Seattle Times: After a Century of Waiting, Let’s Wait Some More

(SounderBruce)

On Saturday the Seattle Times published an editorial opposing placing ST3 on the ballot. For a well-done and more profane takedown, read Heidi Groover's great piece on Slog yesterday.

Here are some high(low?)lights of the Times editorial:

There's no silver bullet, especially not the complex and evolving $54 billion plan Sound Transit is rushing onto November's ballot. Voters should be given more time to consider alternatives, such as a smaller, more incremental plan.
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Slow down. A November ballot measure is too soon. Sure, the agency has provided much promotional fanfare around the Christmas list of expansion and new services. But there has been little discussion of other options for investing tens of billions in the region.
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The board should pause and give voters time to understand and respond to the region's largest ballot measure.
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ST3's cost is another moving target. Sound Transit last year pitched a $15 billion project, but extended it to $50 billion in March so it could build for decades without needing another vote. Then it kept growing.
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It would also take forever, figuratively, to reap the benefits. Even under the accelerated schedule, the light-rail spine from Tacoma to Everett won't be complete until 2036.
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A blank check raises accountability questions. Sound Transit should be subject to voter oversight periodically.

A hallmark of concern trolling is to wrap values arguments in process language in order to appear neutral on the projects in question, and responding to such disingenuous concerns is a tiresome business. The editorial's process objections do not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. The idea that this is being "rushed to the ballot" is false a priori and laughable on its face.

Consider rail from Ballard to West Seattle: if ST3 passes, the long saga to Opening Day will have winded its way through the Bogue Plan 105 years ago, the failed Forward Thrust initiatives in 1968 and 1970, the 1997-2005 failure of the Seattle Monorail Project, a yearlong Corridor Study process in 2013, a yearlong Long Range Plan update in 2014, and a yearlong System Planning process this year.

Or consider the spine projects to Everett and Tacoma, which for whatever their merits were in the 1996 Sound Move documents as a a founding goal of the system, a ballot measure the Times endorsed. In the past three years, layers upon layers of studies and open houses and public comment periods have beaten to death the question, "Should we build to Ballard, West Seattle, Everett, and Tacoma?" The public's unprecedented response has been a resounding, "What's taking you so long?" In this context, the classic "slow down and study it" approach the Times prefers is breathtakingly out of touch with the regional electorate.

Like in its vote against ST2 in 2008, the Times again believes, incredibly, that the plan should be slowed down because the projects take too long. In 2008, it was:

Vote NO on Proposition 1, Sound Transit light rail and buses. The latest proposal is a bad plan. It costs too much and achieves too little. This plan is being marketed as the solution to immediate needs but only a few buses and commuter trains come soon. The light-rail part of the package happens later, some of it in the 2020s.

Buses are cheaper than rail and more flexible. A few buses and commuter trains come soon, but most of your money would go to light rail not fully open to you until the 2020s. It is not 'Transit Now.'

Then, on Saturday:

It would also take forever, figuratively, to reap the benefits. Even under the accelerated schedule, the light-rail spine from Tacoma to Everett won't be complete until 2036.

Either out of ignorance or journalistic malpractice, the Times then makes it appear that Sound Transit's costs have spiraled out of control by deliberately conflating an authorized tax rate with its cumulative take over the lifetime of the package. The deliberate obfuscation here - $15B became $54B! - ignores both inflation and the increased project scope driven by public demand. The state's authorizing legislation approved a trio of tax sources that provided $15 billion in year-of-collection dollars over a hypothetical 15-year package. The $54B figure year-of-expenditure figure is surely massive, but the latter years of the package are when the biggest projects come online and when inflation takes its biggest bite. A 2016 dollar is worth only $.56 in 1991 dollars (78% inflation), and a 2016 dollar will likely be worth nearly $2 when ST3 finishes its work.

Back when it was arguing against another transit measure - Move Seattle - the Times said it was too small, and that it "should be chock full of big fixes, specific big projects and clear and measurable outcomes. Those are all needed because Seattle really needs to get moving to fulfill its role as a global city." Yet it argued for a smaller package then, and it argues for a smaller package now. For a supposed watchdog against government waste, it then goes all-in on the least cost effective spine projects, while leaving Seattle to its Rapid Ride buses in perpetuity:

Board members should consider a leaner Plan B that would continue extending the system's north and south spine. It should rely more on flexible, rapid buses and less on costly, fixed light rail duplicating current bus routes.

This would favor a sprawl-enabling system (maybe that's what they're going for?) whose crushloads would cripple the core transit tunnel, do nothing for surface congestion, and do nothing for the lives of Seattle citizens the paper's name would suggest is in their interest to improve. And the Times (or one of its columnists) would be back with another forceful column the day that SDOT proposes taking the necessary lanes from cars to make the buses as fast and reliable as the Times says they can be.

Lastly, the Times decries that ST3 is a "blank check", when in fact its funds are some of the most extensively earmarked checks you'll find anywhere in the country. By board policy, Sound Transit cannot build projects unless they are in an adopted System Plan planned passed by majority vote of the people, nor can they even bring a project before voters that isn't in the Long Range Plan. So any new project is at least two layers of multi-year public processes away from being funded, and even then voters always get the final say.

I suggest the Times go back and re-read its original Sound Move endorsement in 1996, in which they had a moment of clarity they would do well to repeat:

No one believes there is any more money, physical room or public acceptance for major new highways and freeways.

If they truly believe that, then the choice is not whether or not to build transit, but how and where to build it. Building it on the surface degrades transit riders' experience, takes away the car capacity they treasure, and increases modal conflicts with bicycles, freight, and more. Grade-separated transit is expensive because it does something very hard: it builds genuinely new right of way in the heart of a city while taking nothing from any other mode.

If you want to oppose ST3, do so by believing it doesn't build the right projects for the money. But the Times knows you wouldn't be convinced by their "slightly faster buses" dreams, so they want to convince you of agency incompetence, excess, and ideological conspiracies instead. Don't believe them. Let's debate the future of our transit system on the merits, and then vote on it in November.