Today, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture is con­ven­ing its 2022 ses­sion, which is expect­ed to run six­ty days and must adjourn, in accor­dance with the Con­sti­tu­tion, no lat­er than March 10th, 2021. High on the ses­sion “to do” list for many law­mak­ers, news­pa­per pub­lish­ers, and advo­ca­cy groups is enact­ment of a new trans­porta­tion pack­age to address the state’s mobil­i­ty needs.

To quote from a few of the recent state­ments we’ve seen:

• “The Leg­is­la­ture has delayed far too long in pass­ing a mean­ing­ful infra­struc­ture improve­ment pack­age. After talks broke down ear­ly in 2021 and remained at an impasse all year, law­mak­ers must redou­ble efforts to make a long-term invest­ment in the state’s bridges, roads and tran­sit.” — The Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al board (Jan­u­ary 9th, 2022)
• “Wash­ing­ton state leg­is­la­tors are long over­due to pass a trans­porta­tion pack­age — but we don’t need just any kind of invest­ment. We need a trans­for­ma­tive approach to trans­porta­tion that meets our needs for health, safe­ty, and afford­abil­i­ty, and address­es cli­mate, social, and eco­nom­ic jus­tice.” — It Takes Trans­porta­tion Coali­tion Manifesto
• “The major­i­ty of Washington’s cur­rent trans­porta­tion rev­enue sources are regres­sive, and are restrict­ed to being spent on high­ways. The trans­porta­tion pack­age must rely on pro­gres­sive, cli­mate friend­ly rev­enue sources that do not dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly bur­den low-income and mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties.” — Excerpt from a res­o­lu­tion adopt­ed by the exec­u­tive board of the King Coun­ty Democ­rats at its Novem­ber 2021 meeting

Back in Novem­ber, in antic­i­pa­tion of the com­ing ses­sion, our poll­ster asked a large sam­ple of like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers what they want­ed to see in a new trans­porta­tion pack­age. All recent pack­ages have been high­way heavy, with the lion’s share of dol­lars devot­ed to infra­struc­ture for cars, with tran­sit get­ting mere crumbs. The Leg­is­la­ture did give Sound Tran­sit new rev­enue options in 2015 when it passed Con­nect­ing Wash­ing­ton for financ­ing tran­sit at the region­al lev­el, but it did not sub­stan­tive­ly invest in tran­sit using state-lev­el dollars.

Sev­en years lat­er, much has changed. We’re in the midst of a hor­rif­ic pan­dem­ic, Repub­li­cans no longer con­trol the Sen­ate, and the toll from cli­mate dam­age has got­ten much worse. Inter­est in pass­ing anoth­er trans­porta­tion pack­age is mount­ing. But what kind of pack­age will it be? And what do Wash­ing­to­ni­ans want their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives to pri­or­i­tize at this crit­i­cal moment?

We decid­ed to ask.

We framed the choice as one between a safe­ty and cli­mate focused pack­age that shores up exist­ing roads and bridges, plus invests in fish pas­sage and tran­sit, or a pack­age that focus­es on expand­ing car capac­i­ty, whether in the form of new high­ways, new lanes, or new ramps. The lat­ter, as men­tioned, would be in keep­ing with tra­di­tion, while the for­mer would rep­re­sent a new direction.

In our ques­tion, we did not argue that one approach was supe­ri­or to anoth­er or dis­cuss what the Leg­is­la­ture has done his­tor­i­cal­ly. Our goal was to sim­ply to ascer­tain where peo­ple are and what they’re look­ing for from their lawmakers.

By a three-to-one mar­gin, vot­ers said that they want­ed a safe­ty and cli­mate focused pack­age as opposed to a car-cen­tric one. 

• 60% of respon­dents said they want a trans­porta­tion pack­age that pri­or­i­tizes fix­ing unsafe bridges, improv­ing fish pas­sage, resur­fac­ing dete­ri­o­rat­ing roads, and mak­ing big pub­lic tran­sit investments.
• Only 19% of respon­dents said they want to pri­or­i­tize adding capac­i­ty for cars by build­ing new high­ways, widen­ing exist­ing high­ways with new lanes, and adding or length­en­ing ramps.
• 21% were not sure.

Visu­al­iza­tion of our poll find­ing on the direc­tion vot­ers want leg­is­la­tors to take with a 2022 trans­porta­tion package

Our sur­vey of 909 like­ly 2022 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from Wednes­day, Novem­ber 10th through Thurs­day, Novem­ber 11th, 2021.

It uti­lizes a blend­ed method­ol­o­gy, with auto­mat­ed phone calls to land­lines (50%) and text mes­sage answers from cell phone only respon­dents (50%).

The poll was con­duct­ed by Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling for the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute and has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence interval.

More infor­ma­tion about the survey’s method­ol­o­gy is avail­able here.

Here’s the full text of the ques­tion that we asked and the respons­es again:

QUESTION: If the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture approves a new trans­porta­tion fund­ing pack­age in the 2022 leg­isla­tive ses­sion, do you think it should pri­or­i­tize fix­ing unsafe bridges, improv­ing fish pas­sage, resur­fac­ing dete­ri­o­rat­ing roads, and mak­ing big pub­lic tran­sit invest­ments, or should it pri­or­i­tize adding capac­i­ty for cars by build­ing new high­ways, widen­ing exist­ing high­ways with new lanes, and adding or length­en­ing ramps?

ANSWERS:

• Think the Leg­is­la­ture should pri­or­i­tize fix­ing unsafe bridges, improv­ing fish pas­sage, resur­fac­ing dete­ri­o­rat­ing roads, and mak­ing big pub­lic tran­sit invest­ments in a 2022 trans­porta­tion fund­ing pack­age: 60%
• Think the Leg­is­la­ture should pri­or­i­tize adding capac­i­ty for cars by build­ing new high­ways, widen­ing exist­ing high­ways with new lanes, and adding or length­en­ing ramps: 19%
• Not sure: 21%

You’ll notice that in the ques­tion, we used the adjec­tive “big” in front of “tran­sit invest­ments.” That’s because we want­ed to find out if vot­ers desire a tru­ly mul­ti­modal approach, one in which tran­sit receives a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the dol­lars in a state-lev­el trans­porta­tion pack­age as opposed to just a small frac­tion. The pres­ence of the word “big” is intend­ed to sig­ni­fy that we’re talk­ing about a pack­age that puts tran­sit front and cen­ter in an unprece­dent­ed way.

We con­sid­er fish pas­sage improve­ments, fix­ing unsafe bridges, and resur­fac­ing dete­ri­o­rat­ing roads to also be essen­tial to a suc­cess­ful trans­porta­tion pack­age, which is why they are all grouped togeth­er in one of the choic­es. Safe­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty go hand in hand and should­n’t be pit­ted against each other.

Adding capac­i­ty for cars, on the oth­er hand, does­n’t square with those oth­er goals. It costs a lot of mon­ey while fail­ing to reduce con­ges­tion or pollution.

Yet that is the route we’ve tak­en with past packages.

If we con­tin­ue to pri­or­i­tize build­ing new high­ways, lanes, and ramps, then there sim­ply won’t be resources for seis­mic upgrades to bridges, removal of fish bar­ri­ers, road main­te­nance, or more, bet­ter, and high­er fre­quen­cy tran­sit service.

Infi­nite dol­lars are sim­ply not available.

Sen­a­tor Marko Liias, the new Chair of the Sen­ate Trans­porta­tion Com­mit­tee, declared last week that he won’t sup­port increas­ing the gas tax as part of a 2022 trans­porta­tion pack­age. Past pack­ages have relied heav­i­ly on gas tax increas­es to sup­ply the rev­enue need­ed to pay for the projects leg­is­la­tors have appropriated.

But it seems this one will not.

An upside to the posi­tion Sen­a­tor Liias has staked out is that the Con­sti­tu­tion restricts the use of gas tax rev­enue to “high­way purposes.”

By fund­ing the 2022 pack­age with oth­er rev­enue options, the Leg­is­la­ture will have more free­dom to allo­cate dol­lars to tran­sit and improv­ing fish passage.

Whether or not the Leg­is­la­ture can reach agree­ment on a pack­age before March 10th remains to be seen. It won’t be easy. But leg­is­la­tors should make a gen­uine effort to try to forge an agree­ment, and not punt until 2023.

We have under­fund­ed fer­ries, tran­sits, side­walks, bike paths, and mul­ti­modal trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture for far too long. Mean­while, we have deferred basic main­te­nance and seis­mic upgrades to our exist­ing roads and bridges.

It’s time to lis­ten to the vot­ers and autho­rize the mobil­i­ty invest­ments that will help Wash­ing­to­ni­ans get where they need to go, safe­ly and sustainably.