While Election Day is technically still 13 days away, 
so many people vote by mail that it’s become more like Election Weeks. The presidential and governor’s races are getting lots of play, but you’ll be making other meaningful decisions too – particularly when it comes to several state and local ballot measures. One of the state initiatives, I-1000, “Death With Dignity,” will be explored at a forum tomorrow night at West Seattle High School, sponsored by the WS Ministerial Association, with speakers expected from both sides, 7:30 pm. Meantime, the most-debated local measure on the ballot — Sound Transit Proposition 1, raising the sales tax half a cent — got a thorough airing at this week’s Sustainable West Seattle meeting. If you’re guessing it was a warm, friendly pro-Prop 1 crowd since sustainability and transit seem to go together — not entirely:
By the end of the forum, at least two outspoken attendees had used the same line: “I’m willing to wait for the right plan.” For them, this one does not appear to be that plan. But let’s backtrack:
Proposition 1 is Sound Transit’s second try in two years to get more expansion money. Last year’s measure included road projects – this time around, it’s all transit.
For the Sustainable West Seattle event, the group invited transit advocates on both sides of Proposition 1 – Tim Gould from the Sierra Club, which has endorsed the measure (though it opposed last year’s Sound Transit ballot initiative), and Emory Bundy from Citizens for Effective Transportation Alternatives, which opposes it.
Each was given 15 minutes to make his case; then rebuttals and questions ensued.
Gould began, with the understatement of the night: “It’s been a long twisted history to get to this point,” followed quickly by “it comes down to what kind of a transit future you really want to see.”
He summarized the main points of Sound Transit Prop 1 (text here), extending light rail to Lynnwood (north), Federal Way (south), and Bellevue/Redmond; beefing up Sounder commuter-rail service “from 18 trains a day on the Seattle-Tacoma route to 30 trains a day on that run at full buildout”; and increasing express-bus service, starting next year.
Total cost, $17.9 billion over 15 years (“in year-of-expenditure dollars,” he noted). The Sierra Club’s not that thrilled about this money coming from a sales-tax increase, Gould said, but “that’s all that Sound Transit has available in the current framework … aside from action by the Legislature; we might be able to look at shifting revenue to another source in the future.”
Speaking of sources, Gould also pointed out that light rail is all-electric, “which means it makes use of Pacific Northwest hydropower” and reduces carbon dioxide. His bottom line seemed to boil down to “we have to do SOMETHING.”
In beginning his argument against Sound Transit Prop 1, Bundy noted that he has spent decades advocating for the environment, energy, and civil rights. His approach was heavily analytical and laden with numbers, such as: Even if the goals under this proposal are met, he contends, transit’s share of the transportation market will only rise to four percent (from 3%) by 2030. “I don’t think 1 in 25 trips by transit will get us where we need to go,” he contended. “There are ways that are so much better.”
Pressed before long to elaborate on those “ways,” he continued to rely on arguments against the measure more than arguments for anything else, with more numbers, such as an average cost of $350 million per mile of light rail, average cost of $650 million per station, adding 62,000 more transit trips by 2030 out of what is projected to be 15 million daily trips in the Sound Transit coverage area (King, Pierce, and Snohomish counties).
However, his numbers also seemed to be trying to make the case to add more buses, as well as raising questions about why some of this funding would go toward the completion of projects that were supposed to be in Sound Transit’s 1996 “ten-year plan” for 21 miles of light rail.
Energetically complaining about that point, Bundy acknowledged, “I’m venting a bit” while also accusing Sound Transit of not keeping its promises about Sounder service levels. Right now, he said, “regional express buses carry 77 percent of all Sound Transit trips.” He went on to call ST a “small player: local agencies have 4.9 million service hours per year, and Metro Transit wants you to vote for 17.9 billion dollars so they can add 100,000 (service hours).”
Pressed further to elaborate on what he would support in lieu of this, Bundy offered, “We could be making tremendous use of vanpools” (WSB aside: Note this Sunday event in West Seattle) — as well as vanpooling incentives, bicycling, bus passes, and flexible working hours.
While acknowledging that the Sound Transit measure vote could be “confusing,” SWS president Bill Reiswig reacted to Bundy’s points with, “… the door is closing on our petroleum way of life, and we have to come up with solutions.” Another attendee added that no one should be lulled into complacency by the current gas-price rollback: “We really do need to get started in providing good choices.”
The system expansion itself may not be the only benefit, Gould interjected at that point – “In Portland, because of increased traffic, they’ve now seen that over the course of a decade, the average trip made for work has declined from 10 miles to 7 miles – people are choosing to live closer to where they work, or work closer to where they live.”
Still, another attendee pointed out that the Sound Transit measure “doesn’t do much for West Seattle.” (As noted in this WSB report, and elsewhere, it includes money to study the possibility of future light rail from here, but none of the rail extensions or bus additions it funds are slated to directly serve West Seattle.)
Also from the audience, a declaration that “we spend $10 billion a year on cars … We need to be building up the transit infrastructure we have been neglecting.”
Local activist/advocate Chas Redmond spoke up shortly afterward to declare himself an “absolutely pro-transit individual, but stunned at Sound Transit. We’re trying to create a system which is incredibly costly and taking an unbelievable amount of time to finish, a system which is capacity-limited.” He went on to point to a Maryland Transit Authority project with a lower pricetag and shorter timeline (the “Purple Line”) and said the Sound Transit plan looks to him like “the wrong system for the wrong reasons,” while saying he’s OK with waiting longer for the “right” plan, which another attendee echoed moments later.
To read the text of Sound Transit Proposition 1 for yourself, go here; for supporters’ website, go here; opponents’ website, here. Also note some spirited discussion in the comments following this WSB post.
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