weaker?

Why, yes. Yes they can.

"Rail is great for people who live close to it or can drive to suburban park-and-ride lots and take advantage of it,"

So much for the toolkit approach, eh John? Just about anybody in he region will be able to drive (or take a bus) to one of those dozens of light rail stations. Why do you think park and rides are so popular with the average joe (incidentally, those park and rides just aren't "pure" enough for the Seatle-centric set.

"Plus I think he thinks it should go over 520. And I think he's right. Remember: Seattle to Tacoma is take about ~90 minutes."

John @ 6: thank you for proving the point once again that opponents to Prop 1 base their opposition on pure urban legend. Flip the 9, and turn it into a 6. And while you're at it, also keep in mind only a small fraction of the light rail ridership will take an end-to-end trip.

In other words, your position is not only wrong, it's pointless and irrelevant. Which is what makes you the perfect Prop 1 opponent.

Backpack-peddling Sierra Clubbers needed to oppose Roads and Rail so they could distinguish themselves from other sane enviro groups.

Global Warming may be a serious long-term issue for the planet. But for the inconsistent Sierra Club, it's probably just another fad.

I'm never giving these idiots another dime of my money.

or, maybe Josh is being his usual ray of sunshine and doubting his flipped position ... when in fact most of the anti-RTID/ST2 people have been pretty darned consistent.

Looking for moles in mountains.

Notice how ST chair Ladenburg (Pierce Co. Exec.) and Reardon (Snohomish Co. Exec.) are silent? They aren't trying to argue against anything Sims said.

He is speaking for all the key electeds on ST's board. RTID/ST2 is bad for people.

They put the blonde chick Patterson out there as a sop. She's saying what she is saying to mollify the businesses who've contributed to the "yes" PAC.

All the elected heavy-hitters are against this. To Their Credit. And that is because it is bad for people on a number of fronts.

Can't decide what is more irritating those cash register ads or the pro side's talking point - "the perfect is the enemy of the good"

ST claims that 50 miles will be built for $11 billion in 2007/8 dollars. This is about $220 per mile. It will include tunneling under the UW and going across I-90 most likely tunneling in Bellevue yet they are claiming about the same cost as the first 14 miles that will be completed in 2009. They just raised their estimates for the 4 miles to the UW with only 2 stations to $400 million per mile. If this last 7% increase was not built into the vote which was set before this latest revelation, then the 50 miles would be down to 46.5 before the vote.

But let's say they are telling the truth - would it be a good investment for the 3.5 million that are inside ST2 district at over $3000 per person? We as taxpayers will pay the part the business is taxed through higher prices, businesses always pass on taxes they have no option.

Regional light rail in Portland has not resulted in a greater transit share than we have here.

@31

you should read the paper before posting

http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/othervoices/story/167974.html

I could support Prop 1 if it focused solely on mass transit and making better use of existing roadways. Unfortunately, the people who dreamed up this proposition loaded it full of road pork. Passing Prop 1 will tax us up to $2,000 per household per year more or less in perpetuity and lead to more roads and more cars on those roads. Traffic can be accommodated at a much lower cost by decreasing incentives to take unnecessary car trip, especially in single occupancy vehicles. I'm with Ron Sims on this--let's try congestion pricing and/or tolls instead of repeating the mistakes of the past and building more roads. The system could be designed so that cars fitted with transponders could qualify for a free round trip each work day to get back and forth to work. Vehicles with at least one passenger could get dinged less than single-occupancy vehicles. Ditto for low-income people. Non-peak hour trips could be free. Why tax ourselves this heavily when it is a well proven fact that new lanes simply attract more cars using those lanes, thereby perpetuating congestion problems and increasing greenhouse gas emissions?
The relentless road building supported by this tax fly in the face of the future reality that either gradually because of oil depletion, or even quite suddenly due to a war or other catastrophic supply disruptions, gas prices will inevitably hit $5, $7, $10 (and beyond) per gallon in the not too distant future. Future gas prices will have a definite calming effect on future traffic without pouring even a single cubic yard of cement on the problem. As for the idea that future residents our region are going to drive as much as we are driving now--that is ludicrous. Twenty years ago the City of Seattle announced projections that water consumption would raise linearly with increased population growth, and declared that new supplies (i.e., new dams and possibly wells) must be developed at massive expense. Guess what happened? People conserved and Seattle's dire predictions of water shortages didn't come true. In a similar fashion, we should, and actually can, put ourselves on a road diet.

So The Slog writers were failing all over themselves to post about Ron Sims’s Seattle Times op-ed. Let’s see if they ever post about the late Walt Crowley’s op-ed in today’s Times, Last days of the ICE Age. The ICE in this case is the internal combustion engine. Key excerpt:

With each election, the public has backed a little further away from the automobile-driven imperatives that have shaped our transportation system and patterns of regional and urban development since the First World War. The final fording looms just ahead: the Nov. 6 election on the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) plan for $18-billion-plus worth of transit and highway improvements over the next decade or more.

The RTID package does not satisfy the true believers on either side of the great lanes-versus-trains debate that has divided the region since the 1960s, but its approval would irrevocably tip the balance in favor of transit and other non-ICE Age modes of transportation, such as bicycles, ferries and electric vehicles. Personal transport per se will not cease to exist — it is too ingrained in our culture and economy — but petroleum-powered cars and their insatiable appetite for oil, concrete and real estate will no longer set the pace for future mobility and development.

It's a shame Walt Crowley didn't get a chance to vote yes himself on ST2/RTID. Somehow I feel, though, that he just may have made the difference in this election, albeit posthumously.

Thank you, Walt Crowley. Thank you wherever you are now.

Remember that Crowley pointed out during this year's viaduct campaign how the local left opposed Forward Thrust in 1968 and 1970 and instead proposed "(I kid you not) bridle trails." When I cited this quote on the news of Crowley's death, I suggested the Sierra Club clique could offer bridle trails to Snohomish and Pierce counties as an alternative to light rail. (Hey, Ron Sims and these guys could call their transportation alternatives “toolkit” the three B’s: bikes, buses, and bridle trails.)

At the time, I made sure to qualify my observation with an "I don't know what position, if any, Walt Crowley had on ST2/RTID." But, based his acute awareness of this region's repeated failures to get going on mass transit, I just knew--just knew--where he stood.

Walt Crowley always supported mass transit. Unlike Ron Sims, he didn't support light rail but oppose monorail and then, in a fit of pique, turn against light rail. Unlike the Seattle-only, anti-establishment populistas, he didn't support monorail but oppose light rail and then, when monorail was dead, claim to be a hard-line light rail supporter while at the same time trying to nitpick and delay light rail to death.

Why was Walt Crowley so consistent when so many others have not been? Because unlike Ron Sims, this has never been about his own political ambitions. Because unlike the Grant Cogswell types, this has never been about his own personal validation. There was no agenda. Walt Crowley was always a mass transit supporter because, remarkably enough, Walt Crowley was always a mass transit supporter.

Could it possibly be that Ron Sims and the Sierra Club opposes RTID because it is billions in regressive taxes to make global warming worse? That it funds highway expansion that contributes to a 45% increase in automobile traffic by 2030? That if we are serious about global warming we need dramatic changes in our transportation spending and priorities? Many of the commenters keep trying to frame this as whether one is for or against light rail, which entirely misses the point. It is as if we are not paying attention to everything we have learned in the last few years about the importance and urgency of fighting global warming. Many of the pro RTID commenters above seem stuck fighting the last political fights about roads v. transit, or which transit mode is best. The real enemy is catastrophic climate change, and I have seen almost no one willing to stand up and say how building new highways is any part of a strategy to fight global warming. Yes, push Sims on what his plan is. But also take a moment to evaluate how attacking the Sims and the Sierra Club, leaders on climate change, is at all meaningful to this debate. It is an attempt to discredit the messenger, without any attempt to tackle the message. This is our chance to fight the single largest source of global warming pollution in Washington. Are we going to rise to that fight, or are we going spend billions to make global warming worse? And if we were serious about fighting global warming, how would we spend billions of dollars to win that fight? Those are good questions, and the ones that Sims is trying to raise. Let's have that debate.

cressona when you brought this up on Walt's RIP slog I didn't respond because I thought you were out place doing that. I was here and can tell you the left was not opposed to light rail, certainly the vast majority were working against the war, for civil rights and gender rights, saving the market and stopping the RH Thompson freeway.

From the PI 5-18-70

Vick Gould (look him up at historylink) listed these organizations opposing the vote to held the next day: The Bellevue Rep. Women's Club, Teamster Local 174, Overtaxed Inc., Tax Limit League, Focus on Freeways, Lower Queen Anne Citizens Group, Redmond City Council, Seattle Master Builders, Apartment House Operators Assn., Transit Trust and Society of Pro. Elec. Engineers. Where's the left?

The article specifically announces that the King County Labor, AFL-CIO and the Aero Mechanics had come out against the rapid transit.

There is no mention of this left anti transit agenda on history_link or any history book on the city I can find.

Seattle has a better modal split than Portland after 25 years of light rail and billions of subsidy. Cressona I'm pretty sure that you are sincere but why do you spend so much time bashing individuals and groups instead of making the case beyond it must be rail because, well because.

Is there a price that LR would be too high? What would that be for these 50 miles? Where has light rail worked? Portland has only 8 hours less congestion per driver in a much smaller metro area by population. When Seattle was as small as Portland I'm sure that we had less congestion. Look at the list of major rail system cities - they have bigger congestion numbers than Seattle, they have more sprawl and with the exception of NY we do very well on a per person energy consumption.

So is the main criterion for whether or not we build or expand light rail what it does for commute times for single-occupancy vehicle drivers? (@ 39 and others) Is that what does or does not justify the investment?

If that's the reasoning, the only investment that's ever going to make sense is 50 lanes of I-5 crammed in between Elliott Bay and Lake Washington.

From a letter to the Times: "I urge everyone to ignore his lackluster argument and vote yes on Proposition 1. Doing something now is far better than doing nothing. You cannot put a price on that!"

This is the pro votes argument - you can't put a price on doing something, anything - no matter that this plan increases GHG, no problem we're doin sumpin; induces more sprawl, no problem we're doin sumpin and doesn't reduce congestion, no problem we're doin sumpin.

The pro side wants a blank check to build some light rail but hasn't calculated how their program will impact GW, they'll do that after the vote.

$23 billion to add .005 transit riders and much of that for upper income software workers - oh ya that's cause the uppers won't ride buses.

Yes, yes, we definitely all know all about global warming here! And we all know perfectly well what's going to happen if we build one more square inch of highway! We've seen the amazing Al Gore PoPo!!!!

Having Ron Sims or The Stranger or pretty much anyone weigh in on how your vote will or will not melt the polar ice caps is bullshit. None of these self-appointed experts know shit about what will happen in a decade or a year or tomorrow. For all we know, every car on the road could run on a battery ten years from now.

So yes, let's talk about whether we can live with this plan or whether anyone actually has the stomach or attention span to come up with another one. But please, please, please...stop pretending that the way out of the global warming morass rests on voting no or yes on RTID/ST2.

See http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/ for what the experts say about global warming, highway building, and fuel efficiency. If America continues to increase automobile use, as we have been doing for decades, it will wipe out predicted fuel efficiency gains.

And the thing about global warming is that it is, well, global. Which means that everyone has to step up to solve it, and in particular those countries like ours that contribute the most to it.

There are alternatives, and we should make the elected officials bring them before us. If there are truly no other plans that our elected officials can come up with, then they all ought to resign for gross incompetence.

So do the experts at SGA agree or disagree that more HOV lanes are ok because they let buses get where they go quicker and make that transit system more effective? Or do they come down hard against them 'cause building them is building one bit of highway and is, thus, harmful?

The thing about RTID is that it's constructed to piss everybody off about something. Which makes me think it might be decent to vote for.

The thing about the Ron Sims editorial that really bugs is the broad certainty about RTID "doing nothing about global warming." Well, having no train and no buses that go anywhere real fast also does nothing about global warming, and, like I said, he's no expert on global warming.

I just get skeptical nowadays whenever anyone interjects GW as a justification for whatever they're advocating. It's "Support the Troops" or "Dare to resist drugs" for the left - a way to silence those who disagree with you or convince those who just don't really know what to do.

This prop.1, better called Carbon Dioxode 'n' Transit, commits us to a massive road expansion program.

This forced marriage makes many heretofore environmentalists WHORES who now support spending $$$$$billions to cause MORE GLOBAL WARMING.

Seattle, how could you?

"The thing about RTID is that it's constructed to piss everybody off about something. Which makes me think it might be decent to vote for."

"I urge everyone to ignore his lackluster argument and vote yes on Proposition 1. Doing something now is far better than doing nothing. You cannot put a price on that!"

Yup convincing arguments to vote for this puppy.

GW you miss the point that the pros say that this a good environmental vote and imply that it will do something for global warming - but it isn't analyzed.

Likely results if Prop 1 fails:

1) Sound Transit dissolved by legislature. Replaced with new regional transportation commission to build roads and transit. Last year's bill to do this failed by a few votes. Hard to see how it wouldn't pass after the failure of a five year effort to develop a ballot measure.

2) Roads projects come back piecemeal over the next ten years either through the new commission or the legislature.

3) Worthy Seattle projects that could help make surface/transit possible and help bus rapid transit like Lander, Spokane Street, Mercer Street, and the new I-5 HOV bus ramp are delayed several years due to funding uncertainty. This means they won't be ready when the viaduct comes down around 2012-14.

4) Transit projects come back promising far less rail due to increased costs of construction and financing. The mix of transit in Seattle and outside Seattle will stay the same or be worse due to the declining percentage of the population that Seattle represents.

5) Rail extensions will take 3-10 years longer because of the need to return to the ballot, hire new staff to replace those who left, and create new momentum for a new agency. Even if ST survives, they likely will lose staff and momentum in the years between ballot initiatives. 2008 election will not happen because of Speaker Frank Chopp and Governor Gregoire (132 vote winner, third recount) not wanting to have a tax measure on the ballot in suburban Puget Sound.

Somehow I don't think all of this will help the polar bears...

Add FUD to the list.

A new coordinated agency that does it all and has direct elected representation what a horrible idea. Key phrase - ST may lose staff - the tragedy. How much per year for agency?
Could they produce an energy assessment? No. Million bucks for cocker fennessy (perfect enemy of good)
still putting out on schedule and budget press releases - no please we can't lose any personal from ST.

Another Sound Transit hater @ 48 says big deal if a new commission takes over for Sound Transit. Take a look at what he says:

"A new coordinated agency that does it all and has direct elected representation what a horrible idea."

--Yes, it is a horrible idea. The bill in the leg last year envisioned seven districts of 300,000 people each! At this scale elections are big money. Roads interests will outspend transit interests. Seattle will likely have one and half reps out of seven. Contrast this with a board of elected officials directly responsible for their decisions with their local electorates.

"Key phrase - ST may lose staff - the tragedy. How much per year for agency?"

--There are a whole bunch of people in this region who believe it is progressive and helpful to attack an agency that is trying to build transit in this region. Did ST get off to a rough start? Yes, the board and staff both learned many lessons that have helped guide ST 2. It took about five years to build the staff expertise and board experience. Ask any small businessperson how long it took them to really understand their business and they will generally tell you it was 3-5 years before they got their shit together. The monorail imploded in large part because they had an immature staff and a board that really didn't understand the responsibility of their decisions. Whatever's new agency will have to hire new staff, form new relationships, and create itself in a very short time. That is likely to be painful and slow--we can't afford to wait.

"Could they produce an energy assessment?"

--The answer is no. This little Sierra Club soundbite sounds great but when you look behind the curtain Oz is spinning the dials furiously. The truth is--the model doesn't exist yet! The whole field of carbon assessment is brand new. Models are being developed right now. Should we vote no, wait for new models, put together a new plan, do the necessary public process, and then vote again? Or should we pass this package, do the carbon assessments, and work to make sure the new lanes are congestion priced over the twenty years of the Roads and Transit program. Easy choice if you ask me.

Maybe L. Ron Sims is just coming to his senses. Sound Transit is a boondoggle. Let's look at what Sound Transit does. They run an incredibly expensive and not particularly reliable rail service from Everett to Seattle and Tacoma to Seattle. This service costs 70 dollars per passenger per day and is nothing more than a sprawl subsidy for people purchasing McMansions in South King County. The ST bus service doesn't do anything that Metro, Pierce Transit or Community Transit weren't already doing or couldn't have done themselves. The link light rail plan is years behind schedule, millions over budget and will be no faster than the bus service it replaces. It is also vulnerable to disruption along the portion of the route that runs at grade (question: why is it that Erica C. Barnett shits herself when anyone mentions BRT but then turns around and has an orgasm when mentioning Sound Transit, which is building what basically amounts to BRT on rails?). Sound Transit is also does absolutely nothing for anyone living west of highway 99 other than offer a few token bus routes.

But despite the fact that Sound Transit has not done anything to improve bus service, is encouraging and subsidizing sprawl with the Sounder and hasn't yet carried one passenger on Link Light Rail we're supposed to go to the polls in November and hand them billions of dollars more so they can build more light rail. I'm voting against the RTID/ST package in November, but not because of the roads, but because I believe that Sound Transit is a complete waste of money.

They are both bad - too much for too little, too late. Plus, I don't like the idea of spending the next two generations' worth of taxable or bondable income. It's obscene, folks - that much money for something which will take that long to get done. Obscene and insane - face it.

Chas says vote no--no idea what the better idea is.

Buses?
New transit agency?
Monorail?
Absofuckinglutely nothing?

Chas Redmond @51:

They are both bad - too much for too little, too late. Plus, I don't like the idea of spending the next two generations' worth of taxable or bondable income. It's obscene, folks - that much money for something which will take that long to get done. Obscene and insane - face it.

Chas is right. Borrowing money over such a long duration is freakin' nuts. I mean, what's next—families taking out 30-year mortgages?! And the shame of taxing our children and grandchildren to build something that might actually preserve the viability of this region for the benefit of our children and grandchildren. That's just outrageous!

Now suppose we were talking backloaded 50-year loans using exotic financial instruments to pay for a crippled monorail system. That, Chas and I would agree, is okay. Why? Hey, if someone was going to build a rail line within biking distance of your sprawling single-family home in one of Seattle's suburby neighborhoods, wouldn't you take it?

(Y'know, I would call people like this hypocrites, but hypocrisy suggests some degree of thought that clearly is not present here. It is the Chas Redmonds who make you realize why politicians act like politicians.)

Cressona those 40 year mortgages worked out pretty well. Credit crisis, GW crisis screw it just build rail.

PPA - currently the majority of the board and all but one position in King is controlled by the executive which is an election of 1.8 million people. Cynthia Sullivan lost to anti ST Fergusson but he didn't get a seat. No rail skeptic ever made it after they threw Mckenna off. Wouldn't it be funny if Sims or his replacement starts packing the board with BRT fans - Res. 75 would have allowed the cancellation of all rail projects - I'm sure the current vote will also allow that sort of change.

The agency would be the PRSC with funding. You know the organization that already does the analisis but has no teeth. They wouldn't need to run transit or build roads but they could be a local FTA and make decisions between options. BTW isn't Portland set up with a three county board?

Light Rail in Seattle is farcical buffoonery. You can't build a train station at every 3 story office building in Redmond.

It's a giant boondoggle and Sims is wisely standing out of smells reach of this stinkeroo plan.

The automobile and the bicycle are the only way to move around the point-to-point architecture of Westside Washington.

Also, the Liberals of Seattle have been trying to keep their overvalued homes at a premium -- more roads would move more people into more reasonably priced suburbs with better lifestyles for the middle class and the poor.

Of course they would oppose roads because then they wouldn't have their high home valuation and an ample supply of cheap labor to clean their floors and watch their kids.

Thank John Bailo for elevating the conversation far beyond the ridiculous. Those of us who want a less damaging, more visionary option are simply trying to stop us from wasting our money, time and environment on road projects that will not fix our traffic problems.

We have 34 bridges in RTID territory that have a lower safety rating than the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed a few weeks ago. RTID fixes only 1 of those 34 bridges. We’ll have new roads while our old bridges fall down upon us and we won’t be able to afford to fix them.

Name those 34 bridges. Then tell us what the plans are for maintaining them by the government that is responsible for them. You will find that the cities and counties that have those bridges have a plan for their maintenance and replacement. This is just another meaningless Sierra Club talking point with no context whatsoever.

And it does fix the worst bridge in the state--the South Park bridge in working class South Seattle linking Georgetown and South Park. A bridge scheduled to be torn down in 2010. A bridge that rates a 4 out of 100(the bridge in Minneapolis was around 50). A bridge that carries 20,000 vehicles, 6,000 of them trucks, each day. A bridge that if closed will cause the First Avenue South bridge to be congested 12 hours a day.

so what i seem to be getting from people here is that some people want light rail... some want roads... and some people want... nothing.

well screw the people who want nothing, how about we build light rail and roads?

Suburby neighborhoods? Hmmm. 70 percent or more of Seattle is zoned single family. Guess Cressona means most of Seattle. Non suburban? Hmmm. Capitol Hill, First HIll, U-District, Belltown, Denny Regrade, SLU (soon), Uptown/Lower Queen Anne. Guess ST1 and ST2 are going to take care of all the non-suburby parts, eh? Oh, I forgot, Beacon Hill can't possibly be suburban since it's got a new underground station. No, what we need is a sensible plan to move the urban element of the city around the urban area. That would mean all of the urban hubs and urban villages and even some Eastside, Southside and Northside locations. How about Renton or Southcenter? How about a real transit system in Tacoma rather than a downtown trolley and a long-distance interurban to Seattle? How about a sensible plan which covered more than one linear route? Oh, the downtown tunnel will be maxed if we add to much to the system. Yeah, great system-in-the-making we've got here. I'd rather not waste my money on bad ideas. Perfect is not the enemy of good, bad is the enemy of good and ST1 and ST2 are bad. The roads package is even worse. No, Cressona, I'm not a hypocrite, I've been singing the same song for four years now - a sensible system with interconnects and more than one line - who cares what the technology is as long as there is more than one rapid transit line. We're going to get part of a rapid transit line in between certain stations - gee, why don't we just spend the money and buy everyone electric cars. I haven't done the math but I'm sure it would be more effective and probably cheaper and could be implemented in a few years - not several decades.