It’s not every day a person sees their name in the newspaper, but I saw mine in the paper today. It’s ok, it’s for a good reason. I wasn’t arrested.
I was quoted in the Reno News & Review this week in a piece regarding some Washoe County transportation ballot measures. I’ve written a fair bit about those subjects here, so it was nice to be contacted by the story’s author. After dipping my toe into the water of talking about current affairs vis-a-vis the ballot box by making a presidential endorsement, here’s a roundup of the transportation-related ballot measures affecting both Reno and Seattle.
Reno
WC-2 Sales Tax Increase for Public Transit
Yes
As I said in the RNR, everyone could end up on the bus at some point. Cars are great, I like having one, but cars break, and people still have to get to work. People still have lives to live with independence. A good bus system goes a long way toward keeping everything moving.
RTC Ride isn’t a perfect bus service. In fact, if this blog were going to the ballot with a transit measure, we’d be pretty specific about the improvements in service that would be made, and we’d ask for all the money we’d need. Our bus service would feature 15-minute headways on 80% of the routes during 12 hours of the day and no less than 30-minute headways on all routes in the system. Express buses would run all day, every day, between Reno, Sparks, Fernley, Spanish Springs, North Valleys via TRIC, and Carson City.
Turns out they’re not giving buses away, and bus drivers need food and shelter. So this would cost a pretty penny.
Alas, The Urban Blog’s new bus system isn’t on the ballot this year in Washoe County, and with service cuts looming in the wake of some other service cuts, it does make sense to go ahead and raise the sales tax an eight of a percent bringing the total sales tax rate to 7.5%.
WC-5 Gas Tax Indexing Advisory Question
Yes
If The Urban Blog were running the show, gas tax would be used primarily for the operation of public highway facilities and excise tax would be the way public highway facilities were paid for. That way, every time you registered your car, you could see line items to tell you about the bonds you’re paying off, and you could see their expiration date. Suddenly major public facilities such as a road between Sparks and South Meadows or a Spanish Springs Freeway or a US-50 East Freeway, would now have an established, dedicated funding mechanism.
The Urban Blog is not running the show, but in our ideal system we figure we’d probably want our operational budget to account for inflation. This measure merely lets the RTC know if they should go to the Legislature to ask for the gas tax to be indexed to inflation. So even though it pains us to say it, this measure should pass.
Seattle
Initiative 985 Traffic Signal Timing & Other Assorted Related Items
No
The bane of the existences of many Washington citizens is a guy by the name of Tim Eyman. He’s forever getting stuff put on the ballot that sounds great, would break three things to fix one, and usually gets invalidated by the court after it passes. This measure is one of his. It would siphon funds off from every transportation budget in the state to fund timing every traffic signal in the state, and would open the HOV lanes to general traffic considerably more than they are today.
The Seattle area is working on finally getting light rail service to its major destinations and for a while now has had great express bus service between major destinations and that express bus service depends largely on what I call the “bus freeway”, which provides all kinds of dedicated ramps and lanes for buses, carpools, and vanpools. The HOV network should remain closed to general traffic most hours of the day. Traffic in Seattle is wretched, and public transit ought to be on time.
Timing the traffic lights in the state is a great idea. We’d support a measure that provides a dedicated funding source that doesn’t impact other budgets. This is not that measure. This measure is a turkey and needs to be voted down.
Sound Transit Proposition 1
HELL YEAH!
Sound Transit is the Seattle-area regional transit authority which operates the aforementioned express bus system, and is building the aforementioned light rail system, and also operates the regional commuter rail system.
In 2009 the first trains from downtown to the airport will begin operating, and that’ll be a glorious day. Downtown Seattle has for many years had a tunnel running underneath it carrying buses. When the tunnel was originally built, tracks were installed to carry the light rail trains they were going to purchase any day. Turned out the tracks were not installed properly and the tunnel had to be closed for two years while they installed the track for THESE trains. Once the initial segment to the airport is complete, another segment will begin construction linking downtown to the University District.
This measure would authorize the expansion of the system further, across Lake Washington to the technology and business havens of Bellevue and Redmond, and would also push transit further north from the University and south from the airport. It would add to the commuter rail and express bus services. In short, it would authorize the expansion of the regional public transit service to a point where its usefulness would be greatly improved.
And that’s why we say “HELL YEAH!” to this one. The population of the tri-county area served by Sound Transit is about 3 million. This is long overdue.
Take a look at all the referendums this year related to transit at http://thetransportpolitic.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/a-matter-of-democracy.
Posted by: the transport politic | October 30, 2008 at 01:01 PM