The Legislature says Washington State Ferries needs to generate a certain amount of revenue. Now the Washington State Transportation Commission, which sets fares, has to decide how to raise fares to meet the requirement The WSTC has opened a survey with questions for you; you can answer them here. Its results will be used to shape a fare proposal that’ll be made public next month.
I’d prefer that the state create income and capital gains taxes that modestly shift tax burdens from the lower and middle class to the wealthiest people in our state over austerity measures and increasing the cost of public transportation.
Why should we be subsidizing single occupant automobile commuting by wealthy Vashon Island residents when that money could be used on programs for the lower and middle class across the state?
I could read every comment on every posting in West Seattle Blog for the next 20 years and not come up with a more ignorant take. “Wealthy Vashon Island residents,” my (eye). Most people here are working class, and need to commute on and off the island to get to work sites that public transportation doesn’t serve.
And for your information, ferry riders pay a higher percentage of the costs involved in providing their transportation than do users of any other transportation mode in the state. So I want to know, who exactly is “subsidizing” whom?
Yeah, maybe the Transportation Commission is required by law to raise these fares, but Vashon is getting screwed out of service by staffing shortages that cancel runs, and by mechanical problems that have cut our usual service from three boats to two, and we are getting charged more and more for less and less service.
Last time I checked, we paid taxes in this state just like everybody else. Ignorant, uninformed comments like this don’t help our situation. We’re on an island, and we can’t “just drive around.”
Exactly! I’ve never previously lived in a state without income tax, but I’ve never lived in a state with as bad roads, infrastructure, education system, etc. The taxes on property are outrageous, goods are wildly high, fuel, alcohol, etc. It really pushes the burden on those with less income or fixed incomes. The ferries are part of our state transportation system, and would benefit from an income tax. It astounds me that things like road repair, bridge repair, lack of reflectors on roads are just accepted as normal. Meanwhile we have car-eating holes in the bridge, impossible-to-find-the-lane-in-the-rain roads, you name it. When I drive, out of state, at night, it’s like living in the future; well-marked roads, reflective signs, lane reflectors that don’t become invisible when it rains. Here, we suffer. For as much money as people make here, and it is a lot, compared to national averages, the lack of funds to get things done is unreal. Even if it was 1% on any income above area median, with plenty of exemptions for low-earners, we’d have a surplus of money to actually maintain this state. Rant over.
I’m all for an income tax, but the property taxes you are paying are not out of hand. When compared to cities of comparable size or larger, the tax rate in Seattle ranks 39th. Residents of other large cities are paying income tax and paying higher property tax rates.
Tax the rich! Give to the poor! I think I’ll close my business soon so I won’t have to work anymore and be supported by ya’ll. Sound reasonable?
Yes, because, as you I’m sure are fully aware, there are no operating businesses whatsoever in the 42 other states with income taxes, and would-be business owners just get taxpayer-funded handouts from the state to sit around and do nothing. It’s sure a good thing we don’t replicate that here in Washington!
In the next 10 years you will probably get your wish except the income tax will be expanded deep into the middle class. With the state court ruling that a tax on capital gains is not an income tax but an excise tax, the legislature will feel emboldened to create as many pseudo income/excise taxes as they can. The middle class will not be spared.
Fares should be proportional to the amount of deck space occupied. By that measure drivers are heavily subsidized by walk-on passengers right now.
And, also, weight! Washington State Ferries would not need to run so many large, aging ships if they transitioned people away from driving aboard and towards better, more sustainable forms of transportation. Truly, walking on and cycling should be free, and fares increased for vehicles to make up the difference. If Washington State Ferries wants to truly prepare for the future, it needs to find ways to discourage driving. But, of course, this will be a big challenge when WSF reports up through WSDOT, which is a government-sponsored and taxpayer-funded highway construction advocacy and lobbying organization. There is no problem that a highway engineer can’t propose to solve with an expanded road/freeway/boat/parking lot, etc.
You people who keep wanting to have income tax are so disillusioned. I’ve lived in two other states, both had state income tax and one also had city income tax. We got so many services “for free” that were paid for with those taxes. In one of those states we didn’t pay for garbage, or water, and there were so many snow plows that we got everything plowed, not just primary streets streets. And I have news for you, the roads were both still crappy in both states. The city is so poorly run and we keep giving more and more money with stuff coming out of property taxes or other stop-gap methods and they never quite know what to do with it, can’t decide on anything, and then just want more money. I don’t wish to give more money of mine away to the city or state for them to mismanage if I don’t get some benefit from it, especially on top of the Washington Cares mess. I’ll move out of WA before I pay this state an income tax. I don’t know what miracle you think is all going to happen if you start paying income tax, but you can give away your own money if you want. Nothing stops you from sending it to the government now if you feel they need it.
Surge pricing. There is way more demand than supply during holiday weekends, for example. We already use it for other highway tolls.
Income Tax: Be careful what you wish for. Tinkering with the funding/revenue side of the equation won’t move the needle one iota unless you have competency running the system. If you’re masqerading your political anger as social engineering, you’re ckeaning a loaded gun. Be careful what you wish for: the Eye Man never learned but left us with a royal mess.
Strange, I opened the survey and there aren’t any questions about income or excise taxes. The nature of a law demanding “revenue” levels from the ferries is absurd. The transportation commission knows (or certainly should) how much it costs to operate the ferries. Fares should be adjusted based on that data, not based on some foolish revenue requirement.
When Bill Gates’ dad financed an income tax initiative some years back, it lost because right wing TV ads told everyone they were coming for them. Which was statistically highly unlikely, but many of us aren’t bright and/or have no empathy, so our most regressive taxes in the nation status was once again preserved for the whining wealthy. But to quote an old Almost Live bit, basing one’s level of state taxation on what someone else will pay for the home you’ve put blood sweat and tears in for years, regardless of where your income level has gone, is LAME LAME LAME! And the next person who says “If you can’t afford to live here you should move” gets a knuckle sandwich.
Ferry fares have routinely risen an average 2.5% per year since the year 2000. Prior to then, the State provided a large share of WSF’s operating costs via the then Motor Vehicle Excise Tax, or MVET. In 1999 Tim Eyman of “initiative fame,” proposed Initiative 695 (I-695) that would all but eliminate the MVET by reducing yearly license plate tab fees to $10.00. The initiative passed overwhelmingly but was almost immediately struck down on constitutional grounds in that it asked voters to vote on multiple elements vice the single one (requirement) provided for in the State constitution. However, then Governor Gare Locke and the Legislature decided that, based upon the overwhelming support I-695 achieved that it was clearly the “will of the people” that the MVET, had become an onerous, seemingly ever-increasing burden on Washington’s citizens, As such, he and the Legislature then repealed the MVET, thereby eviscerating billions in funding for essential publics services like ferries, busses, etc. Neither succeeding governors nor legislators have backfilled those lost dollars and, as a consequence, WSF and other transportation entities have been obliged to collect higher and higher fares simply to operate. A disturbing outcome for WSF is that it is now approaching a near 80 percent fare box recovery rate just to operate , far exceeding fare box rate of virtually every other public transportation entity in the country. Equally, the respective Governor’s and legislative leaders since 2000 have poorly provided for new boat construction, which has been further exacerbated by “the buy Washington” mandate passed by the Legislature in years past…before I-695. This equally onerous requirement has resulted in considerable cost increases to build new boats as there has essentially been only one shipyard in the state able to build new vessels. Competition that might have kept boat building costs largely in check was rendered nil thanks to the buy Washington mandate. So here we are once again looking at yet another likely 2.5 percent or better 2-year fare increase to support WSF operations, despite a depleted fleet of older and older vessels requiring ever increasing maintenance/downtime and an often erratic schedule at best. And so it will go ad infinitum until, if ever, the Legislature and Governor put public transportation as a priority over social programs. Wish there was a magic wand that would make it less so, but such doesn’t seem to be in the cards.
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