In a recent column in this paper, Geov Parrish offered his reluctant support for Proposition 1, the transportation package slated for the November ballot. The measure would raise our city's sales tax to nearly 10 cents on the dollar - perhaps the highest rate in the nation - and double car tab fees to help raise billions for a combination of roads and public transit projects.
While we're often in Geov's camp, we part company with him on this one. Proposition 1 is the single most wallet-busting, wasteful, regressive, carbon-emitting, elite-driven, gridlock-ensuring, misguided funding request ever brought before the voters of this region. Given the staggering cost of this package and the blank check it will give to regional agencies unaccountable to voters, a 'yes' vote virtually ensures that 50 years from now our children's children will still be paying for this package.
And because the proposition does not fully fund many projects - projects that won't even start let alone be completed for decades - it does nothing to address our immediate transportation needs.
There's something to hate in Prop 1 for everyone.
A BLANK CHECK
The price tag totals $18 billion in 2006 dollars. But with interest, debt and inflation, the cost rises to $38 million in 2027 dollars and $47 billion by 2057 when theoretically the bonds for these projects will be paid and the projects themselves long completed. And yet, as critics charge, the real price tag could go even higher - much higher. If projects are delayed because full funding is not found, or stall after breaking ground, costs will rise. And with passage of this measure there will be no way for voters to pull the plug, as we could with the monorail. Worse still, Prop 1 gives regional transportation agencies the authority to collect as much as $160 billion from these extra taxes through the year 2057.
INCREASING OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT
The $7 billion roads component of this package is a blueprint for filling up Seattle and the region with even more pavement and cars. King County Executive Ron Sims is right on this one. No one who is concerned about global warming should support proposals that simply create more freeway lanes. To avoid certain rejection of this part by Seattle voters, the highway lobby tacked it onto a ballot with light rail hoping the hype, glitz and glamour of rail would obscure all that auto noise and air pollution.
BAD CHOICES ON SR-520
More than $1 billion is committed to expansion of the 520 bridge but this is only about a quarter of the full cost of the most expensive option now under consideration, the six-lane alternative. Proponents of the six-lane version want to add two freeway lanes to the bridge, create a massive interchange next to Husky Stadium and run a high-level bridge over the Montlake slough, arboretum and Union Bay, causing irrevocable environmental damage to the last remaining wetlands on Lake Washington while pouring thousands of additional cars into our city. More than 30 neighborhood groups strongly oppose this expansion and instead support a four-lane 'green' option. Passage of Prop 1, however, would likely render the six-lane monster a fait accompli. Even though the design for the bridge hasn't yet been finalized, proponents of the six-lane option would no doubt claim a yes vote as a mandate.
The six-lane 520 plan is being pushed by downtown interests because it would funnel more cars downtown and fuel still more runaway office development in Seattle's core. Passage of Prop 1 will put off the day our regional leaders begin to think seriously about a poly-centered approach to growth - relocating some of those downtown office jobs in existing regional activity centers on the eastside and closer to where nearly half of the downtown workforce chooses to live.
SOUND TRANSIT: PAYING A LOT FOR VERY LITTLE
The $10.8 billion for Sound Transit funding in this proposition is also worthy of a No vote. As rail critics have repeatedly pointed out, pouring the vast majority of our region's transportation dollars into a fixed rail system when at best such a system is expected to capture only about 4 percent of all the region's commuter trips, is absurd in the extreme. How will this combat global warming?
By contrast, expanding our bus system and moving to Bus Rapid Transit costs far less in operation and maintenance costs. And we could get it up and running within two years, not three or four decades as is the case with rail. Combine that with creation of a series of smaller mass transit stations in existing activity centers where more of our regional job base should be located, and then run bus routes to and from those centers-that's the only way to buy our way out of the sprawl which will only be exacerbated if rail gets Prop 1 funding.
HANDOUTS
Prop 1 is full of goodies for special interests. Two egregious examples hidden in the package are $90 million to turn the Mercer corridor into a two-way street and another $90 million for a streetcar line on Capitol Hill. Neither of these projects serve any useful transportation purpose. The Mercer plan is designed to enhance the value of Paul Allen's properties in South Lake Union. The city's own analysts say that plan actually will make congestion in the area worse than a "do nothing" option. And it only partially funds a grander Mercer plan ultimately requiring over $300 million in limited tax dollars.
The proposed Capitol Hill streetcar line is nothing more than tinsel serving abutting property owners while draining away precious dollars that we desperately need to create truly effective mass transit alternatives such as cheaper, better, flexible and more efficient bus service that operates at 30 percent less cost than streetcars.
Our view is to vote no on this transportation package or brace yourself for a lifetime of regressive taxes and endlessly torn up roadways to make way for Prop 1 projects. Only the highway and rail lobby will benefit.
John Fox and Carolee Colter lead the Seattle Displacement Coalition. Reach them at editor@capitolhilltimes.com.[[In-content Ad]]
