Endorsement: The Seattle Transportation Levy will be a massive investment in safe, efficient streets

I combined categories to get them to match up as well as I could. You can check my math in this spreadsheet.

Now that Mayor Harrell and the City Council have officially sent the $1.55 billion 2024 Transportation Levy (PDF) to Seattle voters in November, we can put all the debates about expanding the levy behind us and take stock of how it ended up. With $160.5 million for Vision Zero, $193 million for sidewalks and ADA work, $151 million for transit corridors and access, $133.5 million for bicycle safety, and $66.5 million for a new people streets and public spaces budget line, the 2024 levy proposal is by far the best Seattle transportation funding measure in recent memory. It will* do more for walking, biking and transit in our city than the 2015 Move Seattle Levy, which was itself the city's best transportation funding measure in recent memory.

OK, yes, there is an asterisk in that last statement. The effectiveness of this levy relies on the city's yet untested dedication to the recently-approved Seattle Transportation Plan. If Seattle really does follow this plan-prioritizing safety investments, transit access, and bike route connectivity during paving projects as noted-then the 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy will represent a significant acceleration in the city's commitment to Vision Zero. The Seattle Transportation Plan does not include any new or expanded roads. So while the levy includes an astounding and unprecedented $403 million for paving and street maintenance work, that funding is not slated to tear down houses or buy out people's front yards in order to widen roads as Seattle did for much of the 20th century. Instead, streets that get repaved should also be updated to meet the Seattle Transportation Plan's ambitious vision that prioritizes safety.

The 2024 levy includes big increases in safety funding, and it includes a good amount of somewhat loosely defined transit funding. What it lack are a lot of major signature projects like the streetcar or the many bus rapid transit corridors that the Move Seattle Levy promised. Because of how the Move Seattle defined its spending, it is difficult to directly compare transit funding levels. But transit clearly did not get the big increases other elements received, and it possibly even got cut a little when adjusted for inflation depending on how you calculate it. Unfortunately, many of those levy-funded RapidRide+" projects have not gone well. The 2015 levy dramatically underestimated the costs while also overestimating the amount of federal grant funding Seattle would be able to leverage. In Seattle's defense, they did not foresee Donald Trump winning office a year later, a disaster for the nation in so many ways that the decline in federal matching grants for SDOT projects barely seems notable. But as the price tags rose on those projects, Trump's USDOT was not about to lift a finger to help Seattle, so the city had to cut back hard on what was promised.

The lack of specific project earmarks is not necessarily a bad thing, though. SDOT is a very good transportation department staffed with some of the smartest people you will ever meet who genuinely care about our city and the people living and working here. The Move Seattle Levy set them up for failure, and the Seattle Transportation Levy seems designed to sidestep this problem by not over-promising. Instead, it defines the types of work to fund and then leaves it up to SDOT staff following the Seattle Transportation Plan to prioritize and guide that work. Perhaps the proposal underpromises, and there will be people who are uncomfortable approving so much money with so few specifics. Advocacy will be as important as ever for the next eight years, so it is a good thing we have great walking, biking and transit advocacy organizations and volunteers in our city.

Needing advocates to watchdog transportation spending is nothing new. Advocates will need to continue to be vigilant and organized throughout the creation of the project lists and throughout every major project's development to make sure these investments are as good as they can be. Electing leaders who are committed to safe streets work will also be necessary to get the most from the levy, just like always. We learned the hard way with the Move Seattle Levy that a mayor wields the power to change the direction of projects regardless of what official city plans say. Elections have consequences.

Considering the near-total wipeout walk/bike/transit orgs had during the 2023 City Council election (as well as in 2021), both the Seattle Transportation Plan and the Seattle Transportation Levy are surprisingly strong. Of course they could have been even better had we elected a slate of leaders who put bold action on safe streets and transit at the centers of their campaigns, but we didn't. This is why a recent post by Seattle Subway has really been bugging me. They posted in favor of rejecting the levy so that we can run a better levy next year, arguing, We'd expect this to be a lot like ST2 (2007, with highways!) vs ST2 (2008, transit only!)" But the big difference is that 2024 is the high turnout presidential ballot, not 2025. For ST2, the penalty for delaying a year was minimal and the upside was significant due to the higher-turnout ballot coming the following year. It was worth pushing our big light rail plans back a year to get a better deal on a bigger ballot. But Seattle's mayor and eight members of the Council are not up for election, so it would be the same people putting forward a replacement measure next year. With the 2025 electorate likely to be more conservative than in 2024, we'd almost certainly end up with a more conservative measure. I am an extremely optimistic person, but I see no path to getting a more ambitious levy in 2025 if we reject this one in 2024.

The 2024 levy proposal would also take advantage of the moment to set the city on a schedule of running transportation measures during presidential election years. The 2015 levy was a nine-year levy, but this one is only eight years. So if the United States still has a democracy in 2032, Seattle's next transportation funding measure will again coincide with a presidential election. This is a great move, setting up future Seattle leaders and advocates for success.

This levy is good for transit and great for safe streets. Transportation Choices Coalition has backed the levy and is gearing up to help run the pro-levy campaign. Cascade Bicycle Club is also on board. This one levy doesn't need to encompass every possible transportation improvement. It's one big pot that funds a lot of good things. There is no obvious consensus right now on what Seattle's next big transit move should be, and perhaps that is the work of the next couple years. For example, I want to vote on a set of Seattle-funded light rail extensions, like the Route 8 subway concept. We also need to pull King County Metro out of the austerity tailspin it has been in since the start of the pandemic. Perhaps these are the kinds of ideas that could be at the center of a political movement in our city's next elections. There will be a lot more work to do even after this levy hopefully passes.

Voting NO on the 2024 levy would be devastating for safe streets work, crushing all of the momentum we've built in recent decades. Seattle has simultaneously failed to achieve its Move Seattle Levy promises and also done an enormous amount of good work for make our city better for bicycling. Biking around Seattle today is dramatically better than it was in 2015. The Move Seattle Levy currently funds about 30% of SDOT's budget, but it funds nearly all of the department's budget for roadway improvements and redesigns. The department would need to slash staff, and it is not trivial to rehire the kinds of specialized professionals we need to carry out all this important work.

The choice in November is to either accelerate the good work SDOT is doing to improve our streets or to stop nearly all improvements and set stymie transportation progress in Seattle for the foreseeable future.

Seattle Bike Blog enthusiastically supports the 2024 Seattle Transportation Levy.