PTA opposes Initiative 985
The Washington State Parent Teacher Association is taking a stand against Initiative 985 because of its harmful impact to our state’s public schools.
Here’s an excerpt from their news release last Friday:
According to the Office of Financial Management, the initiative could result in as much as $665 million being diverted from the general fund over a five-year period…While some of the 18 board members were empathetic to the need to improve transportation, a significant majority voted to oppose the initiative because of concerns that the diversion of general fund moneys would result in unacceptable cuts to other programs, particularly K-12 education, health care and other programs that are important to children.
Initiative 985 actually does nothing to improve our transportation system. Instead, it makes traffic worse by opening HOV lanes during rush hour and forcing the state to spend a significant amount money on new highway lanes only. Vote NO on 985 and protect your community from the More Traffic Measure.
Tahoma Audubon joins NO on I-985 coalition
Filed under: Endorsements
We’re pleased to announce a new member of the NO on I-985 Coalition today: The Tahoma Audubon Society, whose board voted last night to take a position against the More Traffic Measure.
Founded almost forty years ago, Tahoma Audubon’s mission is..
…to conserve and restore ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and earth’s biological diversity.
We strive to involve youth, families, and seniors in the discovery and protection of native habitat throughout Pierce County. We develop and offer year-round, family-based, nature education programming at the Tacoma Nature Center (Tacoma, WA), the Adriana Hess Audubon Center (University Place, WA), and at the Morse Wildlife Preserve (Graham, WA).
We organize and lead field trips throughout Puget Sound and the State. We also work to affect public policy at the city, county and state level to achieve our conservation goals.
The Tahoma Audubon Society’s mission is to conserve and restore ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and earth’s biological diversity.
The coalition against I-985 continues to get stronger by the day. If you belong to an organization that hasn’t joined yet, urge your governing board to take a position against this harmful initiative.
Washington State Labor Council endorses NO on Initiative 985
Filed under: Endorsements
The Washington State Labor Council has announced that it is joining the diverse coalition of Washingtonians opposing Tim Eyman’s More Traffic Measure this fall:
Delegates to the Washington State Labor Council made additional election endorsements Wednesday at the 2008 WSLC Convention in Vancouver, including endorsing Terry Bergeson for Superintendent of Public Instruction, supporting several additional state legislative candidates, and opposing Tim Eyman’s Initiative 985, which creates a new government bureaucracy and diverts money away from real traffic solutions.
Initiative 985 counterintuitively wastes our existing money by forcing the state to widen highways and opening carpool lanes to everyone during rush hour. Vote NO on I-985.
I-985 ignores the congestion audit
In a Seattle Times op/ed piece, Floyd McKay nails I-985 for its duplicity. The measure claims that it’s carrying out the recommendations of Washington’s recent congestion audit. But it does no such thing:
Eyman maintains that I-985 supports Auditor Brian Sonntag’s “congestion” audit of the Department of Transportation. Of 22 major recommendations in Sonntag’s
report, only synchronization of traffic lights is addressed in I-985. The audit doesn’t recommend limiting tolls on Seattle’s bridges or high-occupancy toll lanes (HOTs), or opening HOV lanes in off-peak hours. It doesn’t deal with freeway artwork or red light cameras. Eyman’s initiative assumes car-generated congestion can be fixed cost-free without other forms of transportation. One of Sonntag’s four general recommendations is “increasing efforts to have people use carpools, transit and telecommuting.” Yet funds in Eyman’s RTC account are barred from buses, rail or park-and-ride.
You heard that right. Initiative 985 almost completely ignores the congestion audit, despite its claim to the contrary. (Traffic light synchronization is already underway in most places.)
Actually, I’m being too nice about this: Initiative 985 actively undermines the congestion audit. The reason State Auditor Sonntag recommended expanding alternative travel is because it is an extremely cost-effective way to solve congestion and mobility problems. It’s hard to get a better deal than multiplying the efficiency of the existing system by filling those empty seats. But 985 shuts down HOV lanes, ties-up key revenue streams, and just generally gives buses and carpools the short end of the stick.
That’s not congestion relief; that’s either confusion or ideology.
A problem for replacing SR 520?
Filed under: Noteworthy Columns
Over at Horse’s Ass, the inimitable David Goldstein fillets I-985 in a sarcastic “endorsement.” Along the way, he makes an intriguing point:
But my favorite provision in I-985, the one that earns my endorsement, is the one that requires that tolls only be used to pay for the construction of the particular section of freeway or bridge on which they’re levied… Let’s be clear: the 520 floating bridge is going to be replaced before it sinks into the lake (or perhaps, shortly thereafter)… And all the current financing plans heavily rely on tolling both the 520 and I-90 bridges to pay for it. Remove I-90 tolls from the equation, and we not only lose a big chunk of federal funds that were predicated on tolling I-90, we also make it impossible to put any substantial toll on 520 without shifting the bulk of the traffic to its toll-free alternative.
This means we’re going to have to find a billion or so dollars elsewhere to pay for the new 520 bridge, and that money is going to come at the expense of other DOT projects throughout the region and the state.
Interesting.
The thing is, I-985 is confusing and tangled enough that it might still be possible for clever accountants to fund the proposed “congestion relief account” with toll revenue and then use the “congestion relief account” to fund the 520 replacement. So it could end up being a shell game of sorts, though it’s not entirely clear. And in a way that’s really one of the problems: there’s a real danger that I-985 will make transportation planning more bureaucratic and opaque, rather than clearer and more efficient.
Read Goldy’s entire post here.
I-985: A mess for westbound SR 520
Filed under: Noteworthy Columns
The Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly nails one of the many bad, unintended consequences of I-985:
Traveling Route 520 at 6:20 Friday, I found stop-and-go traffic from 84th Avenue Northeast to the bridge. The state Transportation Department’s rush-hour map shows even greater congestion much of the time.Â
By throwing open the express lanes, I-985 would expand stop-and-go traffic from two lanes to three and defeat the whole purpose of getting people into buses and van pools.
But it may be even worse than Connelly thinks. Merging creates congestion. Right now, the narrowing of SR-520 westbound from 3 lanes to 2, right before the floating bridge, isn’t a major problem — but only because it’s an HOV-3 lane. There are few enough vehicles that the merge doesn’t gum up traffic. But I-985 would turn the 3rd lane into an HOV-2 lane during rush hour, and a general purpuose lane the rest of the time. Adding more vehicles to the merging lane will absolutely hammer westbound traffic — leading to even longer backups to the 520 bridge, and not just at rush hour.
I-985: Budget buster
The Tri-City Herald has the scoop:
[I-985] would cost the state general fund $620 million over five years.The impact on the budget deficit facing lawmakers in January would be about $290 million…
The state budget is already tight — and I-985 would just make a bad situation worse.
Times op-ed debunks Eyman
This is a great piece worth reading.
Of 22 major recommendations in Sonntag’s report, only synchronization of traffic lights is addressed in I-985.
The audit doesn’t recommend limiting tolls on Seattle’s bridges or high-occupancy toll lanes (HOTs), or opening HOV lanes in off-peak hours. It doesn’t deal with freeway artwork or red-light cameras.
Eyman’s initiative assumes car-generated congestion can be fixed cost-free without other forms of transportation. One of Sonntag’s four general recommendations is “increasing efforts to have people use carpools, transit and telecommuting.” Yet funds in Eyman’s RTC account are barred from buses, rail or park-and-ride.