Already voted no. Walk fuckers, or get a better job.

The Seattle Times should increase their font size - fewer words, shorter stories and easier on old eyes.

Grandparents would love it.

however, none of the comments made in this post about the times answer the central point they're making which is metro could control its costs better.

Second point -- it IS a regressive tax and it's a billion dollar tax hike.

Third point -- Metro does jack shit to run routes that are fast and convenient.

fourth point -- obviously they've been lying in claiming a 17% cut in service -- note that they don't even manage to bring themselves to say that in the voters pamphlet any more.

fifth point -- if they can look at your income to give a lower fare, why can't they look at your income to give a higher fare? MANY metro riders are employed, or above median income, why do we tax unemployed workers and below median income folks for the service of subsidizing rides for folks who are better off?

sixth point -- the claim about congestion is bullshit. adding 30K car's wont make a dent on roads that are already chock full up. when it's cutting roads aka road diets, trips disappear so we needn't worry about the reduced capacity; how come trips similarly just don't disappear when we cut transit?

metro said it only reduced the bottom 3 % of low rider routes. why not cut another ten percent there, and shift give percent of the service hours to the higher rider routes to you know, deliver the same number of trips with about the same dollars? they're not even trying to maximize performance.

I voted yes despite these concerns. The concerns don't deserve the all out ad hominem approach -- they're actually very valid concerns. We're basically taxing working class people horribly via the new taxes, including severe hikes on working families that may have two or three cars they need plus omg a boat or trailer! how dare they have that! in order to ensure many bus drivers make $80K. it's basically a tax the poor to pay the slightly better off and give subsidized rides to the better off. they didn't even bother to spell out the low income fare program, which is pretty sloppy. the claim is cutting transit for working class poor is more regressive than anything in prop 1 and that's just not true -- since MOST WORKING CLASS POOR IN KING COUNTY have two cars or don't take the bus or have that boat. Yessir, most of king county isn't capitol hill and plenty of retired poor people have two cars, a boat and 20 year old Winnebago; or are living in burien and driving to renton for one job and belluveu for another job, using two cars for the two earners; and their kid has a crappy car too. it's a fucking regressive tax and screaming over and over that cutting metro is more regressive just isn't true when metro could make cuts more strategically to substantially mitigate the impacts here. besides, sales taxes are going up!

the assertion cutting transit is more regressive than raising taxes and tab fees would be true in a world where there aren't poor people with cars, who don't take the bus to work. out of the 1.8 million in king county, I doubt very much that "most" poor or working class people are taking the bus to work. there are poor people outside of seattle and outside of capitol hill. many live in homes, didja know? or apartments with large parking lots? they DRIVE to work. or they are retired and try not to go anywhere, but still have a car or two. it's part of the stranger bias -- all cars are bad, so we won't see people who drive cars -- to conclude that the regressive impact on working class nonbus drivers just isn't there, so voila, raising regressive taxes on cars and sales tax is suddenly and magically "not as regressive" as cutting transit. even the working folks who take the bus to work often have cars, too, I'd say clearly a majority of all people in all quintiles have cars, so adding to the car fees just isn't progressive even if it goes 60% for busses. that's another impact stranger ignores, 40% of the funds here don't even go to busses.

if metro itself in the voter pamphlet is no longer claiming it's a 17% cut...if publicola admits now the revenue shortfall is only 14%....to assess regressvity of "slashing busses" wouldn't we need the latest tax data?

aren't sales taxes rebounding?
say it's a ten percent shortfall. can't they cut the lowest rider routes to turn a ten percent shortfall into only a 5% cut in service (trips)?
can't they shift more bus hours from the low rider routes of under 50 per hour to the high rider routes say over 100 per hour? shifting one hour of service that way in effect doubles the service provided by that hour.

considering these things, I suspect it's possible instead of slashing service it's only "some cuts in service, plus some other changes in service." but without facts, who knows, certainly the media doesn't report enough to answer these questions.

to assess the regressivity, we would need some basic facts like this:

1. how many lower quintile folks -- call it the two lowest quintiles -- take the bus and don't have cars?
2. how many take the bus and do have cars?
3. how many don't take the bus and do have cars?
4. and for all, how many cars plus motorbikes or motorized RVs, etc.?

Seems to me this hits some folks rather hard, say if you are a dry wall guy driving a little van to work and you have two kids at home and a spouse and four vehicles. yes Stranger readers, there are people who don't live on capitol hill and who live in king county and have multiple fossil fuel engines; yes we know they will go to hell for polluting the planet, but at least they don't fly to mexico for yoga vacations right?

or what about a retired couple in burien just handing on who are behind on their rent? who can't pay the co pays? who want to give the grandson an extra $50 at christmas -- see, he really needs it for text books at the community college, and he can't afford it since he needs HIS car to get to the job at jack in the box, and his VLF is going up due to this measure -- and the VLF on the old buick and the old Honda going up is another cost.

you can talk about 3.34 a month but this ignores the multiple licenses families. if they have two cars and one old camper van it's suddenly ten bucks a month. and the sales tax hike on top of that. it's $150 a year. this is an impact if your income is $18,000 right? if you are living on a retirement that sucks, plus SS that sucks. the stranger readership seems to be unaware that there are poor people out in king county who will be impacted by this tax hike and who won't really benefit since they don't take the bus -- it's as if some folks never get out to Enumclaw, or the non toney parts of redmon, or even shoreline. or even north seattle or SE Seattle, there are retired people who want to drive to the VA hospital not take the bus. sure, transit going downtown for work is like 50% but apart from that most mobility is from cars so it's rather off to just blithely assume that cutting transit is "more regressive": than raising state and local tax yet again -- isn't this going to put the total burden up to 18% for the lowest quintile rather than 17%? should not we at least look at the data instead of defaulting to the environmental pov which is "car bad, bus good, therefore helping busses must be good, taxing cars must be good, therefore I will declare cutting transit is less regressive than raising regressive taxes!" when there's really no data based case made for that assertion in any of the prop 1 arguments or opinions published anywhere. the county is a hell of a lot bigger than the most transit dependent parts of seattle -- we shouldn't be myopic to the regressive effects of this measure.

(btw, the same argument is made EVERY time we raise state and local taxes or fees. in fact the same liberals who decry the regressive nature of our tax system are the ones constantly raising the taxes -- metro here, parks there, I just got a booklet from the parks dept. about spending a few hundred million for a waterfront park with a swimming barge -- that will be yet another tax hike, too -- at some point we have to stop raising taxes on poor people. they're certainly not going to vote for an income tax when i'ts the liberals constantly raising taxes on them!)

@36. you ignore the fact that when you knock out some of those supporting routes -- causing a reduction of ridership on them, to zero, and another reduction on the 550 -- you also FREE UP the bus service hours to ADD those hours to the OVERLOADED routes where riders are turned away or where you can add more busses and instantly fill them to the nice 120 rides per hour standard, say the 358. you're only looking at on side of the coin, which is by definition a faulty way of assessing impacts. there's often a negative and positive impact in any change you make in anything -- so the point remains viable, in general metro could mitigate much of the cuts (or even with the additional funding, it could get more out of each dollar) by cutting more of the low rider routes and shifting busses to the higher rider routes. so while the regressivity of raising taxes is clear, i'ts not that clear that the cut in revenue would lead to corresponding cuts in service. remember they first claimed it was 17%, then lowered it to 14% revenue cut, actually shortfall, then claimed somehow they had mandated themselves to make a 17% cut anyway, then in the voters pamphlet they don't even say what % cut in revenue we are avoiding with the tax hike, and at any level they can take $1 of revenue cut and turn it into only 50 cents of service cuts through shifting from low to high rider routes. and as to the point that to make $100K you have to work overtime, jesus Christ! you mean our bus drivers make what $75K without overtime?????? it's a fairly high salary for what is NOT a particularly skilled type of job, driving a bus. lots of jobs suck, deal with public, are stressful and somewhat dangerous and only pay $20K a year or $35K or $50K and these are the people we're sales taxing and VLFing to support $80K or $70K base salares and $100K plus with overtime salaries? wtf?

besides, how dare metro run itself to have ANY overtime, that seems rather sloppy if the result is earnings over $100K.

so who's got the data?

how many lowest quintile families in king county take the bus, and don't have cars, versus have cars, and don't take the bus?
that seems to be the two simple data points you'd need to assess if overall this is regressive or not.

why is this data not provided in this very opinionated article?

"We admit it isn't perfect."

Which is why we should throw even more money down a hole to fix it.

@48, so do you have ythe data in terms of how many of king county's families in the lowest quintile
a. own cars, and don't take the bus much,
b. don't own cars, and do take the bus much.

can we get back to a fact based kind of discourse?

btw have voted against every tim eyman proposal ever made, and in favor of income tax, also, voted in favor of the metro thing yesterday while criticizing metro today.

Strawmen and ad hominem attacks will not make Prop 1 pass.

can we somehow get 1000 people to all go and pee on the Seattle Times offices at once? would be worth 1000 misdemeanors for urinating in public.

I hope they have good shoes then. They should give up their Priuses to bus commuters and freaking walk everywhere.
Jerks.

@73 My mistake, not all bus stops allow buses to deploy their lifts and in some cases drivers will not put the lifts down especially if the bus is SUPER packer- which will happen if there are fewer buses.. Also some of the ramps DO NOT support larger wheelchairs well.

If only we had the money to rent or borrow several hundred (or thousand) cars to add to the morning and evening commute so that the morons who write and read The Seattle Times can get a reality check on the consequences of what they are advocating.

Where's a "Gov. Christie" in WA when you need a "traffic study" as proof of concept?

@79

Hey, Seattle Times, if you thought it was hard to find a parking space and expensive to pay for one already, just wait until you have 20% or more cars clogging the streets and competing for parking.

Oh, enjoy the air quality while it lasts because that many more cars is definitely going to impact air quality and is absolutely going to increase healthcare costs for people living in that smog.

@41 jeffinfreemont,

Hey dipshit, the vote is for King County only.

Next time, try and understand the issue before typing and sounding like a total cock-swallowing douchebag.

BTW - many people in the "rural" counties that you hate would eagerly let you keep your tax money - so long as you keep your nutty politics out of their lives. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

@85

or we could charge bus riders a little more.

Shouldnt the people using the service pay for a majority of the cost to run it?

Seems sensible.

@86,

You are comparing apples to oranges. Two completely different things.

However, to answer your question - on some bridges, yes I do not have an issue with tolls - but the tolls should end when the bridge is paid off - not go on indefinitely.

Still have yet to hear anyone explain why bus/transit riders should not pick up at least a majority of the cost for the bus service they are using.

@90
this kind of ire is often found on the right, when they have no good argument. look. there's legitimate issues to debate here, among them, is metro too darn inefficient whether thru its labor costs, its slow route structure, or just having too many low rider routes when it could change those busses to higher rider routes and voila! more service, better service, with the same dollars -- the way Snohomish did in response to falling revenue. someone said starving the system won't achieve the efficiency changes. wow. if metro won't achieve the efficiency changes even under revenue duress, then yes, voting no would be the only way to make them do it. also, they could raise fares fifty cents to deal with this shortfall. unjust? go to fifteen an hour. to say it's not a business to suggest THEREFORE we can't talk about costs, efficiency, is stupid. of course it's a public service, and of course it's legit to talk about costs, efficiencies, and such. then, too, no one, not one person, has even TRIED to tell us the simple fact questions of are there more people in the lower quintile who have cars and don't take the bus work or more people in the lower quintile who take the bus and don't have cars. sure, his eyes have no clue, your eyes have no clue, blah blah blah except for one thing: metro's annual performance list of all routes and all riders per hour on all routes was not the basis for ANY changes for years, then under economic pressure it like deleted the three percent of the poorly attended routes (you do understand, those busses then switch to routes with more riders). making this debate purely about busses good! c ars bad! people voting no bad! people arguing against it must be lazy! they're shiftless! they're lazy shiftless folk, who lie! sounds like some other ancient stereotypes of yore in America, sounds very much like the kind of unreasoned tea party rage.

ever wonder what makes people mad like that? it's when their core ideological beliefs are challenged, they feel threatened to their core. the very possibility that metro is inefficient, pays too much, and is using this crisis to get a ton of money out of us is very scary. btw note how even in the voters guide they don't claim it's a seventeen percent cut in service any more? guess those sales tax revenues are climbing even faster than we thought.

I want to vote for this, but it is really hard. I am low income, disabled and live on the Eastside. I need my cheap car! This month I just happen to have to buy my tabs and already it is breaking my budget. I have to pass emissions too.
Please, people who never leave Seattle, realize that unless you are going to Seattle, the busses are terrible outside the city! They are almost nonexistent. You cannot live here without a car. Due to my disability, I can't walk long distances, and on the Eastside, you are expected to if you want to ride the bus.
Sorry, but i can't afford more. And 20.00 bucks back that I have to fight to get, doesn't cover the increase. I know there are enough wealthy people in this city of ours that can afford it. I wish they would pay and live us poor people alone!

@96

So, if we carry your "logic" forward, 100% of ALL COSTS for ALL streets, roads, highways, bridges and parking lots, including the highway patrol, police force, and court system charged with enforcing the rules of the road and the government expenses associated with legislating and funding all projects, should only and forever be paid by car and truck owners instead of being forced upon their fellow citizens who don't own or use cars.

As is typical of the entitled, privileged class and is evidenced in their ignorant assumptions and regressive, reactionary politics, you haven't a clue that as a car owner and commuter you (Yes, YOU!) are the one enjoying the "free ride."

Last I checked the toll roads in Seattle and WA are few and far between, freeloader. Thank your parents, grandparents and great grandparents for building all this socialist infrastructure you enjoy, freeloader.

Subsidizing transit service for those willing and able to use it removes those commuters from adding to the cars on our streets, highways and interstates.

It reduces traffic congestion. It reduces commute time. It reduces air pollution. It reduces healthcare costs associated with air pollution. It reduces construction, paving and maintenance costs for our roadways. It reduces accidents. It increases the availability of parking, and reduces the cost of parking. Just to name a few of the cost advantages.

It saves us money.

So, what have you got against investing money to save more money and improve the quality of life for everyone, including selfish little you, freeloader?