New Sound Transit plan would not matter much

"King County Council Chairwoman Patterson is very wise to be thinking about "the ongoing need to find a solution to our congestion problem."__

Unfortunately, the new revised Prop. 1 with all its billions and billions of expenditure, funded by a permanent doubling of Sound Transit's current million dollars per day revenue via a half-cent rise in the regional sales tax, offers very modest improvements in transit capacity and performance.

__Check this: the Sound Transit ST2 Plan, Appendix C, claims that all of this taxing and spending will result in 62,000 additional new daily transit trips in 2030 -- with an average of over two vehicle boardings (transfers) per one way trip.

Now 62,000 may seem like a lot of new people getting on board. However, the government planners' forecast for total daily regional trip taking in 2030 is 14.9 million. That means, by arithmetic, that a "yes" vote for the Prop. 1 Do-Over yields less than a half of one percent reduction in daily traffic on the roads that carry cars, trucks, and buses. Not enough to matter. _

Indeed, Sound Transit states in its long-range plan that traffic congestion delay is expected to more than double by 2030, despite installing its light rail spine. __

The news gets worse: __ These forecasts do not embrace the more recent understanding that liquid energy prices may keep going up and up in the years just ahead, with resulting changes in how much we travel each day and how much it costs. __

So why can't local government agencies like King County Metro and Sound Transit work together to offer us a transit plan that doubles transit ridership by 2013, five years from now? _

Instead, giving Sound Transit permission next November to double its taxes forever lets transit ridership in 2030 barely grow beyond the daily travel needs caused by population expansion! _

The "light" passenger railroad that Sound Transit intends to build over 15 years with its doubled taxes locks us down to an inflexible, low-capacity, limited-geography transit spine likely to be completely out of synch with the kind of go-everywhere transit system that we will need in a vastly different future energy environment. __

Rather than immediately providing a full half-cent additional transit sales tax in a sinking economy, why aren't citizens offered the opportunity to ramp up transit taxes more incrementally and flexibly, with bold performance results for every tax increase to match the challenges of our times? _

A theme sounded at the July 24th Sound Transit Board meeting was that the new mass transit proposition for this fall is "not perfect." __No kidding! __ Seems to me that doubling Sound Transit's taxing authority, the largest local government tax increase in Washington State history, should come only after near perfection has been reached in the plan to spend all that money. __

And where's that light rail train to the airport that Sound Transit promised in its last tax election would be running in 2006?

Sound Transit promised us a chance to ride it before asking for even more sales taxes. __ Are you ready for a double down bet on your belief about Sound Transit's future performance, versus the certainty of a higher sales tax?

As Councilwoman Patterson says, "Let the people choose if they believe the benefits of the service outweigh the burden of a sales tax increase."

John Niles is president of Global Telematics, an independent public policy analysis firm in Seattle and volunteer technical director for the Coalition for Effective Transportation Alternatives. He can be reached at niles@bettertransport.info.