Imagine if, simply because the state senate couldn't be bothered to do its job, WS DOT announced that they would have to shut down a couple lanes of I-5 through Seattle next year. That's pretty much the transportation capacity equivalent of what's facing King County Metro.

If the legislature fails to grant King County the authority to levy a 1.5 percent Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, Metro could cut bus service by up to 17 percent in order to close a projected $75 million annual revenue shortfall. With average weekday ridership of about 400,000, that's capacity equivalent to about 68,000 rides a day.

To put that in perspective, I-5 carries about 250,000 vehicles a day through Seattle, the Alaskan Way Viaduct only 110,000. So we're looking at a capacity cut equivalent to about a quarter of I-5's weekday traffic, or more than half of the Viaduct's. Just from a 17 percent cut in Metro service.

It's easy to lose sight of just how crucial transit is to our region's daily commute. Through their various services Sound Transit and Metro together carry about 500,000 rides a day; that's almost as much as I-5, I-405, and the Viaduct combined. Or to visualize it another way, the average capacity of a single freeway lane is about 18,000 vehicles a day—making ST/Metro's half-million rides a day roughly equivalent to building a 28-lane freeway through Seattle.

Yeah, sure, a 17 percent cut in bus service does not mean a 17 percent cut in bus ridership; some riders will just switch to other routes regardless of how crowded they already are. But the same would be true of closing a freeway lane. And of course, some bus riders will choose to drive instead, increasing traffic congestion for everyone else, including the remaining buses on the roads. "The vast majority of our transit users have cars at home," says King County Executive Dow Constantine.

If the consequence of their inaction was the closure of a couple freeway lanes, it's hard to imagine that Republican state senators would be so cavalier. If only they understood that transit cuts are the functional equivalent of freeway closures, I'm guessing this local MVET option wouldn't even be an issue.