Sound Transit: Tim Eyman’s great white whale

Despite hav­ing failed to qual­i­fy the last four (yes, four) con­sec­u­tive ini­tia­tives he print­ed up peti­tions for, Tim Eyman is once again ask­ing his shrink­ing base of fol­low­ers to believe in him and give him mon­ey — lots of mon­ey — to force a new anti-Sound Tran­sit ini­tia­tive in front of the Legislature.

Ini­tia­tive 947 would sab­o­tage the expan­sion of light rail, express bus, and com­muter rail ser­vices approved over­whelm­ing­ly by vot­ers through­out Puget Sound last year. Eyman’s bat­tle cry for I‑947 is “Let’s stick it to Sound Tran­sit!”, which he is now using in all of his communications.

As I explained yes­ter­day, Eyman absolute­ly despis­es Sound Tran­sit because his many past attempts to “stick it” to the agency have end­ed in failure.

That’s evi­dent­ly cre­at­ed a very deep reser­voir of resentment.

While Eyman has endured years of set­backs and defeats of all kinds, Sound Tran­sit has rolled for­ward. It got Cen­tral Link light rail up and run­ning, then expand­ed it three times with Air­port Link, Uni­ver­si­ty Link, and Angle Lake Link. It has com­plet­ed new park and ride facil­i­ties, new Sounder sta­tions (includ­ing in Muk­il­teo, where Eyman lives) and it has added more bus ser­vice… a lot of bus service.

Sound Tran­sit’s rid­er­ship and cred­i­bil­i­ty just keep going up. And that infu­ri­ates Eyman. He can’t stand it. In an email today, he rants at length about the agen­cy’s influ­ence, even accus­ing Sound Tran­sit of hav­ing “hired every law firm”:

Sound Tran­sit has autonomous, unchecked pow­er. They’re immu­nized by an unelect­ed, unac­count­able board. They have no fear of law­suits because they’ve hired every law firm. They exten­sive­ly adver­tise on TV, radio, and news­pa­pers so the media won’t jour­nal­is­ti­cal­ly or edi­to­ri­al­ly chal­lenge them aggres­sive­ly. They spon­sor muse­ums and con­cert halls and orches­tras and operas and sports sta­di­ums with our tax dol­lars.  They are a gar­gan­tu­an octo­pus of influence.

What a pack of lies! (Typ­i­cal for Tim, of course.)

First of all, Sound Tran­sit does not have unchecked pow­er. Sound Tran­sit has a man­date from the peo­ple of Puget Sound to improve qual­i­ty of life by devel­op­ing a region­al mass tran­sit sys­tem. The peo­ple of urban King, Sno­homish, and Pierce coun­ties have vot­ed three times — in 1996, 2008, and 2016 — to autho­rize Sound Tran­sit to build light rail, com­muter rail, and express bus infrastructure.

Sec­ond, all but one mem­ber of the Sound Tran­sit Board (the Sec­re­tary of Trans­porta­tion) is an elect­ed offi­cial from either a coun­ty or a city in Sound Tran­sit’s juris­dic­tion. They are thus both elect­ed and account­able to the peo­ple of our region. When Sound Tran­sit was cre­at­ed back in the 1990s, the Leg­is­la­ture decid­ed that it made sense for Sound Tran­sit to be gov­erned by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of its local gov­ern­ment part­ners, and that struc­ture has worked very well.

Third, the notion that Sound Tran­sit has “hired every law firm” is laugh­able. It is cer­tain­ly true that Sound Tran­sit has beat­en Tim Eyman and his wealthy bene­fac­tors in the courts many times. But that was­n’t because the agency bought off every mem­ber of the bar who has been admit­ted to prac­tice law in our state. It’s because Sound Tran­sit was cor­rect on the law and Team Eyman was not.

Fourth, Sound Tran­sit adver­tis­es to ensure more peo­ple are aware of what it offers, not because it expects to get uncrit­i­cal media cov­er­age. For exam­ple, peo­ple liv­ing in Muk­il­teo (like Eyman) who want to go to a game in SoDo can choose to bypass I‑5 traf­fic jams by tak­ing a spe­cial Sounder game day train to Safe­co or Cen­tu­ryLink Fields on many week­ends — if they know that ser­vice is avail­able. Sound Tran­sit adver­tis­es in order to make sure that they do. Eyman is clear­ly famil­iar with the ads, which is proof that Sound Tran­sit’s mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy is working.

No insti­tu­tion cre­at­ed by humankind is per­fect, and Sound Tran­sit is no excep­tion. But the work Sound Tran­sit is doing is incred­i­bly impor­tant. The infra­struc­ture the agency is build­ing is bad­ly need­ed, and there­fore worth defending.

Fif­teen years ago, when Tim Eyman set his sights on Sound Tran­sit, I’d had enough of his lying, cheat­ing, and dou­ble-deal­ing. I got involved. I became an activist.

I fig­ured the infra­struc­ture Sound Tran­sit was build­ing was so impor­tant that some­body should be build­ing polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture to defend it from Eyman and his ilk. So I found­ed Per­ma­nent Defense. And then, a year and half lat­er, I cre­at­ed the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, which pub­lish­es this blog.

NPI and Per­ma­nent Defense have fought tire­less­ly to turn back attacks on Sound Tran­sit so that Sound Tran­sit could focus on its mis­sion. And we’ve been very suc­cess­ful. Mean­while, Sound Tran­sit has demon­strat­ed that it can deliver.

Sad­ly, that does­n’t mat­ter to Tim “We Love Our Cars” Eyman or Sound Tran­sit’s oth­er unspar­ing crit­ics, most of whom could be called road war­riors because they want trans­porta­tion dol­lars to only flow to roads and high­ways, not mass tran­sit — or at least not rail tran­sit. They don’t ride tran­sit and they don’t under­stand that invest­ing in tran­sit ben­e­fits peo­ple who don’t ride it. They believe, mis­tak­en­ly, that if we just put every dol­lar we can find into wider roads, con­ges­tion will dissipate.

But it won’t. Build­ing more high­way lanes and more roads will only cre­ate more traf­fic. And worse grid­lock. It may sound para­dox­i­cal, but it’s true.

The phe­nom­e­non even has a name: induced demand.

Traf­fic engi­neers and urban plan­ners under­stand it. So do most pro­gres­sive elect­ed lead­ers. I’ve dis­cussed it many times here on the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate. Regret­tably, a lot of peo­ple on the right wing seem not to under­stand it at all. Attempts to date to explain this and relat­ed con­cepts to them have large­ly been fruitless.

I real­ly wish they’d pick up the pam­phlets of Paul Weyrich and Bill Lind and edu­cate them­selves. Weyrich was a staunch con­ser­v­a­tive who believed in the impor­tance of build­ing mass tran­sit and espe­cial­ly rail tran­sit. He and Lind wrote per­sua­sive­ly about the need for Amer­i­can cities to invest in tran­sit and the ben­e­fits of doing so.

Free­dom of mobil­i­ty is ulti­mate­ly all about hav­ing choic­es. When there’s just one mode avail­able — when dri­ving is the only way to get from Point A to Point B — that’s not free­dom. But by invest­ing in a mul­ti­modal sys­tem that makes it eas­i­er to walk, bike, or ride to our des­ti­na­tions, we can unshack­le our­selves from the chains of grid­lock. And every time one of us who owns a car choos­es not to dri­ve it, we’re free­ing up space on our exist­ing road­ways. That’s a win.

Thanks to Sound Tran­sit, I can go places today with­out my car that I could not have gone fif­teen years ago or even ten years ago.

This free mobil­i­ty future is what NPI is fight­ing for. It is the future that peo­ple in our region have repeat­ed­ly vot­ed for. Tim Eyman may not respect the vot­ers’ will, but I’m con­fi­dent we can once again defeat Tim Eyman should his I‑947 have seri­ous mon­ey behind it. It will require work, but it’s work we’re capa­ble of doing.