Curtis King and Rodney Tom’s transportation “listening tour” adds more stops

A few weeks ago, when Sen­ate Repub­li­cans announced the dates and loca­tions for their autumn trans­porta­tion lis­ten­ing tour, we crit­i­cized them for not sched­ul­ing stops in places like Seat­tle (the state’s largest city) or Bre­mer­ton (one of the state’s fer­ry depen­dent com­mu­ni­ties). At the time, I wrote:

Trans­porta­tion is a major issue for Wash­ing­to­ni­ans who live in fer­ry-depen­dent com­mu­ni­ties, which leads us to won­der: Why wasn’t a meet­ing sched­uled in, say, Bre­mer­ton, Port Townsend, Fri­day Har­bor, or Anacortes?

And what about peo­ple in south­west or south­east­ern Wash­ing­ton who don’t live near Van­cou­ver or Yaki­ma? There’s no meet­ing being held at a loca­tion with­in rea­son­able dri­ving dis­tance for many Wash­ing­to­ni­ans. Was any thought giv­en to sched­ul­ing meet­ings in Belling­ham, Aberdeen, Pull­man, or the Tri-Cities?

There’s still no meet­ing sched­uled in Island, Whit­man, Grays Har­bor, or Kitap coun­ties. But to their cred­it, the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have added mid-Octo­ber stops in Seat­tle and Belling­ham, which are very pro­gres­sive cities whose peo­ple care about mass tran­sit (unlike Sen­ate Republicans).

The new stops are to occur on the fol­low­ing dates and at the fol­low­ing places:

• Octo­ber 14th – Seat­tle, 6–9 PM: Loca­tion changed to First Pres­by­ter­ian Church, 1013 8th Avenue, Seat­tle, WA 98104
• Octo­ber 15th – Belling­ham, 6–9 PM, Port of Belling­ham Cruise Ter­mi­nal, 355 Har­ris Avenue, Belling­ham, WA 98225

Now that there is a real Seat­tle stop on the tour, the Sen­ate Repub­li­cans’ web­site no longer ridicu­lous­ly calls the Sep­tem­ber 17th Belle­vue stop “Seattle/Bellevue”.

A stop was also added in the Tri-Cities, but that has already tak­en place, on Sep­tem­ber 26th. We’d still like to see stops in cities like Aberdeen, Pull­man, and espe­cial­ly Bre­mer­ton. For peo­ple liv­ing on the Olympic Penin­su­la, the clos­est stops on the tour are pret­ty far away (Taco­ma, Everett, Seat­tle, Vancouver).

Bre­mer­ton would be some­what clos­er for a great many Penin­su­la dwellers, and it would also be very con­ve­nient for Kit­sap Coun­ty res­i­dents, who are fer­ry-depen­dent and cur­rent­ly adjust­ing to high­er fer­ry fares.

Read­ers who care about pro­tect­ing Metro from dra­con­ian cuts should plan on show­ing up next Mon­day at the hear­ing down­town, a week from tomor­row. The Tran­sit Rid­ers Union will be hold­ing a ral­ly out­side to demand fund­ing for Metro begin­ning at 5 PM, one hour before the meet­ing begins.

If you’re able to spare time next Mon­day, please make plans to attend the ral­ly and the meet­ing and let Sen­ate Repub­li­cans know you’re opposed to gut­ting Metro ser­vice. Metro will have no choice but to make deep cuts next year if the Leg­is­la­ture does not give King Coun­ty the author­i­ty to con­tin­ue col­lect­ing vehi­cle fees.