Thumbs down on Transit’s Prop. 1
October 14, 2008
By Administrator
Proposition 1 on your November ballot will get you a half-penny-per-dollar increase in sales tax. That’s for sure, and immediate.
Along the way, a new bus route or another bus for an existing route might come your way and hopefully will be going the way you want it to. Of course, you’ll have to take a bus to Redmond or Issaquah to catch one of these additional bus trips. And someday far, far away — maybe in 20 years — you might live long enough to take a bus from there to Bellevue where you can catch a ride on a light rail train to Seattle.
While there are no direct benefits to Snoqualmie and North Bend, more bus connections further down the road do have merit. Voters must decide if that’s enough to justify a sales tax increase, a continuation of the existing 0.4 sales tax and three-tenths of a percent increase to the motor vehicle excise tax — to raise $17.9 billion for the bus/light rail package.
It just may be that the notion of light rail in the Puget Sound region is too late. The only traffic solution we envision is one that gives drivers the option to use their very own driveway as a personal park & ride. We need collector buses that go into neighborhoods, then connect to larger buses to take people where they need to go when they need to get there. Unfortunately, Proposition 1 will only put 20 percent of its tax collections toward more buses.
The cost is too great — King County would have one of the highest sales tax rates in the nation — and the wait too long for light rail to kick in.
Another traffic related ballot issue is I-985. The initiative seeks to open carpool and bus lanes to all traffic except during peak hours of 6-9 a.m. and 3-6 p.m. weekdays. While it’s a tempting notion, the change comes with a price tag and there is no clear evidence that it would make much difference in drive times. Vote no.
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