Ignore the Seattle Times editorial board and the naysayers — vote YES on Sound Transit 3

To the aston­ish­ment of no one, the Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board this week pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al for­mal­ly rec­om­mend­ing a “no” vote on Region­al Propo­si­tion 1, the bold and much need­ed plan to expand light rail, com­muter rail, and express bus ser­vice that’s on the bal­lot in urban Puget Sound.

Com­mon­ly known as Sound Tran­sit 3 (ST3), Region­al Propo­si­tion 1 is a once in a gen­er­a­tional oppor­tu­ni­ty for Wash­ing­ton’s urban res­i­dents to ensure that tran­sit can keep up with region­al growth and expand to meet the mobil­i­ty needs of com­mu­ni­ties across King, Sno­homish, and Pierce coun­ties, where the vast major­i­ty of the state’s pop­u­la­tion is concentrated.

Propo­si­tion 1 would autho­rize Sound Tran­sit to expand our light rail spine north to Everett, south to Taco­ma, east to down­town Red­mond, west to West Seat­tle, north­west to Bal­lard, and south­east to Issaquah.

Propo­si­tion 1 would also sig­nif­i­cant­ly expand bus ser­vice. New bus rapid tran­sit lines would be cre­at­ed to run on I‑405 and SR 522, while exist­ing ST Express ser­vice would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly enhanced.

Addi­tion­al­ly, Sounder com­muter rail would expand, get­ting a new south­ern ter­mi­nus in DuPont and run­ning more frequently.

ST3 is the result of years of exten­sive out­reach and plan­ning con­duct­ed by Sound Tran­sit, yet the Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board bizarrely calls it “rushed onto the pres­i­den­tial-year bal­lot”. It’s no secret that the Blethen-owned Times does­n’t like Sound Tran­sit, but this edi­to­r­i­al makes it sound like the scribes the paper employs sim­ply haven’t been pay­ing atten­tion to ST’s work at all.

At NPI, we have, and we can attest that the ground­work for Sound Tran­sit 3 has been laid over the course of many years because we’ve been par­tic­i­pants in it.

We stepped up to con­tribute our ideas when Sound Tran­sit announced it was updat­ing its Long Range Plan. We trav­eled to Olympia to lob­by the Leg­is­la­ture to give Sound Tran­sit the rev­enue author­i­ty it need­ed to ensure ST3 would not be depen­dent sole­ly on one volatile rev­enue source like ST2 was. And when Sound Tran­sit asked the pub­lic what the final plan to sub­mit­ted to vot­ers should look like, we weighed in. So did many oth­er cit­i­zens and organizations.

We’re very hap­py with how ST3 turned out. So are many local lead­ers across the region. A pletho­ra of city coun­cils have endorsed ST3 because they rec­og­nize that a robust tran­sit sys­tem leads to greater oppor­tu­ni­ty and broad prosperity.

When peo­ple are free to get to where they want to go with­out being forced to dri­ve, they can lib­er­ate them­selves from traffic.

For tran­sit to be appeal­ing to peo­ple who have the means to dri­ve, it must be con­ve­nient, fre­quent, clean, and reli­able. That means it needs to run in its own right of way. Build­ing new right of way is not cheap, sim­ple, or easy, which accounts for ST3’s sig­nif­i­cant price tag. But it is def­i­nite­ly worth it. Ask any­one who reg­u­lar­ly rides Uni­ver­si­ty Link since it opened to the pub­lic back in March.

The Blethens and the scribes they employ have become less harsh towards Sound Tran­sit since 2008, when we vot­ed resound­ing­ly to pass ST2. But they’re still under­min­ing the noble cause of tran­sit for all with their call to reject ST3.

In an appar­ent attempt to sound more rea­son­able than it did eight years ago, the Times has adopt­ed a mantra, “Press pause!”, which it orig­i­nal­ly debuted back in June when Sound Tran­sit’s Board was prepar­ing to sub­mit ST3 to voters.

Per­haps the most galling part of this edi­to­r­i­al are the pas­sages that refer to Sound Tran­sit 2 and omit the con­text need­ed to under­stand that vote and this one.

The Times opines:

Press­ing pause would not doom the region to traf­fic hell nor would it kill transit.

Sound Tran­sit already has fund­ing to build a bus-and-rail net­work that will han­dle most of the region’s tran­sit demand through 2040.

The Sound Tran­sit 2 project now under way extends light rail from Seat­tle to Lyn­nwood and almost to Fed­er­al Way, and between Seat­tle, Belle­vue and Red­mond. This ST2 work will be done by 2023 no mat­ter what — we’re already pay­ing for it. That won’t slow or stop if the region spends anoth­er year or two refin­ing plans for its future expansion.

The Times disin­gen­u­ous­ly fails to men­tion that none of “this ST2 work” would be hap­pen­ing at all if they’d got­ten their way in 2008. They emphat­i­cal­ly called for ST2’s rejec­tion that year, after hav­ing enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly backed Sound Move (ST1) only twelve years pri­or. (That prompt­ed this response here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate, which The Stranger’s Dan Sav­age called “required read­ing”.)

The Times now seems to be tac­it­ly admit­ting that Sound Tran­sit 2 is a good thing. So are they going to admit they were wrong in 2008 when they char­ac­ter­ized ST2 as “a bad pro­pos­al” con­sist­ing of “a few stops at huge­ly expen­sive stations”?

I rather doubt an apol­o­gy will be forth­com­ing, but I still would­n’t mind see­ing one.

If that weren’t bad enough, the Times again omit­ted vital facts with this next bit:

Remem­ber, vot­ers reject­ed ST2 in 2007 because the orig­i­nal pro­pos­al was too big and unwieldy. That didn’t kill tran­sit. Vot­ers pressed pause, lead­er­ship pro­duced a more rea­son­able plan and ST2 was approved the fol­low­ing year.

That is not a good expla­na­tion of what hap­pened in 2007.

Here’s a bet­ter one.

In 2007, at the behest of state law­mak­ers, vot­ers were pre­sent­ed with a plan called Roads & Tran­sit, which was the result of a shot­gun mar­riage arranged by the Leg­is­la­ture between the now-dis­solved RTID and Sound Transit.

RTID, short for Region­al Trans­porta­tion Invest­ment Dis­trict, was an enti­ty cre­at­ed by the Leg­is­la­ture to fund urban high­way construction.

The Leg­is­la­ture told RTID and Sound Tran­sit they need­ed to go to the bal­lot togeth­er with a plan to invest mon­ey in roads as well as transit.

After vot­ers reject­ed the joint plan required by this shot­gun mar­riage, Sound Tran­sit’s poll­ster con­duct­ed research to find out why peo­ple vot­ed no. The key find­ing that came out of that research was that vot­ers did not want to vote on a pack­age that com­bined road projects with tran­sit projects.

So Sound Tran­sit went back to the bal­lot alone in 2008 — a pres­i­den­tial year — with a plan com­pa­ra­ble to what it had offered the pre­vi­ous year (though a bit scaled back), and vot­ers enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly said yes. As before, the plan called for expand­ing light rail north, south, and east, and expand­ing ST Express and Sounder.

RTID, mean­while, end­ed up get­ting killed. It was uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly dis­solved, while Sound Tran­sit began mov­ing for­ward with its Phase 2 implementation.

Since we vot­ed on ST2, Sound Tran­sit has demon­strat­ed it can con­sis­tent­ly deliv­er projects on time or ahead of sched­ule and under bud­get. The agency is very well run and has been laud­ed local­ly and nation­al­ly for its strong track record. Its new CEO, Peter Rogoff, left a fed­er­al posi­tion to run the agency because he con­sid­ered it to be a fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­ni­ty. That’s a cred­it to the great work of CEO Emer­i­tus Joni Earl and her team, who endured years of bad press as they turned ST around.

But all of this great work appar­ent­ly does­n’t count for much, because the Blethens and their scribes still don’t trust Sound Tran­sit. They say:

Press­ing pause would direct region­al lead­ers to pro­duce a more rea­son­able plan with more account­abil­i­ty, includ­ing peri­od­ic pub­lic votes, rather than allow a per­pet­u­al blank check that ST3 offers Sound Transit.

ST3 is not a “per­pet­u­al blank check”. Sound Tran­sit is not ask­ing vot­ers to give it mon­ey so it can build some­thing to be deter­mined lat­er; it is ask­ing vot­ers to autho­rize a spe­cif­ic set of projects con­nect­ing spe­cif­ic neigh­bor­hoods that would be com­plet­ed by spe­cif­ic dates. The esti­mates are con­ser­v­a­tive (account­ing for the long time­frames, which the Times also com­plained about) in keep­ing with Sound Tran­sit’s phi­los­o­phy of under-promis­ing and over-deliv­er­ing. Many of the pro­posed projects may be com­plet­ed soon­er, espe­cial­ly if fed­er­al fund­ing can be secured.

And what is meant by “peri­od­ic pub­lic votes”? Do the scribes at the Times not real­ize that elec­tions them­selves are a pub­lic ser­vice, and cost money?

Hold­ing more fre­quent votes on tran­sit expan­sion would mean incur­ring addi­tion­al costs, because we’d be in the habit of pay­ing to vote on whether to build a set of projects before we actu­al­ly start pay­ing to build those projects.

And it would mean more con­fu­sion and uncer­tain­ty. Sound Tran­sit can work with Pat­ty Mur­ray to pur­sue fed­er­al funds and col­lab­o­rate with cities on project deliv­ery much more effec­tive­ly if it does­n’t have to go back to the bal­lot every oth­er Novem­ber to get anoth­er sta­tion or seg­ment approved.

It seems to us that in call­ing for “peri­od­ic pub­lic votes” on tran­sit expan­sion (with­out ever defin­ing “peri­od­ic”), the Times is hold­ing Sound Tran­sit to a very dif­fer­ent stan­dard than it holds WSDOT, which is respon­si­ble for high­ways, fer­ries, freight mobil­i­ty pro­grams, and Amtrak Cas­cades in part­ner­ship with Amtrak and ODOT, the Ore­gon Depart­ment of Transportation.

Last year, the Gov­er­nor and Leg­is­la­ture agreed on a major trans­porta­tion pack­age, Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton, giv­ing WSDOT the go-ahead to design and con­struct a slew of high­way projects all over the state. Unlike ST3, those high­way projects have not been sub­ject­ed to a pub­lic vote, nor are they like­ly to be.

By the way, here’s what the Times edi­to­r­i­al board had to say about Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton in July of 2015, after the pack­age was final­ized:

Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee signed a $16.2 bil­lion trans­porta­tion-invest­ment pack­age that had been ham­mered out over two years of gru­el­ing nego­ti­a­tions with law­mak­ers. It is a very good, well-bal­anced deal for Wash­ing­ton state. It includes fund­ing to fin­ish the High­way 520 bridge and oth­er megapro­jects, and pro­vides tran­sit grants. It is well worth the 11.9‑cent-per-gallon gas-tax increase.

Well worth the gas tax increase and also, appar­ent­ly, the bonds the state is sell­ing to obtain addi­tion­al financ­ing for the projects (lest we forget).

So the $16 bil­lion Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton pack­age was “well worth it” (and, by impli­ca­tion, WSDOT can be trust­ed to deliv­er it) but ST3 isn’t worth it — and Sound Tran­sit can’t be trust­ed with $27 bil­lion in new tax revenue?

That’s some tor­tured log­ic. Are the Blethens and their writ­ers aware that research shows the pub­lic has a high­er regard for Sound Tran­sit than WSDOT?

We do not have “peri­od­ic pub­lic votes” on WSDOT’s plans and projects, but that does­n’t mean that WSDOT is with­out over­sight. We have a Gov­er­nor and a Leg­is­la­ture for that, as our state’s founders intended.

Sound Tran­sit is like­wise gov­erned by elect­ed offi­cials. With the excep­tion of the Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion, all mem­bers of Sound Tran­sit’s board are coun­ty exec­u­tives, city and coun­cil coun­cilmem­bers, and mayors.

The elect­ed offi­cials WSDOT answers to have the pow­er to direct WSDOT to move for­ward with megapro­jects with­out a pub­lic vote. How­ev­er, the elect­ed offi­cials Sound Tran­sit answers to can­not sign off on sys­tem expan­sion on their own; state law requires that pro­pos­als for sys­tem expan­sion go before the voters.

That is why we are vot­ing this month and next month on ST3.

Sound Tran­sit’s lead­er­ship did their home­work pri­or to sub­mit­ting ST3. The plan is ambi­tious because peo­ple have told Sound Tran­sit they want an ambi­tious plan.

Account­abil­i­ty is a pop­u­lar buzz­word in pol­i­tics, but when it’s not defined, it real­ly does­n’t mean much. Sound Tran­sit is already a heav­i­ly scru­ti­nized agency with a cit­i­zen over­sight pan­el that under­goes reg­u­lar audits, and the Seat­tle Times goes out of its way to fea­ture the agen­cy’s crit­ics in its news cov­er­age and on its edi­to­r­i­al page — some­times even simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, as you can see from this screenshot:

The Times base­less­ly sug­gests that if the region says no to ST3, vot­ers will get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote on a “more rea­son­able” plan next year or the year after.

That is high­ly unlike­ly. If ST3 goes down, we prob­a­bly won’t see anoth­er pro­pos­al for Sound Tran­sit sys­tem expan­sion until 2020, which is the next elec­tion that will see high turnout. And we can expect that a future pro­pos­al will cost much more, while deliv­er­ing less than what we’d get with this plan. Say­ing no to ST3 means wait­ing longer and pay­ing more to con­nect com­mu­ni­ties to our rail spine.

We’ve squan­dered oppor­tu­ni­ties to invest in high capac­i­ty tran­sit before, like when we turned down For­ward Thrust in the 1960s.

Eight years ago, a major­i­ty of vot­ers in Sound Tran­sit’s juris­dic­tion made the wise deci­sion to ignore the Seat­tle Times and the naysay­ers and pass Sound Tran­sit 2. We must do that again this year, so we can accel­er­ate the build­out of the rail spine that our region needs and com­ple­ment it with even bet­ter bus service.

We can con­tin­ue to stew in ever-wors­en­ing con­ges­tion on our high­ways, or we can vote to lib­er­ate more of our com­mu­ni­ties from traf­fic by pass­ing ST3.

We hope you’ll join us in mak­ing the lat­ter choice.

Vote APPROVED on Region­al Propo­si­tion 1.