TRANSPORTATION

The Brookings Institute has called our region’s transportation governance ‘sclerotic’ (meaning ‘hardened’). In a Seattle Times column, link below, Bruce Katz said, “[t]he region has simply grown too much to have mobility run by a farrago of agencies… [T]he days of multiple competing systems and their redundancies, wasting infrastructure dollars (read taxes), need to end. A coordinated regional transportation strategy is necessary.”

Watch and listen to Deb as she discusses the issues facing the 48th District and her agenda for transportation, education, health care and taxes.

In short, while we sit in traffic, the people we hire to fix transportation are sitting in meetings. We get more studies, longer delays, lots of process and moderate incremental gains with this highly fragmented system.

But that delay and indecision burns through money, as inflation and external pressures drive up costs of projects. And to make it worse, one of the unfortunate effects of putting major public transportation packages to a public vote is that it takes much longer and thus ends up costing us more in the long run!

The re-design of the SR 520 bridge has been in the works for over ten years. Even with recent design approval by affected jurisdictions, there are many approving steps left and construction won’t begin for another couple of years. That’s a strong indication that something’s not working. (There are, of course, many more, but I need to be brief.)

Eastside legislators must work to ensure that the SR 520 corridor and I-405 are priorities for the state and the region. But because we don’t travel only within the 48^th District, we need to ensure that the entire system works for us, too.

Here’s what we need to do:

• Reduce red-tape and endless meetings.
  
  Streamline decision-making and planning. Everyone’s trying very hard right now and sometimes the coordination shows some progress. But as an overall matter, the system’s parts do not work together. If you doubt this, take a look at the mess that has become SR 519, the freight corridor out of the Port and between the two new stadiums. A serious missed connection between bus transit and Sound Transit was narrowly averted when a citizens’ group brought it to various governments’ attention. We waste resources and lose opportunities because our system is a crazy-quilt.

• Make transit work better for us.
  
  Transit as now delivered is designed for high-density urban areas, and it works very well in those settings. If we are to increase transit use in lower-density suburban areas, though, we have to think creatively, really outside-the-box. The Eastside’s central cities will become more dense and be served well by transit, but to make any real progress in getting us out of our SOVs, transit in the ‘burbs needs to be re-thought. There is simply too much time involved in the transit option for most people, making it no choice at all. Tackling this problem is doubly important, as the rebuild of the SR 520 bridge will include tolls. We must give people real options, not imaginary ones.

• Expand financing options.
  
  We compete with other urban regions that use a variety of financing mechanisms. We need to expand the availability of tax-increment financing, public-private partnerships and tolling for system funding. Some of these will require pilot projects, public discussion and a clear understanding of alternatives. In the case of public-private partnerships, we need to ensure that we strike hard bargains in which the public sees real benefits and gains.

For more information on transportation plans and data, check these websites:

Puget Sound Regional Council - www.psrc.org

Washington State Department of Transportation - www.wsdot.gov

Quote above can be found in The Great City, Bruce Katz, Director, Metropolitan Policy Program, appearing in The Seattle Times, January 30, 2005; http://www.brookings.edu/views/op-ed/katz/20050130.htm

If you have questions or comments about these issues or others, please don’t hesitate to contact me via email at deb@debeddy.net or phone 425.827.9105.