Tim Eyman gloms onto another anti-red light camera measure — this time in Redmond

I’ve lost track of the num­ber of times I’ve been asked (usu­al­ly in con­ver­sa­tion) what moti­vat­ed me to cre­ate Per­ma­nent Defense more than nine years ago. Reg­u­lar read­ers are undoubt­ed­ly famil­iar with the sto­ry of PD’s found­ing, because I’ve told it or referred to it many times over the years.

The cat­a­lyst, of course, was Tim Eyman’s tak­ing of his own donors’ mon­ey for his per­son­al gain — a scan­dal that was first exposed by the Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer and then con­firmed by Eyman him­self days later.

But my moti­va­tion for cre­at­ing Per­ma­nent Defense was pro­tect­ing the qual­i­ty of life of the com­mu­ni­ty that I am proud to call home: Redmond.

Pri­or to launch­ing Per­ma­nent Defense in Feb­ru­ary of 2002, I was what you might call a pas­sivist — some­body who tracks pol­i­tics, but does­n’t par­tic­i­pate. I’d care­ful­ly fol­lowed the debate over I‑695, I‑722, I‑745, and I‑747 (Eyman’s schemes for 1999, 2000, and 2001, respectively).

As local gov­ern­ments began deal­ing with the after­math of the lat­ter mea­sure in late 2001 and ear­ly 2002, I real­ized that my way of life, and my neigh­bors’ way of life, was being threat­ened, even though I was (and still am) for­tu­nate enough to reside in one of Wash­ing­ton’s most afflu­ent cities.

Red­mond tru­ly is char­ac­ter­ized by its pub­lic ser­vices. We have a top-notch police force, a respon­sive fire depart­ment (which oper­ates a Medic One unit), a well-equipped region­al library branch, won­der­ful pub­lic schools, and a pletho­ra of fine parks, includ­ing Mary­moor (which is man­aged by King County).

Red­mond city gov­ern­ment also does many oth­er things: it cleans the streets, fills pot­holes, sup­plies clean, fresh water to homes and busi­ness­es, pro­vides facil­i­ties and fund­ing for sea­son­al fes­ti­vals (Red­mond­Lights in win­ter, Der­by Days in sum­mer), main­tains com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing spaces, and sends inspec­tors out to ensure that con­struc­tion projects are in com­pli­ance with build­ing codes.

All of these ser­vices cost mon­ey and are sup­port­ed by our com­mon wealth.

I knew that if Red­mond’s com­mon wealth was weak­ened, the place I’d grew up, the com­mu­ni­ty I knew and loved, would with­er away and become a shell of its for­mer self. I resolved that I would not allow that to hap­pen. And so, to help pro­tect Red­mond, I became an activist against Tim Eyman’s initiatives.

Nine years lat­er, Tim has gone from indi­rect­ly threat­en­ing Red­mond’s future to med­dling in the affairs of NPI’s home­town. See, not long ago, Red­mond installed red-light cam­eras at sev­er­al major inter­sec­tions, hop­ing to improve traf­fic safe­ty at those places. Tim has long been an oppo­nent of red-light cam­eras — he unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt­ed to place statewide lim­its on their use in 2008 with Ini­tia­tive 985, which was over­whelm­ing­ly reject­ed by vot­ers.

But of course, he did­n’t give up. His new strat­e­gy is to latch onto ini­tia­tives to ban and/or restrict red-light cam­eras at the city lev­el. He asso­ci­at­ed him­self with such an effort in Muk­il­teo (where he lives), which passed with 71% of the vote. He recent­ly asso­ci­at­ed him­self with efforts to get rid of red-light cam­eras in Mon­roe, Longview, Wenatchee, and Bellingham.

And now he’s try­ing to get red-light cam­eras removed in Redmond.

Eyman calls him­self a “spon­sor” of the ini­tia­tive even though he does­n’t live in Red­mond and can’t legal­ly sign it.

His pur­pose in being affil­i­at­ed with the actu­al insti­ga­tor, Scott Har­lan (who does live in Red­mond) is to gen­er­ate pub­lic­i­ty and pres­tige for him­self (he nev­er pass­es up an oppor­tu­ni­ty to take cred­it for something).

But what he fails to grasp is that what he is doing is not unlike what the red-light cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers do when they attempt to drum up busi­ness. They are sales­men from some­where else, and he is a sales­man from some­where else.

Both Eyman and the red-light cam­era man­u­fac­tur­ers are free to ped­dle their “wares” here, no mat­ter how unwel­come they may be. Red­mond is part of Amer­i­ca, and all Amer­i­cans are enti­tled to free­dom of speech, free­dom of assem­bly, and the free­dom to peti­tion for a redress of griev­ances. Our free­doms do not end when we leave the juris­dic­tions where we reside as individuals.

All the same, Red­mond is not oblig­ed to buy what either of them is selling.

We at NPI agree that unchecked sur­veil­lance by gov­ern­ment (or the pri­vate sec­tor) threat­ens indi­vid­ual right to pri­va­cy. That is why we favor repeal of the “Patri­ot” Act, are against the TSA“s use of intru­sive body scan­ners, sup­port state efforts to thwart attempts to cre­ate a nation­al ID card (REAL ID), and were fierce­ly opposed the bill that gave tele­coms immu­ni­ty fol­low­ing the dis­clo­sure that they had helped the Bush admin­is­tra­tion ille­git­i­mate­ly spy on Amer­i­can citizens.

At the same time, the red-light cam­eras that Red­mond has deployed are not the unspeak­able evil Tim Eyman and his cohorts make them out to be. Red­mond is not Med­i­na, where pret­ty much every inter­sec­tion is sub­ject to video­tap­ing. The cam­eras we do have were not installed sim­ply to gin up rev­enue for the city, as Coun­cilmem­ber David Car­son patient­ly explained in a post­ing on Facebook:

Red­mond is *not* a city that is starv­ing for rev­enue Scott [Har­lan]. We have a AAA bond rat­ing and Red­mond is prob­a­bly the most rev­enue-sta­ble city in all of Wash­ing­ton State. If you’d like me to arrange a meet­ing with our Finance Direc­tor so that we can dis­cuss this on a bud­getary lev­el, I’m sure I can arrange that.

Just because oth­er juris­dic­tions use this as a cash cow to bilk dri­vers who fre­quent their streets (by tweak­ing yel­low light times and oth­er tricks to bump up the rev­enue stream) does­n’t mean that Red­mond has the same M.O. or goals. The soon­er we have a con­ver­sa­tion about the mer­its of this sys­tem on a safe­ty lev­el, the soon­er you will under­stand why the Police, May­or and Coun­cil all agree on this pro­gram (opti­mistic on its abil­i­ty to curb this prac­tice but yet still open to oth­er meth­ods — which is why it’s a pilot pro­gram at this point).

Read what Ori­on wrote about that Avondale/Union Hill inter­sec­tion (which I’ve also seen with my own eyes) and you will then under­stand WHY we’ve done this (again, after more than a year of gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion and refin­ing how we want­ed this sys­tem to be admin­is­tered). When some­one runs a red light at inter­sec­tions where the speeds approach that of free­ways, they risk their own life and that of oth­ers by flout­ing the law. I’d be com­plete­ly fine with them risk­ing their own lives, but I draw the line at those of inno­cent, law-abid­ing dri­vers and passengers.

Car­son, inci­den­tal­ly, is the most con­ser­v­a­tive of Red­mond’s sev­en city coun­cilmem­bers. His views on the major issues we face are undoubt­ed­ly more sim­i­lar to Tim Eyman’s and Scott Har­lan’s than ours. But, as his com­ments above demon­strate, he is bet­ter informed than they are. Since join­ing the city coun­cil at the begin­ning of 2008, pub­lic safe­ty has been an issue he’s had to deal with reg­u­lar­ly as one of Red­mond’s sev­en lawmakers.

If dri­vers obeyed the law and did­n’t blow through red lights, there would be no need for red light cam­eras. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, not every­body who gets behind the wheel does a good job of keep­ing their cool and dri­ving defen­sive­ly. Too many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans have for­got­ten that dri­ving is a priv­i­lege, not a right.

Reck­less dri­ving threat­ens the well-being of Red­mond’s res­i­dents. That’s why the city is try­ing to com­bat it. A dri­ver who goes rac­ing through an inter­sec­tion at, say, fifty miles an hour after the light has turned is thought­less­ly endan­ger­ing oth­er peo­ple. A vehi­cle that impacts anoth­er vehi­cle at a high-speed can eas­i­ly lead to seri­ous injury or death. Pedes­tri­ans and bicy­clists stand even less of a chance of escap­ing from such a collision.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, Red­mond’s chief exec­u­tive, John Mar­chione, is not pleased that Eyman and his pals are try­ing to abol­ish the city’s care­ful­ly planned red light pilot project. In remarks to the Red­mond Reporter (which pub­lished a sto­ry on the mat­ter yes­ter­day) he appro­pri­ate­ly termed Eyman’s rhetoric a “tem­per tantrum”. In addi­tion, he released a state­ment out­lin­ing the his­to­ry of the process to date.

“We care­ful­ly and thought­ful­ly imple­ment­ed a one-year pilot pro­gram to cre­ate and eval­u­ate traf­fic safe­ty cam­eras,” stat­ed Mar­chione. “We have a process already estab­lished where we will eval­u­ate the data and deter­mine at the end of the year whether or not to con­tin­ue the program.”

Mar­chione con­tin­ued, “Our pro­gram is unique in that any rev­enue gen­er­at­ed over the cost of the pro­gram can only be spent on traf­fic and pedes­tri­an safe­ty pro­grams and cap­i­tal improve­ments not already bud­get­ed for in our cur­rent 2011–2012 budget.”

I have no doubt that the debate over the red-light cam­eras will con­tin­ue to rage on. Eyman will con­tin­ue to belit­tle city lead­ers and ques­tion their motives. Man­u­fac­tur­ers will spend mon­ey try­ing to beat back efforts to remove their machin­ery. Peo­ple will weigh with their opin­ions at pub­lic meetings.

And the debate will con­tin­ue to miss the point.

Rather than ask­ing, Are red-light cam­eras good or bad?, we should be ask­ing a more impor­tant ques­tion, Why do so many peo­ple dri­ve reck­less­ly in the first place?

All that red-light cam­eras do is soothe a symp­tom (reck­less dri­ving). The cam­eras do not tack­le the root cause of the problem.

Address­ing root caus­es (as opposed to just symp­toms) is a major part of NPI’s phi­los­o­phy. It requires going beyond sound bites and talk­ing points, and think­ing crit­i­cal­ly. It’s not easy to do. That’s why so much of what pass­es for civic dis­course in this coun­try is shal­low in nature.

I believe there is no sim­ple answer to the ques­tion I asked above (Why do so many peo­ple dri­ve reck­less­ly in the first place?).

Part of it has to do with how we have con­struct­ed our com­mu­ni­ties; sub­urbs like Red­mond are typ­i­cal­ly dom­i­nat­ed by auto­mo­biles. And when I say “dom­i­nat­ed by auto­mo­biles”, I don’t just mean that there are lots of cars. I mean that the neigh­bor­hood was designed for vehi­cles and not people.

This has had the side effect of com­pro­mis­ing pub­lic safe­ty, as the authors of Sub­ur­ban Nation explained in 2000:

The prob­lem with cur­rent street design stan­dards is not that engi­neers have for­got­ten how to make streets feel safe but that they don’t even try. Streets that once served vehi­cles and peo­ple equi­tably are now designed for the sole pur­pose of mov­ing vehi­cles through them as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. They have become, in effect, traf­fic sew­ers. No sur­prise, then, that they fail to sus­tain pedes­tri­an life.

They add:

The desire for increased traf­fic vol­ume — “unim­ped­ed flow” — has result­ed in wider streets. While trav­el lanes on old streets are often only nine feet wide or less, new streets are usu­al­ly required to have twelve-foot lanes, which take longer for pedes­tri­ans to cross. “Unim­ped­ed flow” also has anoth­er name — speed­ing — adding all the more to pedes­tri­an risk.

Fur­ther­more:

Under cur­rent stan­dards, streets are allowed only to curve loose­ly, with the result that one fin­ger on the steer­ing wheel and one foot on the gas ped­al are all that it takes to maneu­ver through a res­i­den­tial neigh­bor­hood. The inten­tion is to pro­vide greater safe­ty by allow­ing dri­vers to see far­ther in front of them, but the result is that dri­vers feel com­fort­able dri­ving at high­er speeds, mak­ing walk­ing all the more dangerous.

Red­mond’s Pub­lic Works depart­ment has been try­ing for some years to improve road­way geome­tries by imple­ment­ing “traf­fic calm­ing” mea­sures. The city has also recon­fig­ured some streets to have few­er gen­er­al pur­pose lanes. Still, there are plen­ty of arte­ri­als in the city that remain big and wide.

Not coin­ci­den­tal­ly, all of the inter­sec­tions where red-light cam­eras have been installed have sig­nif­i­cant cross­ing distances.

Red­mond is slow­ly becom­ing more walk­a­ble and bik­able. With­in the next two decades, Sound Tran­sit’s East Link exten­sion will hope­ful­ly reach down­town, mak­ing it easy to get to Belle­vue or Seat­tle (two com­mon des­ti­na­tions for Red­mond res­i­dents) with­out a car. But most of Red­mond’s res­i­dents still live in sub­di­vi­sions and use a car to get around. What’s more, many peo­ple com­mute through Red­mond on their way to some­where else.

Most dri­ver edu­ca­tion text­books cov­er, at some point, a phe­nom­e­non known as veloc­i­t­i­za­tion. Veloc­i­t­i­za­tion occurs when the mind becomes used to trav­el­ing at a high-speed and thinks of that high-speed as nor­mal. A dri­ver can observe the phe­nom­e­non whilst exit­ing a high­way. Thir­ty miles an hour seems ridicu­lous­ly slow after hav­ing trav­eled at six­ty miles an hour for a while.

But to a per­son stand­ing still watch­ing vehi­cles merge into traf­fic from a offramp, thir­ty miles an hour seems real­ly fast. That’s because it is.

When traf­fic engi­neers build wide roads, they are effec­tive­ly invit­ing motorists to dri­ve fast. In Tim Eyman’s home­town of Muk­il­teo, there is actu­al­ly an arte­r­i­al called the Muk­il­teo Speed­way, which winds through the city and ter­mi­nates at the fer­ry dock. To me, the word “speed­way” evokes a racetrack.

That’s not an appro­pri­ate metaphor for our roads.

So we need skin­nier streets. We could also ben­e­fit from more round­abouts. Research has shown that round­abouts make for safer inter­sec­tions than traf­fic lights; this is because they force dri­vers to slow down and look around. A round­about lit­er­al­ly inter­rupts the tra­jec­to­ry of a road, where­as traf­fic lights mere­ly hang above it. Round­abouts are also more effi­cient because there’s no light to idle at. Even when the pow­er is out, round­abouts can effi­cient­ly process traffic.

But sprawl is not the only cul­prit. Our cul­ture of our instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion is, in my view, equal­ly cul­pa­ble. As a peo­ple, we have become too greedy and impa­tient, too busy to enjoy our lives. We are con­stant­ly bom­bard­ed with adver­tis­ing urg­ing us to buy the lat­est thinga­ma­jig or whatchamacal­lit. We would rather get some­where quick­ly than enjoy get­ting there.

We’re always rush­ing from one thing to the next, inward­ly seething at any­body and any­thing that gets in our way.

Instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, is coin­ci­den­tal­ly, what under­lies Tim Eyman’s sales pitch. His ini­tia­tives are all about self­ish­ness. Destroy­ing our com­mon wealth and bol­ster­ing pri­vate wealth. Under­min­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy so it can’t work for the com­mon man and serve the pub­lic good like it’s sup­posed to. Eyman is cap­i­tal­iz­ing on the ugli­er aspects of our cul­ture and bring­ing them into our politics.

Instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and self­ish­ness are not what Amer­i­ca is all about. Our found­ing fathers talked about “life, lib­er­ty, and the pur­suit of hap­pi­ness” in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence for a rea­son. They thought of the new Unit­ed States as a place where peo­ple could real­ize their potential.

At our last Spring Fundrais­ing Gala, in June 2010, NPI’s good friend John de Graaf, who has writ­ten exten­sive­ly on this top­ic, talked about the plans for the then-forth­com­ing Seat­tle Area Hap­pi­ness Ini­tia­tive, which is refram­ing and redefin­ing how we mea­sure well-being here in the heart of the Pacif­ic Northwest.

John’s books include Affluen­za (The All-Con­sum­ing Epi­dem­ic) and Take Back Your Time (Fight­ing Over­work and Time Pover­ty in Amer­i­ca). He has done more than any­body else we know to help his fel­low cit­i­zens reclaim their time and real­ize how to lead more reward­ing and ful­fill­ing lives.

We would all be safer and hap­pi­er, even amidst our sub­ur­ban sprawl, if we just slowed down — lit­er­al­ly and figuratively.

Amtrak cre­at­ed a bril­liant tele­vi­sion spot mak­ing this point. It’s called, “Kids Repeat”, and it depicts chil­dren play­ing with toy auto­mo­biles and planes, par­o­dy­ing high­way con­ges­tion and air­port con­ges­tion. The kids beau­ti­ful­ly emu­late the frus­tra­tions of the impa­tient com­muter. Just as the litany of mim­ic­ked com­plaints reach­es a crescen­do, the scene changes, show­ing anoth­er child play­ing with a giant minia­ture train­set. A hap­py child intones, “The train is now arriving.”

“The train has arrived, indeed,” says the spot’s nar­ra­tor, as a real pas­sen­ger train is shown exit­ing a tun­nel. “Amtrak. Enjoy the journey.”

If more of us took that advice (enjoy the jour­ney) would we have a prob­lem with peo­ple blow­ing red lights? Would we even need red-light cam­eras at all? Prob­a­bly not. Cour­tesy and patience have become too uncom­mon in mod­ern Amer­i­ca. We need to relearn those virtues… and take back our time as we do so.