The PDF is here. If you hate PDFs, the text of the proclamation is below.

WHEREAS, a section of the Interstate 5 bridge over the Skagit River in Skagit County collapsed on May 23, 2013, closing the Interstate in both directions, requiring implementation of detours through adjacent neighborhood roadways, causing extensive disruption of the primary north and south bound transportation route through Western Washington, and impacting our citizens, businesses and economy in Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom Counties; and

The estimated cost to repair the bridge is $15,000,000. Repairs and necessary interstate highway closures require the approval of Washington’s Secretary of Transportation, and the Washington State Department of Transportation is coordinating resources and working to implement damage repairs. These emergency conditions warrant closure of affected roadways for a significant period and implementation of emergency procurement procedures to hire a contractor to repair the damage; and

The roadway damage and its effects continue to impact the life and health of our citizens, as well as the property and transportation infrastructure of Washington State, all of which affect life, health, property, or the public peace, and constitute a public disaster demanding immediate action; and

The Washington State Military Department has activated the state Emergency Operations Center, implemented response procedures, and is coordinating resources to support local officials in alleviating the immediate social and economic impacts to people, property, and infrastructure, and is continuing to assess the magnitude of the event.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Jay R. Inslee, Governor of the state of Washington, as a result of the above-noted situation and under Chapter 38.52 and 43.06 RCW, do hereby proclaim that a State of Emergency exists in Skagit, Snohomish, and Whatcom Counties in the state of Washington, and direct the plans and procedures in the Washington State Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan be implemented. State agencies and departments are directed to utilize state resources and to do everything reasonably possible to assist affected political subdivisions in an effort to respond to and recover from the event. As a result of this event, the Washington State Military Department, Emergency Management Division, is instructed to coordinate all incident-related assistance to the affected areas.

The fact of the matter is that the development of less toxic and more energy efficient forms of transportation will be slow in American cities not because of a conspiracy of the rich and corporations but because of democracy itself. The standard subjects of the democratic process are at the center of the problem. They, the voters, will always oppose the one thing that's needed for the real social transformation of urban transportation, which is the imposition of laws, taxes, infrastructure plans that make driving a miserable experience. As a consequence, instead getting down to business, we will continue to play silly games like this...

In the Kemper Freeman utopia—without all that nasty, communistic commuter rail—this would be the idyllic CT to NYC commute every day:

Connecticut commuters endured slow trips to work Monday following last week's train collision that that injured 72 people and disrupted rail service into New York City.

... Many decided to drive instead. State transportation officials said traffic on Interstate 95 and the Merritt Parkway was at a crawl Monday morning, with the trip between Bridgeport and Stamford estimated at about an hour during the height of the rush hour. The trip normally takes about 25 minutes.

And that's not with no transit. That's with Metro-North using 120 shuttle buses between New Haven and Bridgeport until regular service can be restored.

In the comment thread on my recent article about King County Metro's looming 17 percent service cuts (and other posts like it) you can see plenty of comments fuming about the very notion of subsidizing bus and rail service with tax dollars. But as Connecticut commuters are learning today, drivers benefit hugely from keeping all those transit riders out of their cars and off the roads.

Beer can cars...

Hundreds of people crowded into Pioneer Square's Union Station to demand that the legislature allow King County to tax motor vehicles in order to continue funding Metro bus routes (as well as road and street improvements). As Goldy writes in this week's paper, without that taxing authority, Metro will be forced to slash services by 17 percent next year.

• Ansel Herz
• Metro riders wait patiently to plead their cases.

Bus riders are understandably frustrated by the threatened cuts. They're discouraged that they have to once again lobby for services that they fought hard to preserve just two years ago. The Seattle Times has a thorough write-up of Metro's years-long struggle to fund its services, while news intern Ansel stopped by the meeting yesterday and talked with a few people who would most likely be affected by the cuts.

• Ansel Herz

h/t: biffp

And no thanks to those old farts who worry about the future of the national debt and fuck all about the environment...

For six decades, Americans have tended to drive more every year. But in the middle of the last decade, the number of miles driven — both over all and per capita — began to drop, notes a report to be published on Tuesday by U.S. Pirg, a nonprofit advocacy organization.

People tend to drive less during recessions, since fewer people are working (and commuting), and most are looking for ways to save money. But Phineas Baxandall, an author of the report and senior analyst for U.S. Pirg, said the changes preceded the recent recession and appeared to be part of a structural shift that is largely rooted in changing demographics, especially the rise of so-called millennials — today’s teenagers and twentysomethings. “Millennials aren’t driving cars,” he said.

Inhabitat:

To say that it’s been a good week for Tesla would be quite an understatement. First, the Tesla Model S earned Consumer Reports’ highest-ever rating with a score of 99 out of 100. Then, after 10 years in business, the electric car maker announced its first quarterly profit in Q1 of 2013 with a net income of $11.2 million. In the wake of the news, Tesla stock prices surged 24 percent, as shares of the company’s stock reached $69.40 when markets closed in New York on Thursday.

And the Sightline Institute points out that it's happened after voters could legally smoke pot:

• Sightline Institute

One of the often-overlooked benefits of declining driving, particularly among the young, has been a rapid reduction in car crash deaths over the past decade. And those safety improvements have probably been helped by falling sales of super-sized pickups and SUVs, along with other promising automotive technology trends.

But during last year’s debate over marijuana legalization in Washington, I heard quite a bit of concern that permissive marijuana laws would reverse the recent declines in crash fatalities. I recall chatting with a well-meaning tow truck driver—a guy who’d seen the aftermath of a lot of terrible crashes—and he was convinced that legalizing pot would just mean more dead kids. Being a parent myself, I found it easy to understand that perspective. Despite a long-term decline in alcohol-related crashes in the state, drunk driving is still a very serious problem—and I can certainly relate to the fear that legalizing another intoxicating substance would boost car crash deaths.

So far, though, the opposite has been true: crash fatalities in the first part of the year seem to have fallen to a new low.

This is a tiny sample size from only four months, and the Sightline Institute acknowledges these are preliminary numbers, but if the trend continues through future years in Washington and Colorado, which also legalized pot, these sort of findings may help debunk claims that pot legalization causes more highway fatalities. (That argument was used heavily to stop previous legalization initiatives in California and Nevada.) But to the larger point—larger than pot—I'm just glad fewer people are dying on our roadways.

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.

Oh, Ed Murray:

As a quick bit of background, subarea equity is a policy in which Sound Transit is split into five subareas – and money collected in a subarea must be spent in that subarea. This means money collected in Seattle essentially stays in Seattle, money collected on the eastside stays on the eastside...

Murray claims that his reason for wanting to remove subarea equity would be to focus transit investment in Seattle—but the outcome of removing it would be the opposite. As a transit advocate who wants Seattle to have more grade separated transit, this is scary because it’s a direct threat to a new line in the city, and it’s scary because a mayoral candidate should have a better grasp of the issues.

If Seattle is going to build a functional light rail network in Seattle—a complete Seattle Subway, if you will—it will be by spending money raised by Seattle to building that rail network in Seattle. That's where we have the greatest tax base, the greatest density, the greatest need for transit, and the votes to pass it. We won't get there if we allow suburban voters, who aren't as thrilled about spending money on this stuff, to serve as an obstacle and delay for future votes on construction. Moving at the sluggish pace the whole region approves transit, we wouldn't complete a complete light-rail network for another hundred years. That's stupid. If Murray were smart about transportation, he'd be at the forefront of trying to build that transit system in his lifetime. Pro-transit voters might even support him in his run for mayor.

Much of the comment thread on my War on Cabs piece is pretty awful. But there is one line of commentary that's worth dignifying with a response, and that is the suggestion that the obvious solution to our current regulatory crisis would be to deregulate the industry:

[R]egulating the precise number of taxis is a classic example of something the government should let the market decide.

Except, Seattle already tried deregulating its taxi industry. And failed.

As outlined in a 2001 report from the city Consumer Affairs division, Seattle abandoned a half-century of taxi regulation back in 1979, eliminating its rate-setting authority and opening the industry to all comers. The expectation was that the magic of the market would lead to lower prices, greater efficiencies, and better service. Yay, competition! But it didn't work out that way:

The taxicab industry was deregulated in 1979 because it was believed that competition would provide the public with improved service and lower rates. In fact, service quality declined and rates were often higher. Subsequently, the taxicab industry was reregulated starting in 1984. Initially, rate ceilings were established and later a moratorium was placed on issuance of new taxicab licenses. Seattle, like nearly all of the other cities that experimented with deregulation, eventually returned to regulation of entry and rates.

And that's not just a city bureaucrat's conclusion. Writing in the pro-market AEI Journal on Government and Society (and posted to the libertarian Cato Institute's website) Evans School professor of government affairs Richard O. Zerbe Jr. explained back in 1983 that despite its promises, taxi deregulation in Seattle resulted in "unexpected problems" and "widespread consumer complaints." Deregulation, Zerbe concludes, is not as simple as free market advocates think:

Continue reading »

The drips of racism in the comment thread on Goldy's article about cabs and their growing competition are repugnant ("It smells like six month old leftover Indian food mixed with ass and vomit," "[t]hat isn't the cab you smell it is the driver," "drivers who pretend they don't speak english," and they "are often Muslim and seem to hate Americans"). But I can't argue with the substantive complaints about Seattle taxis: The cabbies balk when you try to pay with your card, they often don't show up when you call, the dispatchers give you guff if you complain that they picked up a different fare even though you're the one who called, they're expensive, the drivers smoke, and many of them just have no clue where they're going.

Still, I take cabs several times a month—they're cheaper than owning a car if you use them occasionally—and I sympathize that drivers have difficult, low-paying jobs with grueling hours. Many of the drivers (lots of whom are professional and kind and have given me great service) work essentially at the mercy of the fat cats who own several cars. And, apparently, plenty of their customers are racist pieces of shit. But Christ, it's not like the rest of us riders are frustrated with Seattle cabs for no reason. And it's not like shitty dispatch and shitty service are impossible to fix. They're totally fixable.

So I'm all about the surge in competition: The cars for hire, the limos, the car-sharing services, the ride-sharing apps. They're surging because they're better than cabs. Sure, some of the competition is probably breaking the law, but hopefully the Seattle City Council can regulate that competition into legality. (I'm not saying deregulate the entire industry; killing the cab companies would be a terrible blow for our tourism industry.) But give Yellow Cab, Orange Cab, and Farwest some real above-the-board competition to fear—that seems like the only way to force cab companies to step up their game.

Goldy's got a great piece in this week's paper that asks: Is there "a war on cabs"?

• Mike Force
• The Seattle City Attorney's Office has determined "that SideCar—and similar businesses—are subject to for-hire vehicle licensing and regulation requirements," the city's consumer affairs department confirms. Yet none of their drivers or vehicles are certified, licensed, or inspected.

GO READ THE PIECE >>

Sometimes a little imagination can go a long way...