The Silent Approach of Progress
Traffic in the Seattle area is a continuing sideshow of gaffes, poor planning, sloppy accounting, and misdirection of the public money. Tim Eyman's "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it any more" referendums have shown the lawmakers in Olympia that we're willing to be shills for the auto industry and that we'll cut taxes just because we -- as an outraged body politic -- can. Not that we should. The result of all this misdirected voter aggression is a ravaging of the public transportation organizations which no longer have enough money to accomplish anything.
The public votes for a light rail system. Three, four, years later, they still haven't settled on a route which actually goes anywhere or services anyone. Last year, a revised monorail plan not only gets on the ballot but narrowly wins. Who pays for it? The residents of Seattle proper with a solid 'thwack!' on their car tabs. Just the other day, the Seattle Times reported that revenue for the monorail is 50% below expected levels. The explanation? Residents of Seattle are renting PO Boxes in unincorporated King County so that they can register their vehicles outside the city limits and avoid the monorail tax. Two things wrong with that explanation: (1) PO Boxes, even the small ones, aren't free and this theory requires that residents of the city have weighed the cost of a PO Box per year versus the cost of their contribution to the monorail and found the difference to be worth the time of having to drive out to this box in the boondocks once or twice a year; and (2) there are actually that many PO Boxes in unincorporated King County. How about we look a little closer to home and maybe check the math from the city offices first? It's not like there isn't a history of being off in the projection of costs in the past (anyone remember the BILLION dollars they overlooked in the projected cost of the original 21-mile route?)
I can't be too bitter. I am, after all, writing this from the comfortable air-conditioned seat of a Sound Transit train car. But you can't live in the Puget Sound area and not be a little cynical about the state of public transportation. All of the transit solutions seem to be perpetually mired in an endless circle jerk of trying to make sure everyone remains happy and we can all get together for a group hug afterward. Meanwhile, nothing gets accomplished.
It is with some surprise that, while waiting to make a left turn off of Pacific Avenue this morning on the way to the Tacoma Dome Park and Ride, I watch an electric light rail train pass by. I could have reached out the window of my car and touched it.
Things do happen, I guess. Glacially, but change does arrive.
Listening to: Killing Joke "Loose Cannon" Killing Joke [2003]