Sausage Links, transit migraine edition
Ready to pay $6.85 round-trip to drive across the 520 bridge? Me neither. That's the proposed toll that would raise money to help pay for improvements to the floating fossil. But the idea of a toll begs another question, something I've been dying to get reader input about: Do you think having a toll on local bridges like 520 will sway voters to vote for the proposed light rail measure this November? Thoughts?
Meanwhile, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims have dueling opinions about light rail in today's Seattle Times. Sims says we should wait a couple years before we invest in light rail, while Nickels gives us "10 lame reasons to delay mass transit."
Fair price? The Seattle City Council will vote Monday to decide whether to accept Mayor Nickels' proposal to impose a 20-cent fee for plastic grocery bags. ...
Fair assessment: The Seattle Municipal League releases its ratings of the best legislative candidates of 2008. ...
Pain killer: Richard Roesler at the Spokesman-Review notes yet another heated campaign in Washington — the race for the apparently coveted position of state insurance commissioner. ...
Tax headache: Marilyn Watkins at the Everett Herald joins the ranks of folks who think Washington needs a new tax structure. ...
Stamp act: U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, is supporting a $5 billion bill that would provide "gas stamps for the needy." Naturally, his opponent in the state's 7th Congressional District, Steve Beren, thinks it's a pretty dumb idea. ...
Circus act: Times columnist Danny Westneat wonders where Seattle's voters are going to find the money to pay for all the ballot measures offered by the city this November. ...
Now cramming: The state Board of Education could decide Thursday that high school students must pass two years' worth of algebra courses to graduate. The op-ed board at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, meanwhile, says increasing state standards is a good thing. ...
Now blogging: The Oregon Liquor Control Commission has launched a new blog. Today's post explains about "why you can't just serve yourself wine out of a vending machine." Riveting stuff. Hat tip to The Oregonian ...
Now plagiarizing: Monica Guzman at the Seattle P-I wonders if Vanity Fair meant to rip off cartoonist David Horsey's recent spoof on The New Yorker's satirical cover featuring Barack Obama as a Muslim. ...
Cell phone driving death watch: The P-I reports State Patrol officers are more likely to give you a "talking-to than a ticket" if you're caught talking on your hand-held phone while driving. ...
Comments:
Posted Thu, Jul 24, 8:42 p.m. inappropriate
Oh Brother: Dig a little deeper and read a little harder Clark, especially on the toll thing.
The whole intent of the toll thing on 520 tright now is to get people to pay attention and work out the right toll that will build a bridg instead of just leaving it up to some freak powerful legislator from the boonies.
And while you talk about the highest possible toll under consideration, you might consider not just what we'd pay, but what we'd get in return, along with the fact that it'd be peanuts most times of the day.
I think the goal is a much better new bridge to replace one that could sink in the next huge storm or crumble during the next huge earthquake. But it also looks to me like a trip along 520 would would be a whole lot better with the damn toll than its been in about 20 years. That's good. People who don't want to pay have a few choices, including I-90.
I'd pay for less congestion, and it looks like most other people would happily do the same unless the tightwads and freeloaders have sway with the legislature and cheap out again instead of doing something right.
You get the commute you pay for. That's just a fact of life. Live far away: you pay more to drive. Live close to work: pay more for your home.
Everybody shouldn't pay for all the people who chose to live far from work to have a big yard and a big home. The people who make that choice ought to pay the full cost, not expect the rest of us to pay for them.
I'll pay for a better trip to work and back home. And I'll gladly pay for the transit system we obviously need to give us all a choice and give people at the low end a high quality option to a toll or - probably most important, the 20-25 dollar cost of parking every day in Seattle or Bellevue.
Posted Mon, Aug 11, 6:08 p.m. inappropriate
$6.85 toll is a straw man: Clark Fredrickson writes: "Ready to pay $6.85 round-trip to drive across the 520 bridge? Me neither. That's the proposed toll that would raise money to help pay for improvements to the floating fossil."
No, wrong, there is no government proposal to institute $6.85 or any particular toll. The SR 520 Tolling Implementation Committee of top officials -- (Secretary of Transportation Hammond, Executive Director of PSRC Drewel, Transportation Commission Member Ford) are not making any proposal in the four tolling scenarios being floated to the public. It's a multi-hour or perhaps multi-day computer run to actually generate a particular scenario, and none of the four that were published actually hit the two billion dollar revenue target. The high tolls generated too little money because they weren't put on soon enough, and the low tolls put on the existing bridge generated too much money!
Read about all four of them at the Committee web site.
More than anything else, the Committee was trial ballooning sensible but controversial concepts like beginning tolling on the existing 520 bridge, or tolling on the I-90 bridge.