AltBrothers

Run-up to a transit killing

A cloud is hanging over Seattle much like the one that hung over our nation the summer of 2003. We now know that that cloud was the result of humanly engineered truth-suppression and misuse of false facts. It was the act of using misinformation to lie, support lies and to not act in what was true and right. We call that time in our recent past a “run-up to war”. I anticipate that the cloud now above Seattle will be known as a “run-up to a transit killing”.

Seattle, through King County Metro, has one of the better bus transit systems in the United States. However as Seattle’s streets and freeways continue to clog, King County Metro is increasingly unable to keep up. As Americans jobs continue moving to Asia, cities in Japan, China, India, and Malaysia are making inner-city travel easier through building impressive monorail systems. This gives an increasing number of their citizens less stress and more time to be productive professionally and personally. Their gain is America’s and Seattle’s loss.

Earlier this year, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels admirably was successful in convincing U.S. mayors to adapt the Kyoto Protocol on Greenhouse Gas. In Las Vegas, the new monorail has already carried its 10 millionth rider and is on pace to replace 4.4 million automobile trips off the road. However, as the Seattle Monorail Project was correcting its original unworkable financing, Mayor Nickels inexplicably and completely withdrew his support, revoked the Transit Way Agreement, erected special hurdles and set movable targets. You would think that Nickels must know what he’s doing, but according to an October 24, 2005 editorial in Infrastructure Journal (http://www.ijonline.com), it seems that Nickels doesn’t know or is not being honest about how cities such as Chicago, Miami, Minneapolis and Denver are financing their critical transportation and infrastructure needs today, and that our Seattle Monorail Project is well within the limits.

Building on this cloud of withheld information, is the fact that many people in Seattle believe that the monorail will have little positive impact on Seattle. This is because most people do not see the monorail in cooperation with light rail, providing an exponential increase in in-city rail service. Look at the maps. The Green Line monorail is much more than a rail between Ballard and West Seattle.

The Green Line is a rail corridor which (if given the chance) will add ten (10) new in-city rail-commute options where only two (2) rail-commute options are just now under construction. It’s an obvious benefit to die-hard car owners in lower insurance rates and repair/parking costs for less in-city driving. Could these silent interests, behind the scenes, be part of the cloud-producing force? I don’t think any in Seattle have asked the question. Surely a transit project that is able to be self-sufficient (no public subsidies) is a threat to high heaven. Eternal subsidy transit is a darling. It’s usually slow and it grows even slower if taxpayers don’t kill it in the end.

Some are crying for bus rapid transit and streetcars. But how will that happen? Does that call for building more lanes? How rapid and time-certain will they be on surface streets with surface street issues? Who’s mobility will they slow down or cut off in order to gain the priority green-lighting advantage?

Back to rail. Sound Transit’s Phase 2 is the effort to tunnel north under the University District and up and out to Northgate — a tough proposition, given the current experience under Beacon Hill. Then there is crossing Lake Washington to Redmond. The corridor from Ballard, through downtown and out to West Seattle would happen later - likely year 2015 or later. Ballard and West Seattle will just keep on becoming more disconnected from the central city, and the central city increasingly cut off from its west-city hubs.

We in Seattle have been silenced and whipped into a frenzy over two state-owned roads (the Viaduct and State Route 520). We’ve been threatened that supporting rail transit is taking away money for road safety, never mind that freeway drivers apparently have repeatedly rejected tolls, hot lanes or increased HOV lanes to decrease wear and tear and increase safety repair funds. California has hot lanes, Florida, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and others have tolls on bridges and highways and have had them for decades.
The failure of the Washington State Legislature, the WSDOT, and the failure of city leaders in progressing our road system to standards that are so “yesterday” in other areas is not the fault of transit supporters, and in particular, is not the fault of the four-times voted Green Line Transit Plan. If the state’s new gas tax is raising the money we were told it would, then we can repair the roads and have more rail transit too.

The Seattle Monorail Project has new leadership and a greatly improved Phase 1 plan and financing. We also have Proposition 2 on the ballot to directly elect board members to make sure we have qualified people who will do what we elect them to do.

It is baffling and reprehensible that a mayor who claims to support decreasing carbon emissions, and even road safety will use this opportunity to kill a proven emissions decreaser, and pressure alleviator on road-use. It is even sadder that so many in Seattle are silent and assisting this terrible casualty.

A great American who just recently left us said,

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

Rosa Parks, an American who’s civil rights were being killed on public transit, said those words. Her wisdom is fitting for us. Timely and reliable transportation is essential for the masses of us who cannot afford downtown high-rise living, or ever-moving to the neighborhood of our next job. It is darned near close to if not a civil right. The call comes to us today as it came to a tired commuter in 1955. “Wait, drive, pollute more and surrender more of your time” in a time-eating, congesting, and sprawling paradigm. Why won’t we invest in our own good, for our right to faster, time-certain mobility and greater employment and personal opportunities through advanced transit?

We have suffered 30 years as a no rail town. We can vote “no” to monorail and spend the next 30 as a 1-rail town. It isn’t too late to do the right thing. I hope history will write only that this has been a “run-up to an attempted transit killing”. Brothers and sisters in Seattle, please vote “YES” for Monorail Proposition #1 and #2.