Proposition 1 was a measure just on the ballot in the Seattle area recently. Pierce, Snohomish, and King Counties would tax themselves to pay into the RTID, or Regional Transportation Investment District, funds from which would be spent on a number of projects including 50 miles of light rail and widening of some existing freeways.
It was a big plan, it was an expensive plan, it was not loved by either the far left wingnuts or the far right wingnuts, and it went down, one might say, in flames. The political history of the project is important to the story: it was put on the ballot by the Legislature, in an effort to broker compromise between proponents of roads and proponents of transit, who are said to be unable to agree on anything.
That whole sentiment seems an exaggeration. Auto drivers will ride transit when it makes sense, contrary to much popular belief. The grueling nature of the daily commute in large metropolitan areas, especially for those working in the downtowns and concentrated employment centers, almost guarantees that there will be a significant percentage of people who will flee their cars if traffic is bad enough and transit is good enough.
It is lucky, then, that the record on the evolution of transportation systems is so clear. The more population you add to an area, the farther out in mileage terms you spread that population to an area, the more roads you build to support the spread out population, creates a miserable tangle of traffic near all major confluences of population and interchanges along busy corridors.
Seattle is seeing it but it really goes back to the first modern interurban highway systems built by Robert Moses in New York.
Moving forward Seattle can learn a lot of lessons from Moses and I think a lot of other states, such as Florida.
- Toll for roads
- Stop putting transit measures on the ballot.
By the first, revenue is generated tomorrow - by the users of the resource - and given that fact, construction can usually begin the day after, even in harsh economic times. In Florida, fares of 75 cents are a regular occurrence and automated fare collections mean traffic barely has to slow down in a lot of spots.
By the second, I also mean the road measures but I'll talk about it in terms of transit today. If the state legislature directs a local authority or other body to build light rail in a given set of areas, the local authority should work with municipal level bodies and citizen advisory committees to get the things built it's been directed to build. Citizens still dictate what gets built where -- but people don't need to constantly vote and vote and vote and vote on this stuff. If the projects take longer than they should to complete, they still get built.
This is the way it's been done for roads for a long time in a lot of places and is a pretty well-proven model. In Nevada for instance, residents of the Reno area are getting just the freeway they want in the form of Interstate 580, because the DOT has meetings with people in the area but takes its guidance from the legislature. That project is, some would say, late, but that's because local residents insisted a key portion of the road be built through the mountains rather than their quaint little valley.
As for Seattle, well, I'm sure it's not done voting (sigh) on roads and transit. The place threatens to fall down all around us, and I dare say there are a number of people for whom that might be the preferred solution.
Comments