You're showing so much leadership in helping protect transit in your county, Dow

if you want transit in this country, root for oil prices to rise. our commitment to failed ideas will continue unabated on this one wo/ extraordinary external circumstances. as w/ any change to the corporate sponsored status quo, figure it takes 80% or more support from the populace to get what we want. does gas have to be $6 a gallon for that?

Remember, every day people like Kemper Freeman wake up, bless their al-Qaeda cell training, and try to destroy America and our infrastructure to further harm our economy and destroy America.

I'm actually going to defend sub-area equity a bit. It's politically necessary for regional transit, and enables each area to get what they pay for. Without it, we would have been limited to a King County system. No commuter rail from Everett or express bus service from Lynnwood, because Snohomish County wouldn't have agreed to the plan. No commuter rail and express bus service from or in the Tacoma area, because they would have voted it down too.

That leaves the only remaining regions as North, South, and East King. With a countywide system we'd probably still have built the same light rail lines that we either have or have approved to build. And I don't see the express bus service being much different either. So lack of sub-area equity would have been a wash for Seattle and the Eastside. Maybe South King would have ended up with less, but thanks to declining sub-area revenue it's not going to get as much under sub-area equity anyway.

Sub-area equity got us a commuter rail system and better express bus service across the region, which is exactly what we need in suburban areas. And it cost Seattle nothing.

My only real complaint is that each sub-area should have taxing authority to approve additional service ahead of schedule. I do think the need to get the suburbs on board has slowed down the rate of building our light rail system, even if it hasn't slowed down what we built. With the ability of North King to pay for accelerating its own projects, we could have a lot more light rail a lot faster. But that's a change we could institute now without affecting sub-area equity either way.

So Goldy, would you say you're for or against keeping tax revenue in the area in which it was raised?

Because with this post and your article on the welfare state in Washington, you're seemingly arguing both sides.

@6 and you would be wrong.

Sub-area equity is another tax on the productive tax-paying urban centers to support the anti-tax areas that shouldn't get transit because it's not cost-effective and has ridiculous ridership per tax dollar ratios.

In other words - communism.

@7,

I only seem to be arguing both sides if you're an idiot. The Welfare State article and posts are intended to educate voters on the real direction in which tax revenues flow.

@9 ah... so you didn't want to find a solution to the inequity in tax distribution, you just wanted to bitch about it. gotcha.

I probably shouldn't bother, but Will, not a penny of Seattle's money is going to build an inch of transit in any location outside of North King. There's no way you can say that Seattle is being taxed to pay for the suburbs. It just isn't true.

Now, it's probably true that Seattle is being hindered in terms of how fast it is building transit. That's the real problem with sub-area equity. But that could be fixed by allowing Seattle (and other areas) to pay more to accelerate projects in that subarea.

We need to change this:
"It's unfortunate because the extension to Federal Way is a casualty of the recession," said King County Councilmember Julia Patterson.

To read something like this:
"ST 2 was passed at the height of one of the largest economic bubbles in the history of mankind. That there was enough money to build out light-rail to Federal Way or Tacoma was a complete work of fiction."

The comments above re: would never have passed without the sub-area equity component are spot on. Additionally, per the articles on this issue in the PI, South King County has benefited well beyond their sub-area equity, to date. "Despite the downturn, the south King subarea has the most investments to date, with full investment in Sounder rail and stations in Tukwila, Auburn, and Kent, full bus service, and Central Link light rail to Seatac, Beal said"

One other item - in the "Fuggedaboutit" article, ST admits that "Express bus service is quicker"...Light Rail is obsolete technology - we can do better for less $$$$ to actually move people.

I have yet for anyone to explain why light rail costs on average $35 million per mile in the rest of the world, and $20 million per mile in Baltimore but $179 million per mile in Seattle.

And that doesn't account for the $20 billion that was wasted in the first 15 years of "planning".

Light rail is supposed to be cheap and easy to roll out.

But we (in typical fashion) have twisted it into something arcane, slow to implement, and incredibly expensive.

By my calculations we should have spent enough money to lay 1,000 (one thousand!) miles of track at market prices.

We have 20 miles.

It's been a while, but last I heard folks in Tacoma were happy with the results of sub-area equity and that the line in down town couldn't have gotten built without it.