Bill Virgin gets confused sometimes

Bill Virgin’s column today in the Seattle P-I trashing Roads and Transit achieves the remarkable feat of contradicting itself not once, not twice, but three times. That's a pretty impressive feat, if you ask me. Bill decides to begin with a delightful metaphor.

The 8-foot-tall steaming pile of elephant dung in the middle of Proposition 1 is Sound Transit's grasp for billions (the exact count of billions depends on who's doing the counting and what they're including) to expand the light rail system to, egads, Tacoma to the south, Bellevue and Redmond to the east and Lynnwood to the north.

Why eight feet? And why on earth would we want to build light rail to Tacoma and Bellevue, Redmond, and Lynnwood?

Absolutely nobody lives there, or ever travels there for any reason. Remember Redmond, by the way.... it's one of Bill’s contradictions.

Nor is that all. Did you know, for example, that there's a plan for yet another streetcar, this one to run from the International District up to Pill Hill and Capitol Hill? If it's hill climbing we're after, why not a cog railway? Or maybe we can ask Pittsburgh if they've got an extra incline they could spare.

Why not ask San Francisco? Or I suppose we could take a little trip back in time to when Seattle, hills and all, had a rather extensive street car network. The idea that street cars can’t climb hills is silly. They can and do. Not to mention that a route from the International District to First Hill can avoid many of the steeper grades.

The specifics of Prop 1 pose a huge dilemma for business owners in this region. Do they vote for the package, figuring that there's enough good in it to outweigh the gawdawful parts? Or do they reject it entirely, figuring the increased financial burden on businesses, their customers and employees (in the form of higher sales and motor vehicle excise taxes) is far worse than the congestion that won't be relieved?

The truth is that they support it. Almost every chamber of commerce has endorsed the plan along with many of regions businesses and employers. They don’t just support the roads portion, but the transit portion as well. You can read the whole list here. Bill, surprisingly enough, actually knows this. Emphasis mine:

Officialdom -- the governor, the Port of Seattle, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, among others -- is backing Prop 1 (not to be confused with a ballot measure in King County to renew a Medic One levy, also called Proposition 1). "The time is now. The longer we wait, the more expensive these transportation fixes become," the chamber's endorsement resolution says. "This is an issue of global competitiveness -- we will lose businesses, talent and economic opportunities to other more advanced regions if we don't provide reliable transportation now."

But officialdom has probably not had to drive every day past that elongated Stonehenge Sound Transit is building in the South End, marveling at the billions being sucked up in construction of light rail's first phase and the millions more that will be required in subsidies to operate it until the whole thing crumbles to sand eons hence.

Huh? I guess all the businesses who belong to the Seattle Chamber of Commerce (and almost every other local chamber) don’t count as businesses in Bill's mind.

(While we are on the subject of subsidies, let us deal with and dispense with for good the complaint that people have to subsidize the highway system even if they don't own a car. Yes, they do subsidize the road system -- as well they should. Unless they produce and dispose of everything they consume at home, do not travel beyond the boundaries of their property and have no expectation of having police, fire or ambulance crews show up in an emergency, then they do derive benefit from the highway system, and accordingly should pay.)

While we’re on the subject of driving past things, I suggest that Bill take a drive on I-90 out past Sammamish. He might notice a massive $178 million dollar interchange and fancy new road up to the Sammamish Plateau. A developer footed one-fifth the cost and I suppose in a few centuries the tax revenue generated from the people living up there, about six to seven thousand will cover the rest.

The role of government is to allocate resources. Sometimes I subsidize you, other times you subsidize me. It’s called having a society.

The objections to Prop 1 go well beyond the huge chunk of money going to transit instead of where it might do more good. They're also raised by what the mass-transit spending is for -- more fixed rail, instead of smarter, more flexible, more effective and less expensive options.

[...]

If Sound Transit is so enamored with rail, it ought to add whatever help it can to getting back in operation the Seattle waterfront trolley, which, aside from moving tourists, was helpful in getting spectators to and from Safeco and Qwest fields.)

So Bill's alternative to rail is...rail?

Having a waterfront trolley is nice, but it does not address the major congestion along corridors like I-90, I-405, and I-5. Extending Link light rail, while not cheap, will give commuters a quick, reliable, safe, and clean choice.

They might even talk with Microsoft about why the company set up its own bus service to move employees between its office campuses.

Just a guess, but I bet it’s because they recognize that people ride transit. If only light rail was going to Redmond. I thought I read that Bill mentioned the proposed extension to Redmond. Oh...that's right:

expand the light rail system to, egads, Tacoma to the south, Bellevue and Redmond to the east and Lynnwood to the north.

That's right, nobody goes to Bellevue, Lynnwood, Tacoma, or Redmond. Sound Transit just wants to build Link for fun.

Something for tourists to ride when they come here and decide to head out to the suburban wilderness beyond the Seattle city limits.

Between the attacks from the anti-tax crowd, the "cars are evil" cult and the mass-transit skeptics, Proposition 1 is increasingly in trouble. About the only workable strategy left to the coalition of Big Government (although Ron Sims has bailed), Big Business, Big Labor and Big Media is to proclaim, "If you don't vote for this, then we'll all hold our breath till we turn blue and you won't get anything ever and won't you be sorry, so there."

Not sure if you have been paying attention, Bill, but that isn't the strategy. The strategy is to explain how this plan benefits every community throughout Puget Sound, and assure voters that what is promised can be delivered.

If Bill has watched the television ads, then he knows that the campaign theme isn't "vote for this or else".

Would Bill prefer we not have a vote at all, or that the results just get ignored?

After reading this column several times, I still don’t quite get what his point is. He knocks rail, but argues that the Sounder and the waterfront streetcar are good alternatives. He says the new light rail won’t go anywhere useful, then argues that it should go places it is in fact going.

Finally, he argues that business have a hard time supporting the plan, while using a quote from the Seattle Chamber supporting the plan. Pretty baffling.

Virgin knows we need to do something...but he doesn't like this package. Well, what is his plan? Increasing bus service? Congestion pricing? Wider freeways? That's not going to cut it. The heart of this package...the component that boosts the effectiveness of all the other projects...is light rail. It is a proven transit solution. We can either put rail in now...or pay more to do it later.

We should have invested in mass transit years ago with Forward Thrust, but we didn't. It would be a disaster to make that mistake again.