Roads & Transit opponents too confused to make a real case for voting no

With absentee ballots scheduled to start going out in just a few days, the number of stunningly childish attacks on the Roads & Transit package have increased dramatically, collectively reaching the level of a embarrassing temper tantrum, which is oddly both amusing and pathetic at the same time.

While local right wing bloggers continue to express their loathing, this morning's P-I features a Ted Van Dyk column filled with so much nonsense it's hard to contemplate how it all fits into 817 words, because just about every bit of it is ill-informed. It does not offer a rational argument against Sound Transit 2, which is the component of the package its author hates - Van Dyk admits he would support RTID if it were alone.

Van Dyk is obviously confused - very confused. He decided long ago he didn't like Sound Transit, so he sees what he wants to see.

He imagines light rail trains running on rails plated of gold (it's in the column title, folks! - "Stop light rail in its gold-plated tracks"). Most people would say that's only figurative language... but with Van Dyk, we're not so sure.

Ted probably thinks Sound Transit intends to serve caviar free to each passenger at all hours of the day, hand out Starbucks frappucinos to each rider when they board (on the town), and has plans to install huge leather couches inside of Link trains with flat screen televisions hooked up to satellite service...so Seahawks fans can watch NFL Sunday Ticket on their way to the game.

To most people that sounds totally ridiculous. Who'd want their tax dollars spent like that? But this is akin to what Ted Van Dyk sees when he looks at the plainly simple Sound Transit 2 proposal, structured around fifty miles of new Link trackage set to serve dozens of neighborhoods in congested corridors.

Ted doesn't see a working rail system that painlessly connects Seattle to the suburbs. He imagines something different, something stupendously wasteful, like what I described above. And that's why his column stinks. It is not a serious, thoughtful discussion about light rail. It's seething hatred shaped into words:

The Sound Transit portion of Prop. 1 is the most intellectually dishonest and cynical such proposal I have seen over a lifetime in politics and public policy. The public officials sponsoring it either do not comprehend or care about its Jonestown Kool-Aid implications for the region.

Yikes!

Whatever Van Dyk's drinking evidently has lead in it, because that is a crazy paragraph. How is a carefully crafted plan for good, reliable rapid transit, constructed on a huge foundation of public comment, "cynical"? If there's been any intellectual dishonesty in this debate, it has come from people such as Van Dyk, whose attacks have been colorful but ignorant.

Van Dyk's not the only one who is confused, though.

Looking over the thread attached to a Strange Bedfellows post about Roads & Transit a couple weeks ago, I came across this brilliant comment by an unregistered user urging other voters to reject the package. Here's the first part:

According to Randal O'Toole, The Thoreau Institute, there has never been a light rail system which has met its projected ridership or profitability. The systems do not go where people want to go and do not provide transportation when people want to travel.

The fixed locations of light rail absolutely prohibit and modification of the system at a reasonable cost when the demographics of the area change. Bus rapid-transit is a better way to go, because it allows the flexibility of using existing roads as alternate routes in emergencies and with changes in population.

The commenter is wrong about rail, which is actually versatile, flexible, dependable, and reliable. Light rail, in particular, can be built at grade, below ground, or above ground, as the Central Link system is. Of course light rail has a fixed alignment, and that is its strength: because it operates in its own right of way, it can't get stuck in congestion. Light rail isn't intended to exist by itself, it's supposed to be part of a larger transit network that helps get people where they want to go.

When roads are the only choice, everyone is forced to drive, and endless gridlock ensues. No matter how big the highways get, the gridlock remains the same or gets worse. This fact is irrefutable: it has been well documented over and over again.

If you've ever driven down a canyon interstate like I-680 in the exurban Bay Area, then you know what I mean: it's bumper to bumper bumpers even though there are at least six lanes on each side of the highway. And that's just one example. Planners in urban Georgia have stupidly continued to create and widen highways but Atlanta's traffic remains as snarled as ever. Go there and see for yourself.

Likewise, if you've visited a major city with a working rail system, you know how convenient and useful such a service can be.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat recently visited Portland, wrote a column about his experiences, and concluded that "we will love" light rail. It's one of the finest pieces he's ever written:

My worry has been about what we'll get for the money. You don't want to spend billions and end up with transit that dithers, stopping at red lights and halting about like a street trolley.

So I came to Portland to ride its 44 miles of light rail. To see what it's like. Portland's system is similar in technology and design to the 50-mile light-rail expansion plan King, Pierce and Snohomish counties are voting on in the Nov. 6 election.

It didn't take more than two minutes for me to be impressed. That's how long I waited to catch my first train in downtown Portland.

In two days of riding the rails, on 14 different trains, the longest I waited for one to come was eight minutes. That was at 11 on a Sunday night.

The longest any of my trains spent stopped at a station was 25 seconds — even when 75 rush-hour commuters tried to board a crowded train at once. I've waited much longer for a single rider to get on a Seattle bus, fumbling for change or arguing with the driver.

Portland isn't the only city with a working rail system, of course.

A few weeks ago, at the beginning of August, I flew to Chicago to attend the second YearlyKos Convention. After landing at Midway Airport, I collected my suitcase at baggage claim, bought a 7 day transit pass allowing unlimited trips for $20, and took a skybridge out of the terminal to the L station.

There I boarded an Orange Line train that rapidly took me to downtown Chicago, where I was able to get off about a block away from my hotel.

The trip took maybe twenty minutes during rush hour traffic. That's the beauty and simplicity of a rail system.

I can't wait for the day when I can get on a Link train in downtown Redmond and take it all the way to SeaTac Airport to catch a flight.

Link will connect major hubs together, serving major corridors and offering relief to commuters. It will interface with park & rides, Sounder commuter rail (a heavy rail system), buses operated by Sound Transit and its partner agencies, and streetcars such as Tacoma Link. Many of the projects in the RTID section of the package (the "roads" component) explicitly benefit Sound Transit 2.

Light rail will take people where they want to go. It will provide a choice and it will provide convenience. Sound Transit is not building light rail to make money, it's building it because it's an essential ingredient in a multimodal transportation system. Injecting profitability into this discussion is ridiculous, because public services are not moneymaking ventures.

Perhaps the real confusion of Roads & Transit opponents is well summarized by this last sentence written by the anonymous P-I commenter who groused about Link:

A NO vote on R-67 is the only rational choice for taxpayers who are already overburdened.

Wrong ballot measure, genius.