Seven premonitions you can take to the bank

Predictions at mid-year regarding sweet deals for developers, a Sonics boon, the precarious viaduct, a Boeing handout, Sound Transit, Pat Davis, and cleaning up Puget Sound.

• READ MORE
• 1 comment

Transit train wreck: Here's how to do buses right

They aren't the only solution, but they are the most flexible and potentially most attractive solution if they are used well. Bus lines are flexible, scalable, and can touch more people than rail, and they don't have to be a pain to use. Part 3 of 3

• READ MORE
• 47 Comments

Transit train wreck: Revealing bus-route ridership

We've got buses going everywhere, and guess which routes are logging the biggest increases in ridership? Not the route that would become light rail to the Eastside suburbs. Part 2 of 3

• READ MORE
• 27 Comments

Transit train wreck: The case against more light rail

The recent former state secretary of transportation has been riding buses a lot lately and crunching numbers, and he's convinced light rail to the Eastside and more Sounder service has no place in a big new transit plan. He thinks an advanced bus rapid transit system is the best way to serve millions of people and smartly manage urban growth. Part 1 of 3

• READ MORE
• 38 Comments

The Rossi contributor behind that traffic survey

It's an election year and my political antennae are up. So when I saw this story in The Seattle Times, my first thought was: This is a gift to Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi.

• READ MORE
• 2 Comments

Getting ready for the Big One

The images of the quake aftermath in China raise the question: What would the wake of a major quake look like in Seattle? Fortunately, we have the answer. Or at least a pretty good guess.

• READ MORE
• 6 Comments

Psst! Wanna see the Viaduct disappear?

The debate about Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct used to be a very public, contact sport, but as many local politicians were carted off the field, the controversy moved to a 30-person stakeholders group, who meet very quietly. Meanwhile, the politicians edge back onto the playing field and hint at solutions.

• READ MORE
• 6 Comments

Sound Transit did not hear us

Prop. 1 was soundly defeated, but the leadership of Sound Transit plans to deliver Son of Prop. 1 to the voters this fall. The agency better get used to rejection.

• READ MORE
• 45 Comments

Is Dino Rossi a moderate?

I wouldn't call him that, but the Republican candidate for governor has no need to run to the right to beat Christine Gregoire. Just as he did in the election cliffhanger of 2004, he can present himself as a comparatively moderate candidate, one in touch with the state's mainstream aspirations. He's starting to do that.

• READ MORE
• 6 Comments

Cordon blues: New York is no indicator of tolling's future

The sort of tolling under consideration here and elsewhere in the U.S. is completely different from that proposed for Manhattan. That was "cordon" pricing, and it fell flat in the Big Apple. True congestion pricing makes a lot of sense in metro Puget Sound, contends the author. He explains the difference.

• READ MORE
• 10 Comments

Congestion pricing: Even New York's got a problem with that

The failure of an ambitious tolling plan there holds lessons for metro Puget Sound.

• READ MORE
• 12 Comments

More evidence that Washington infrastructure collapse is over-hyped

Okay, classify this as a pet peeve, but it bugs me when politicians, including Christine Gregoire, wave the bloody shirt of the Minnesota bridge collapse as an all-purpose rationale to boost infrastructure spending. Gregoire has done this often. She raised the specter of the Minnesota disaster as an argument in favor of Proposition 1 last fall; she raised it again to argue for a new toll bridge across the Columbia River, and yet again at a national governor's meeting in February. I have no quarrel with repairing or inspecting roads and bridges--please, let's do that. But the fact is, we still don't have the final word on what happened in Minnesota, so the lesson there is unclear.

• READ MORE
• 3 Comments

Sound Transit version 2.1

Imagine this scenario. Sound Transit comes back to ballot this fall with a shortened light rail plan and all three county executives within the voting district oppose it. Wouldn't that make for an interesting campaign season?

It might just happen. Right now, Ron Sims (King), John Ladenburg (Pierce), and Aaron Reardon (Snohomish) have grave reservations about Sound Transit's scaled-back proposal, which would extend the line up to Northgate and across the Interstate 90 floating bridge to the Eastside suburbs.

• READ MORE
• 4 Comments

Politics not as usual

A seminal campaign speech and a crisis on Wall Street mark a turning point in the national conversation, with implications far and near.

• READ MORE
• 1 comment

Traffic's so bad, we might actually be willing to pay a toll

Puget Sound policy-makers have been taking the public pulse. Their surveys reveal that people are generally pessimistic about the future, frustrated with traffic, and willing to pay to cross Lake Washington in a car — as long as it's really cheap.

• READ MORE
• 14 Comments

New cure for collapsing bridges: state and union pension funds?

With Washington facing mounting costs for roads, transit, and bridges, might the answer lie in tapping union pension funds? It certainly doesn't look like taxpayers are going to do much more. The Legislature is getting more tax averse and Eyman-minded. Bucking the costs down to a regional level, as in the defeated Proposition 1, doesn't seem to work either, as the local politicians load up any proposals with Christmas tree goodies. So if self-discipline won't tame the problem of too many claimants on too little money, maybe an infusion of money will do the trick? Enter America's second-biggest union federation, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), as well as an idea from super-dense Hong Kong.

• READ MORE
• 3 Comments

National perspective: Shifting campaign pledges, cold local transpo politics

Back from a cold and snowy week in Minnesota, still hustling my new book, Seattle seems downright tropical. My first act on return was to turn down my thermostat; it seemed unseasonably warm here.

Several weeks in other towns have given me a chance to observe other places and, also, to see my home place in better perspective. Here are observations for this long weekend.

• READ MORE
• Comment Now

Transportation: Can't we all just get along?

An opponent of Proposition 1 opens the bidding, in hopes of finding a middle ground in the transportation wars. The peace treaty: a little more rail, no new highways, some highway fixes, unclogging arterials, tolls, and no more cute trolleys.

• READ MORE
• 13 Comments

Tim Eyman's great year

You might love to hate him, but the populist initiative king is having a banner year — and even liberals are finding some areas where Eyman's laws are helping. Maybe you should send him a thank-you card.

• READ MORE
• 14 Comments

Is Gregoire hyping disaster to sell bridges?

Gov. Christine Gregoire is eagerly sharing the happy news of her willingness to slap tolls on bridges and highways. She met with Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski in Clark County the other day to discuss moving ahead on a $4.2 billion new bridge over the Columbia River on I-5. The feds would pick up most of the tab, but Gregoire is set on imposing tolls. To push her agenda, she's using last summer's Minneapolis bridge collapse to make her case for urgency. Only problem is, it turns out the Minneapolis bridge disaster wasn't a case of aging infrastructure. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has concluded the problem was a design flaw.

• READ MORE
• 5 Comments