2019–2021 transportation budget approved by Washington State House with five nays

The Wash­ing­ton State House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed over­whelm­ing­ly this morn­ing on a bipar­ti­san basis to adopt a trans­porta­tion bud­get for 2019–2021 (ESHB 1160) devel­oped by the House Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee, chaired by Jake Fey. The vote was nine­ty to five, with three excused.

The five nays were a mix of Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans: Sher­ry Apple­ton, Drew Hansen, Michelle Caldier, Vic­ki Kraft, and Jeff Mor­ris. The roll call was as follows:

Roll Call
HB 1160
Trans­porta­tion bud­get 19–21
Final Passage
3/29/2019

Yeas: 90; Nays: 5; Excused: 3

Vot­ing Yea: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Barkis, Bergquist, Blake, Boehnke, Callan, Cham­bers, Chan­dler, Chap­man, Cody, Cor­ry, Davis, DeBolt, Dent, Doglio, Dolan, Dufault, Dye, Enten­man, Eslick, Fey, Fitzgib­bon, Gildon, Goehn­er, Good­man, Gra­ham, Gregerson, Grif­fey, Har­ris, Hoff, Hud­gins, Irwin, Jenkin, Jink­ins, Kil­duff, Kir­by, Klip­pert, Klo­ba, Kretz, Leav­itt, Lovick, MacEwen, Macri, McCaslin, Mead, Mor­gan, Mos­bruck­er, Orcutt, Orms­by, Ortiz-Self, Orwall, Paul, Pel­lic­ciot­ti, Peter­son, Pet­ti­grew, Pol­let, Ramos, Reeves, Ric­cel­li, Robin­son, Rude, Ryu, San­tos, Schmick, Sells, Senn, Shea, Shew­make, Slat­ter, Smith, Springer, Stan­ford, Steele, Stokes­bary, Stonier, Sul­li­van, Suther­land, Tar­leton, Thai, Tharinger, Valdez, Van Wer­ven, Vick, Volz, Walen, Walsh, Wilcox, Wylie, Ybar­ra, Young, Chopp

Vot­ing Nay: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Apple­ton, Caldier, Hansen, Kraft, Morris

Excused: Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Frame, Lekanoff, Maycumber

The approx­i­mate­ly $10 bil­lion bud­get will keep the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol, Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries, and WSDOT Rail Pro­gram hum­ming in addi­tion to the state’s avi­a­tion ser­vices and high­way maintenance/highway con­struc­tion. It includes mon­ey for a long list of projects, includ­ing the removal of bar­ri­ers to fish pas­sage.

High­way megapro­jects fund­ed by this bud­get include:

• SR 520 cor­ri­dor improve­ments on the west end 
  • ($396 mil­lion)
• Cor­ri­dor widen­ing and improve­ments on I‑405 from Ren­ton to Bellevue 
  • ($384 mil­lion)
• Pre­lim­i­nary engi­neer­ing, right-of-way acqui­si­tion, and ear­ly con­struc­tion on the Puget Sound Gate­way, SR 167, and SR 509 
  • ($265 mil­lion)
• Expan­sion of the I‑5 cor­ri­dor through Joint Base Lewis-McChord 
  • ($165 mil­lion)
• Con­struc­tion of US 395 in the North Spokane Corridor 
  • ($164 mil­lion)

The objec­tive of most of these megapro­jects is to widen high­ways or con­vert exist­ing roads into high­ways by adding new lanes, which our team con­sid­ers to be waste­ful and not in line with our goal of reduc­ing cli­mate dam­ag­ing air pollutants.

Widen­ing I‑5 through JBLM, for exam­ple, will not improve traf­fic because it will sim­ply encour­age more peo­ple to dri­ve… a well doc­u­ment­ed phe­nom­e­non called induced demand that we have dis­cussed for years here on the Cas­ca­dia Advocate.

WSDOT (the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion) knows all about induced demand, but for rea­sons we can’t fath­om, the depart­ment and the Leg­is­la­ture are still mov­ing for­ward with these mul­ti­mil­lion dol­lar high­way projects.

I‑5 is already at least three lanes wide in each direc­tion between Taco­ma and Olympia. Why isn’t the state con­vert­ing one of the lanes to exclu­sive use by high occu­pan­cy vehi­cles dur­ing peak hours and pro­vid­ing fund­ing for Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit, Pierce Tran­sit, and Sound Tran­sit to increase the fre­quen­cy of bus ser­vice through the cor­ri­dor on that con­vert­ed lane? That would be a lot cheap­er and have the poten­tial to actu­al­ly pro­vide an alter­na­tive to peo­ple try­ing to fight JBLM traffic.

More lanes just means more con­ges­tion. Ask Los Angeles.

On the brighter side, the bud­get con­tains fund­ing for Wash­ing­ton State Fer­ries to con­tin­ue build­ing new ter­mi­nals in down­town Seat­tle (at Col­man Dock) and in Muk­il­teo. Both ter­mi­nals were sore­ly in need of an upgrade. The new Muk­il­teo ter­mi­nal that the state is build­ing on the site of a for­mer U.S. Air Force fuel­ing facil­i­ty will offer pedes­tri­ans and bicy­clists a much bet­ter onboard­ing experience.

It will also be seis­mi­cal­ly safe and be clos­er to Sound Tran­sit’s Muk­il­teo Sounder sta­tion. The pas­sen­ger wait­ing area was designed to be light on the earth.

This bud­get also funds projects to elec­tri­fy fer­ry ves­sels, which is fantastic.

“For the acqui­si­tion of a hybrid-elec­tric, 144-car ves­sel, $99 mil­lion is pro­vid­ed in the 2019–21 bien­ni­um, with the intent to fund the ves­sel com­ple­tion in the ensu­ing bien­ni­um and to pro­vide fund­ing for an addi­tion­al ves­sel at that time,” a staff analy­sis explains. “In addi­tion, two exist­ing Jum­bo Mark II ves­sels will be con­vert­ed to oper­ate in hybrid capac­i­ty at a cost of $44 mil­lion, result­ing in 25 per­cent sav­ings in fuel costs. Addi­tion­al­ly, $500,000 is pro­vid­ed to WSDOT for an elec­tric fer­ry plan­ning team to devel­op long-range imple­men­ta­tion plans.”

Clark Coun­ty leg­is­la­tors are excit­ed that this trans­porta­tion bud­get con­tains fund­ing to restart the process of replac­ing the bridge that car­ries I‑5 across the Colum­bia Riv­er into Ore­gon. The last such attempt, the Colum­bia Riv­er Cross­ing project, col­lapsed due to a myr­i­ad of issues, includ­ing Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion to TriMet MAX light rail on the bridge. (MAX has con­tin­ued to expand with­in Ore­gon since then.)

Some of the small­est pieces of this bud­get are eas­i­ly the best ones.

For exam­ple, here’s anoth­er high­light from the staff analy­sis:

“The Chair’s bud­get pro­pos­al pro­vides an addi­tion­al $10 mil­lion for spe­cial needs trans­porta­tion ser­vices, through both tran­sit agen­cies and non­prof­it ser­vice providers. Sev­er­al oth­er items are also fund­ed, includ­ing $485,000 for an expand­ed sum­mer ORCA pilot pro­gram for eli­gi­ble high school stu­dents; $750,000 for the Inter­ci­ty Tran­sit DASH pro­gram; and $250,000 for a pilot pro­gram that will pro­vide improved access to tran­sit for home­less indi­vid­u­als that have very low income.”

There’s also $12 mil­lion for “a new cap­i­tal grant pro­gram to aid tran­sit author­i­ties in fund­ing cost-effec­tive cap­i­tal elec­tri­fi­ca­tion projects.” And: “$250,000 is pro­vid­ed to the WSDOT Rail Pro­gram for a study of the fea­si­bil­i­ty of an east-west inter­ci­ty pas­sen­ger rail sys­tem, with ser­vice to be con­sid­ered for Auburn, Cle Elum, Yaki­ma, Tri-Cities, Ellens­burg, Top­pen­ish, and Spokane.”

Hur­rah for the WSDOT rail pro­gram! It would be fan­tas­tic to see cross-state com­muter rail ser­vice. Amtrak Cas­cades has been a boon for trav­el­ers need­ing to get between Seat­tle and Port­land and not want­i­ng to fight I‑5 traf­fic. But there is no com­pa­ra­ble ser­vice run­ning across the Cas­cades. And there should be.

These tran­sit appro­pri­a­tions are all great. More of these in the future, please.