Defeating Initiative 1033…
Voters defeated Tim Eyman’s Initiative 985 last November. But now Tim Eyman is back with a new initiative that would wreak havoc on our state’s economy, resulting in more layoffs and lost jobs. To learn more about the effort to convince voters to say NO on Initiative 1033 please visit Permanent Defense.
Initiative 985 Defeated!
Congratulations, Washington State.
Voters, give yourselves a big pat on the back for rejecting Initiative 985, a measure that would have harmed our communities and lengthened our commute. I-985’s demise means our buses
UW Daily Opposes I-985
http://dailyuw.com/2008/10/30/daily-recommends-voting-no-initiative-985/
Washington Poll: 45% Yes, 43% No
It’s very close!!
http://www.theolympian.com/southsound/story/638290.html
Newspapers across Washington agree: NO on Initiative 985!
Filed under: Endorsements
Newspaper editorial boards across Washington State are coming out in force against Initiative 985 because of the harm it would inflict upon our communities.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Seattle Times, The Stranger, the Yakima-Herald Republic, Spokane Spokesman-Review, Walla Walla Union Bulletin, Tacoma News Tribune, Vancouver Columbian, Everett Herald, Columbia Basin Herald, and many, many more newspapers urge you to vote NO on Initiative 985.
To read excerpts from editorials, check out our newly updated Press section.
Seattle Chamber: I-985 a step backwards
Filed under: Analysis, Endorsements
The Board of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce recently voted to oppose Initiative 985 because the increased traffic I-985 would create isn’t good for our workforce or our economy. Here are a few of the concerns cited by the chamber in its opposition statement:
Negative fiscal impact: The state’s Office of Financial Management estimates that I-985 would redirect approximately $600 million in state funds over five years. This could push the state budget deficit past $3 billion, which runs counter to the Chamber’s longstanding support for statewide fiscal responsibility and is unwise in a time of economic uncertainty. I-985 could also harm the state’s already stretched transit agencies, stripping an estimated $20 million over five years in federal transit funds as a result of opening HOV lanes to all traffic during non-peak hours. Additionally, the new account mandated by I-985 specifically bans the use of its funds for park and ride lots, ferries, buses and rail.
Untenable situation for SR 520 and I-90: The Chamber is playing a central role in the 520 mediation process. Although substantial progress has been made, financing the replacement continues to be an open question. Most finance plans assume more than $1 billion will be generated by tolls. Tolling 520 and not I-90, as this initiative would mandate, could have disastrous results for regional congestion.
Traffic light synchronization: Many cities across the state have already enacted the synchronization mandated by this initiative. Currently, fines from red light violations go to those cities or local jurisdictions. Under the initiative, they would be redirected to the new state “Reduce Traffic Congestion Account.” While this account does allow funds to be spent on synchronization, cities and local jurisdictions that have already installed cameras stand to lose $40 million over the next five years.
 The NO on 985 Coalition is a diverse group of Washingtonians from many different backgrounds fighting to preserve and enhance the Evergreen State’s quality of life.
Why gutting our high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes is a bad idea
Filed under: Analysis
If Initiative 985 is approved, high occupancy vehicle (or carpool) lanes will be open to everyone at almost all hours of the day, including rush hour.
This would dramatically worsen traffic and lead to an increase in commute times for families all over Puget Sound.
The goals of the HOV system, as defined by the Department of Transportation, are:
- To maximize the people-carrying capacity of the freeway system by providing incentives to use buses, vanpools and carpools.
- To provide capacity for future travel growth.
- To help reduce transportation-related pollution and dependency on fossil fuels.
Gutting HOV lanes would paralyze our bus system and deliberately punish those Washingtonians who are doing their part to reduce traffic and reduce carbon emissions by riding motorcycles or traveling together in a carpool or vanpool. That’s a step in the wrong direction that will hurt each and every one of us who shares the road.
We can’t afford for our traffic to get any worse. That’s why we have to reject I-985.
Governor Gregoire strongly opposed to I-985
Filed under: Endorsements
Recently, the NPI Advocate published an interview with Chris Gregoire which included a question asking for her position on Initiative 985. Here’s the governor’s interview with NPI Executive Director Andrew Villeneuve:
ANDREW: You’ve been good about coming out and telling people where you stand on issues; that’s something your opponent doesn’t do. Do you have a position on Initiative 985, the traffic measure – the More Traffic Measure?
GOVERNOR: Opposed.
ANDREW: You’re opposed?
GOVERNOR: Opposed.
ANDREW: You don’t like the idea of opening carpool lanes during rush hour?
GOVERNOR: No! It won’t work! Because it’s this… micromanaging… saying, these hours [referring to the set six hours when carpool lanes will remain carpool lanes]…well, it doesn’t work like that on every road! So what we’re going to end up with is an inability to enforce from a law enforcement perspective – it won’t work – and we’re going to have worse congestion, not better. Worse congestion.
So, it’s a bill of goods, it’s not going to work, and oh by the way, it’s going to steal money from the general fund… which means we’re going to steal money from education, or healthcare, or community safety.
ANDREW: And you’re aware that the initiative actually prohibits spending money on ferries and rail and other [alternatives to highways]…?
GOVERNOR: Yeah!
ANDREW: I mean, it’s ridiculous.
GOVERNOR: Yeah. Absolutely. So, absolutely opposed.
Initiative 985 would steal money away from underfunded services like our schools, worsen your commute, and lengthen the amount of time you’re away from your family. I-985 is a bad idea. Vote no.
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.