What gas tax: I'm a little confused by these truth-SAYErs (spend as you earn). Are they suggesting that the huge gas tax now be repealed for this program? Certainly they are not promoting themselves by dreaming up another tax supported program. Their cost of living salary increase might rationalize another tax as a job expense but for the shrinking "outside world" these fools have to start considering how many are not investing in the area anymore because they do not want to support their dreams. Just because there is a population growth does not mean these people's ideas are not actually supporting other areas by their acts of being the other areas' best sales person.

_: The timing is really unfortunate if you want to pass the RTID measures. This will just confuse people.

Tolling is relatively fair, but gas taxes are more fair. Tolling is only on certain roads. Gas taxes have the additional benefit of encouraging efficient vehicles.

But absolutely I support the idea of drivers paying their own way.

What about non-highways?: 1. I don't think a system in which only highways are tolled will work as people will divert to local arterials, making those roads & streets even worse than they are now.
2. A system in which ALL roads & streets are tolled is not politically viable.

"Congestion pricing" in the manner suggested is just another "policy of the day" exercise to make wonks feel important.

Tolling Impractiable: I agree with the comment above. Are you going toll local streets because that's where a lot of traffic will go. Just wait and see how backed up Highway 99, Rainier Avenue, Airport Way, 1st Street become if you put tolls on I 5. As someone who grew up in this area, I can tell you 5 different roadways to take other then interstate 5 to get to Seattle. If you begin tolling at Lakewood in the south, you can cruise up highway 7, Steilacoom Boulevard, Pacific Avenue, Tacoma Way. See 9 road ways that will see major traffic congestion by those of us avoiding tolls. It will not will not tack that much on to a commute time. I can't wait to hear the bitching from those folks who vote for tolling and then wonder why they can't get out of their own neighborhood because of all the additional cars using the short cuts through their neighborhood.

Tolls are here to stay: Arguing that people will start taking local arterials to avoid tolls misses the point. People are already taking local arterials to avoid traffic, they will do so to avoid tolls too. Population growth will only make the problem worse. Considering the amount of money we will have to tax ourselves to buy up and destroy vast tracks of private homes and businesses to make room for more free highway lanes, isn't this a better solution?

Not only that, but the arterials comment is only a short term issue. People move to new homes and/or change jobs every two to three years. Clogged arterials and tolled-yet-fast highways will have an effect here. People will move closer to their jobs, and get jobs closer to their homes.

If you build more free capacity (supply), you solve traffic congestion for about four years before demand prompts people to move to take advantage of that new supply and traffic congestion is restored. If you reduce capcity (supply), you have worse congestion for about two or three years before demand is reduced.

So take your pick: reduce supply to reduce demand, and exchange congestion for a couple of bucks and more free time with friends, family, etc. Or, increase supply by increasing taxes to buy private real estate for more lane space, and do it again in four years when demand has soaked up the additional supply.

cheers for tolls: Tolls are long overdue in this region and I welcome them.

Will traffic be diverted from highways to arterials? probably. But I doubt this will be a problem: uncongested highways will be the fastest way from point a to point b. Drivers know this, and they are willing to pay for it; tolling provides the solution. Additionally, highways, especially where bridges are concerned, are often the ONLY way to get from point a to point b. For example, there is no efficient way to get from redmond to/from seattle without using one of the highways: there isn't a viable arterial option that drivers could use to avoid tolls.

There is one statement in the first article of these series which I keep thinking of: "When the supply has no price, then demand will always exceed it." Tolls are a great way to bring a market solution to a very difficult problem.

London baloney: This massive tax increase comes from I assume a paid consultant hack from London--the unhappy English food capital of the world as in overcooked meat and 3 soggie vegetables. How much did this worthless study cost?? Tolls are for idiots who worship the Sopranos and dream of being stuck on the New Jersey and Garden State turnpikes/parkways. "What exit are you from" should not become part of the local Seattle area language.

tolls are necessary: I support tolling, especially variable-rate congestion pricing schemes that target peak travel times.

Tolls not only address the externality costs associated with the impacts of car travel, like air pollution, noise, etc., but will also reduce non-essential trips and keep traffic moving.

I'm willing to pay a little money to have a better shot at getting where I want to go, on schedule.

Transit: The woman in Madison Valley who complained about difficulty of getting to Microsoft - there's no revenue to get you any new service without something like tolls. The 40/40/20 split means Seattle gets screwed on new bus service - not even taking into account the hours we'll lose to the SLU streetcar - and I don't see BRT on Madison anytime soon. Link's nearest station to Mad Valley will be on Broadway. Now, if we had 5-minute headway shuttle service up Madison to Broadway, loop to the station and back down to Madison Park, suddenly transit looks very, very attractive (and avoids the worst part of the trip into downtown, the portion from Boren down Madison that seems to crawl at any time of day).

But we'll never see that kind of transit service without additional revenue. I am pleased to see the report calling out the reality that without additional service and the all-important cross-jurisdictional coordination, transit will continue to serve far too few trips.

Get those excess people off the roads.: We need to be clear about this, though. The real goal here is to free up the highways for those wealthy enough to be able to pay the outrageous tolls cited here. We need to get the poor and the retired and the low income workers off the freeways, so people can zip to Medina and M.I. without being impeded by the lesser members of our society. And in the process, let us not only price the lower classes off of our roads, we will press them together in busses and other "mass" transit, "mass" being those people who are not enjoying the whizzing freedom of their high income lives. Where do we see the element in this proposal that will make certain that ALL citizens are equally motivated to solve the problem? Nowhere. Once again, the thickness of your wallet is the determining factor.

I love this: City highways in the US remind me of stereotypical toilet paper lines in old communist Russia. We're all lined up for hours, wasting our lives, waiting our turn for our basic services. All the while other countries have 6 different brands of TP, and wait for less than a minute in the 10-items-or-less line. (this being the dozens of commute options available in cities that have thought ahead)

The problem is absolutely a resource that costs nothing to use. That resource isn't gasoline - it's roadway bandwidth.

RE: Get those excess people off the roads.: I'd be fine for an alternative solution that is income neutral, as long as it gets a large number of people out of their cars. Perhaps the license plate number solution mentioned in article 3. Or perhaps WWII-style driving rations - you're only allowed on the freeways for some number of hours.

Would these work for you? Or are you just fine waiting in line? How about once the number of cars gone up and the average wait has doubled - will you still be fine waiting in line?

Quick Congestion Solution: Use the same tolling technology to verify that vehicles/drivers are licensed and insured PER WASHINGTON STATE LAW. No license, no insurance, you'r e off the road and car is impounded.

RE: Get those excess people off the roads.: I don't think that the toll proposals have a goal to "free up the highways for those wealthy enough to be able to pay". This isn't about making room for rich poeple on the road: the current traffic levels are distasteful to everyone, regardless of income.

Tolls will make both rich and poor reconsider their commuting behavior. Obviously, rich poeple will have an easier time of it, but that's true with or without the tolls: driving isn't cheap. Unfortunately, at this time, driving is often the only viable choice for transportation (the bus system just isn't ready for prime-time right now).

And that is EXACTLY why I like this proposal so much: by using the toll money to invest in transit, everyone is given viable choices in how they commute. It will no longer be necessary to bear the financial burden of a car-payment, car-insurance, and $3.20 gasoline. Making transit a viable alternative will save poeple money, which is helpful for rich and poor alike.

Yes, tolls will cost money: But the congestion and pollution are costing us a lot of money right now, and it will cost us a lot more in the future. Adding tolls makes this cost evident to everyone and helps us deal with the problems now.

RE: Get those excess people off the roads: Getting the poor of the roads and force them onto mass transit? The poor already ARE taking mass transit.

A couple of bucks per day is the cost of taking a bus round trip in Seattle. A car costs way more, when you factor in gas, insurance and the cost of an automobile itself (which, by the way, has increased far faster than salaries have increased over the past 20 years--why do you think we have car loans with six or seven year terms, something unheard of just a decade ago).

I still remember, more than a decade ago, when I was in the bottom 10% of wage earners in the US. I owned a car, but only because my parents gave an old junker to me as a gift. If they hadn't been willing to pay for auto insurance, I would have been one of the legions of uninsured or underinsured motorists on the road (which, by the way, drives up your auto insurance costs). But then, I could barely afford gas (let alone an oil change), so I wouldn't have been much of a danger. I didn't drive it. I think I filled my car up once per month, if that. Buying a six pack of beer was a major financial decision.

This isn't a sob story: when I was poor, I took public transit because that's all I could afford. Tolls on the New Jersey Turnpike? Whatever. Irrelevant to me.

Opposing tolls on roads is not defending the poor. Tolls will be used to improve mass transit for the poor, making their lives better. And yours, for that matter, but this argument isn't about the poor, it's about keeping your commute free. Pure and simple. Which is a valid argument, just be up front about it.

If we really want to protect the poor from paying tolls, it's really quite simple: do the tolling equivalent of food stamps. If your annual income is below, say, $25,000, the automated billing system will send you no bill whatsoever. If you make between $25,000 and $35,000, you pay half. Anything above that, you pay full. But something tells me that mainly college students will bother applying for that $25,000 or less exemption.

This tolling proposal is, without a doubt, a wealth transfer, taking money from the rich who could afford to drive every day anyway, and using it to improve transit options for those who can't.

Oh, the other reason this isn't a sob story: I am now in the top 1% of wage earners in the US, but I still take public transit to work everyday. Because to me this isn't about freedom to drive wherever I want whenever I want for as little as possible.

This is about improving my quality of life. I can read on the bus, relax, think about my plans for the evening. Reducing the demand for roads will improve the quality of all of our lives.

Beyond Toll Booths: Google Tolling: Google revolutionized the internet by tagging all internet real-estate and then micro-charging for advertising access to users of that real-estate through its search engine. Our road system is easy to tag and the wireless internet makes charging a piece of cake. When a vehicle uses a road or bridge or highway we make a micro-charge for use. At the end of the day the vehicle owner gets a bill for all the infrastructure used per vehicle. The beauty of the new system is several-fold: 1) from driver usage patterns it'll be easy to see where new transportation infrastructure investments should be made, 2) from daily traffic patterns it'll be easy to set variable-rate pricing to optimize flow and use of infrastructure, 3) from infrasructure charges it'll be easy to make transportation pay for transportation, and 4) by inserting this system in place of the Soviet free roads paradigm we should be able to junk the whole sales tax/gas tax/bonding mess and let transportation revenues be used SOLELY for transportation.

In addition, a separate Transportation Authority could then be set up, bypassing the current political-industrial middle-men, putting transportation engineers in charge of developing and maintaining our infrastructure. With this way of doing busines, it shouldn't be hard to do twice as much as we're doing now, faster, for less cost, and more effectively to boot.

The technological challenge here is pretty simple. Not too different from your average internet database application or cell-phone billing where each phone call would be the equivalent to the use of a road segment. It's just never been done with roads. A minor obstacle is the current set of guys getting their pockets lined for doing virtually nothing about transportation for decades, who will scream bloody murder.

Beware, this is a disruptive re-imagining of transportation that should make financing road projects simple. A problem for some will be systems like light rail that never ever pay for themselves and that subsidize ridership so grotesquely that usage revenue will never (not in a thousand years) pay for themselves. In a fair and good world, light rail would only exist in and be financed in Hell. But short of that, it's got Seattle.

In any event, Google tolling of infrastructure is inevitable. The current dead-enders are likely to resist the occupation by the market forces of transportation democracy. In the end sanity and evolution purge themselves of technologies that are uncompetitive, whether steam engine, steam locomotive, or 19th Century transportation financing schemes. I can hardly wait in traffic or the day.

The "No Action" Alternative: Carless.

1. Just because I am dubious that this trendy policy-of-the-week congestion pricing has political legs does NOT mean I support more highways.

2. Your suggestion that we let congestion itself exert itself as a cost to force people to change their behavior is a realistic one; and it should obviate the need for any sort of program of congestion pricing i.e. embrace the "No Action" alternative in the first place -- which is what we will end up doing anyway -- and save the money.

3. This region is not capable of large transportation decisions -- and that's for better or worse depending on your perspective.

By the way, the RTID is a disaster: Light rail takes the majority of transportation dollars and assures us all a broken road system for the next century. In the rosiest scenario, 4% of our transportation problems get solved by light rail. The upcoming Anna Nicole line to the airport will be a pretty thing not worth the billions of dollars spent. The RTID will help get us ST2 which formalizes the marriage with the public. This will be the Anna Nicole Smith line, also pretty, but a financial disaster of epic proportions. An added benefit of light rail is "transit-oriented development" which assures that transients can move freely throughout the County and that the homeless will have a place to stay. These way stations will be modeled after Paris Hilton, and called Skid Row Hiltons in memory of the rich Seattle heritage on which they are based. I don't want to mention the utterly useless ST2 extension to downtown Bellevue Square, the Little Dubai of the West.

Cogestion Pricing is mainly just a tax...: In London it's relieve congestion somewhat, but the tax keeps going up and up unrelated to actual congestion. So it's really just a government financing scheme that Seattle will have to consider because we have no income tax and the property and sales taxes are suffering from repetitive raising syndrome.

A Story In Need of an Editor: It does not appear that Ron Sims has proposed any road tolling strategy, he paid for a flawed study which reported some potential value, but did not recommend anything. All the author needs to do is post the draft study for people to understand the basic facts and see through the hyperbole.

How does Mark H. at the UW know why the draft study was not publically released yet? Did Ron Sims tell him that? Or has Mark been reborn as an all knowing seer and political hack. I thought he was an academic. Didn't the Seattle Times report on this about a month ago?

I hear a poll was done by Sims that showed people in the County - and the rest of the general vicinity - don't support the things reported in this series. That's the big reason why Sims didn't make a big deal about it.

Sims initial instinct was OK. He was looking for a bold way to get dramatic reductions in Greenhouse Gases - ambitous goals he set earlier this year to great fanfare. But his green staff found out that if any congestion pricing scheme would actually help, significantly more public understanding and buy-in would be required, along with a far more robust understanding than provided by the flawed study reported on here. No groundwork, no Greenhouse Gas reductions - just wheel spinning.

I hear there was also partisan politics involved in the initial Sims idea: better to raise tolls than raise taxes to preserve Democratic dominance of politics. But better minds intervened: the Democrats do not want to be pegged as the people who toll everything, in addition to taxing things. Not right now anyway. They are no more interested in this than enacting another Sims cause: Gay marriage.

Look, there's no way anything remotely like what was studied by the Sims staff will be happening around here anytime soon. Case in point: the 520 bridge. While there is general agreement that tolls will pay for the replacement, there is no consensus in Olympia or anywhere else about the vital details.

What will the toll on the 520 be? No one knows yet. GOP leadership is promoting no toll on 520 - just trade light rail on I-90 for a "free" new bridge. That GOP idea went nowhere in the legislature last year. But Luke Esser counted the votes and it'll be back about October 15, 2008. Democrats in the legislature are working overtime to keep the toll as low as can be. But any plan for a reasonable toll on 520 relies on more government funding via taxes, like the $1.1 billion on the ballot this fall for the new bridge.

This could be the issue that helps define who is in charge in Olympia in 2010.

The talk show hypsters will probably have a lot of fun with this. Reporters who write stories about tolls get a lot of people to read them. But no one is seriously proposing anything like what's reported here. That would be stupid. The most ardent advocates of these ideas do not believe that people are anywhere near ready.

If voters reject the big transportation ballot measure this fall, that's another story. A no vote will open up a debate on ideas like the one studied, but sidelined, by Sims. And then that will be rejected in favor of something far less scary to most people. And then we'll wait a few more years, and by the time we get around to doing something again, the costs of everything will have gone up by billions.

Raising the I.Q. of the "stupid bus system": The recent polling of citizens done by KC on their priorities of government revealed that what people want is MORE FREQUENT buses. That way you don't sit around waiting half an hour to an hour if you miss a bus. This is an easy way to improve mass transit. Thats what the people want. What do we get? A train trip to the airport. For the cost of light rail we could have the greatest, most frequent bus system in the world with literally hundreds of stops that light rail will never make. What do we get? ST2 which will get you to Bellevue Square and back to your home in a condo in downtown Seattle. Bus Rapid Transit is the express bus on steroids that lets you commute fast. Much more flexible than light rail. But what do we get? Light rail taxes or the next fifty years with MOST of our tax dollars going to pay DEBT SERVICE. That's right, ST makes the monorail financiers look like shrewd little Warren Buffets. Eventually the public will find out how many tens of thousands of dollars, how many cars, and how many college educations ST wants fro the average household budget over the next 50 years. Compared to light rail, buses aren't just smart, they're geniuses who've figured out that light rail is an evolutionary dead-end, a fatted Sodo Dodo ready to be killed.

RE: A Story In Need of an Editor: Good read of the political pulse. The politicians keep trying to figure out where the people are going -- but they're just milling around -- so the politicians keep falling back on mega-infrastructure projects that are solutions in search of a problem:

"Let's see, we have congestion on our roadways now, so let's build light rail for the million new people who'll be here in 20 years if the economy keeps going smoothly. Oh, and roads, let's pretend they're falling down like the Viaduct and sinking like the 520 bridge, , declare an emergency, and then throw scraps to the roads guys. Who drives cars anyway?"

The RTID will fail big time because it won't make economic sense to the voter. Thirty billion politicians dancing on the head of a pin won't make this pig fly. If light rail is going to solve only 4% of the transportation problem in the rosiest scenarios, then $30B -- most of it debt service over 50 years -- is an atrocious solution for getting people to-and-from the airport, to-and-from Microsoft, and to-and-from the UW. While ST fiddles, roads burn.

Instead, expand bus service, implement programs that get people to live closer to work, relax the windfall real estate Wealth Management Act (i.e., the GMA) so that people can live affordably and with environmental responsibility in the suburbs where they want to live (where has growth been over the last thirty years, anyway? ), expand and maintain the road system reasonably (when does the I-5 discussion begin?), and forget the conceit that Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, and Renton are each going to become Manhattan with trains swooshing around like a 1950 Sci-Fi movie ("It's a bird, it's a plane! No wait! It's a train up on concrete pillars! Forget college education for the kids! Forget retirement! It's yours free if you vote Yes for 50 years of light rail taxes!")

As you point out, the political reality does not support tolling. But it hasn't stopped the Narrows Bridge from being tolled. The 520 bridge is up next, and it's getting tolled come Hell or high water. Let' toll it for its FULL cost over it's intended life time and make users pay. Go ahead and add the "socially engineered" incentives (e.g., for low-income workers, regular commuters, truckers, car pools, students, drivers with no DUIs) and disincentives (e.g., "Hummer" tax based on size of car, peak-hour metering charges, damage-to-roadway charges for trucks based on weight, terrorists identified by Google Earth, and SUVs with Bush-Cheney bumper stickers).

In a digital world, collecting user fees is ridiculously easy and the obvious way to go. Government will eventually bite the bullet and make the commitment. Politicians love to support the inevitable. The short-term way out of the funding crisis -- particularly after RTID fails due to the "pigs get fed, hogs get slaughtered" greed of the ST folks -- is freeway and bridge tolling. Eventually this gets extended to this rose-colored robust world of self-financing infrastructure and users will simply pay for what they drive on.

Politicians won't ask the voters if they want tolling, they'll just start doing it. It's the straightforward solution to the roads problem, and easier to deal with than the centrally planned STID (i.e., the Soviet Transportation Improvement District) because each toll is associated with a piece of infrastructure, so we don't need the pork barrel and Federal feeding-at-the-trough politics that Patty Murray and Sound Transit are now succeeding in. Even with federal funding lipstick for light rail, the pig STILL can't fly (but the wings are now kissable). Eventually, light rail proponents are going to have to look completely away from taxes and towards revenue generated from people actually using their system and from bonding of that revenue stream. That's the right way to pay for any of this infrastructure: tolls and user fees.

RE: The "No Action" Alternative: David,

1. A valid call: sometimes it's easy to jump to conclusions.
2. Only problem is determining the appropriate cost level. When it's free, we'll settle on horrible highway congestion--a free resource will always be overconsumed.
3. Yeah. *sigh*

And...
4. I haven't seen you commenting in a while! I've missed your commentary! Of course, you've probably been commenting and blogging and weighing in for months, but it's always nice to see a familiar name again.

--Mike O'Neill

Why not make our buses free?: We only collect about 15% of the cost of our transit system at the fare box. We could probably save a lot of that cost by eliminating the administrative overhead required for collecting those fares. Why not show that we're serious about increasing transit ridership and make our buses free?

The toll program will never get off the ground. There's little popular support for it, and the closer the government gets to enacting it, the more money Tim Eyman will make collecting signatures on the initiative petitions to oppose it.

RE: aising the I.Q. of the "stupid bus system": your statement doesn't say anything about the tolling proposal, so I'm kind of hesitant to reply and drag this off topic, but here goes:

increased bus frequency isn't an option. The demand for more busses is not present in many suburban areas. Sound transit and seattle metro update bus routes to adjust for demand about once a year, and they do a rather good job of it.

If low demand for bus routes is preventing greater frequency, then what can be done? How can we increase the demand? Tolls are one way of doing this which also happen to solve several other problems (like congestion and infrastructure funding). Increasing the cost of driving makes more poeple consider taking the bus. Funding the busses with the tolls will give us a plan to improve bus frequency. What's not to like?

regarding your statements on light rail, I disagree, but I'd rather talk about tolls and not light rail. I'll leave it at that.

RE: Cogestion Pricing is mainly just a tax...: In london, the tax went up precisely because it was related to congestion. It's a market solution, not a government financing scheme.

When the congestion pricing started, the price was too low, and congestion wasn't reduced to the desired levels. In a market, when demand is high, the market responds by raising the cost of the supply. So, London did the right thing and raised the price of the road use. Congestion was reduced, car trips were eliminated, biking and transit use increased; the market solution worked.

in the future, I expect london to make adjustmenst to congestion pricing in the same way that our feds adjust the interest rate.

Drivers are the predominant cause of traffic, but the traffic costs everyone. Congestion pricing aims to put that cost solely on the driver, which I think is very, very fair.

Tolling is a good idea, but what would a transit system look like?: I think the most important thing is to define what the bus system would look like to make this happen. How can people who live very long distances actually get somewhere without a car? And don't criticize them for where they live. The person in Maple Valley who commutes to Everett might have at one time just commuted to Renton. Maybe her job shifted, or will shift at some point. The bigger problem is housing prices. If there were a lot more affordable housing close-in, there would not be so many long distance commuters.

Tolls are able to be adjusted for inflation in maintenance costs, which is one of the problems with the gas tax. Construction costs for repairs seem to go up faster than income from the gas tax, which creates a problem as roads built 30 to 50 years ago start to wear out.

I wonder though how this would work on I5 and I90, which are Interstates. It would probably require federal approval and maybe people with out of state license plates would not need to pay.

Taking the Bus is stupid?: So this lady named Hosea would have to leave her house a half hour earlier to take the bus. Getting off work at 3:30pm she could ride an express bus home in a HOV lane and save the time she now spends killing time shopping in Everett. She would likely save more than a half hour in the pm. Factor in the financial costs associated with commuting by car riding the bus isn't stupid. her choice not to ride the bus is stupid. And of course there is the increased risk of being killed while driving her car and the effect on the environment.

It's your turn Piper!

RE: Tolling is a good idea, but what would a transit system look like?: Not sure about the permission part, but back East there are lots of interstates (including I-90 through Indiana, New York, and Massachusetts) that collect tolls from residents and outsiders alike. They do it with toll booths, but there must be a way to work around that.

The Sims report suggests license-plate photo capture and billing by mail, but someone from out of state could just ignore the bill, couldn't they? And if they don''t use an exit ramp, where the camera and sensor are, they would get to drive through for free.

Pre-existing toll roads: I believe that the reason why certain elements of the Interstate System (NY, Indiana etc) are toll roads is because they pre-date the Interstate System.

Thank you, Mike O'Neill: It's hard to comment when so much of what is going on in the public conversation is fantasy.

I find it fantastic that anyone can think that a community which cannot figure out how to fix what everyone agrees is a damaged road (i.e. the Viaduct) and will not be able to do anything about a supposedly/potentially dangerous bridge (i.e. 520) can think about establishing a revolutionary system to meter road use throughout the region. Maybe it's when people realize that they cannot influence reality that they retreat into dreaming.

Get a grip, folks.

•••

But I am heartened however that there are at least a few worthwhile things happening such as the New SAM, which I believe is a cutting-edge and marvelous museum and which (being a basically positive person) I seize on as something which I can sincerely praise.

I think I'm important: I just caught Paton on KIRO 710 - with Dori Monson. He gave a great review to the article, as well as Crosscut. I think this was a first time cite for Crosscut on that station - one that stands as a measure in the traditional radio world that should be used to measure Crosscut in the interactive media/blogosphere.

Most of the people on KIRO were business people who spend a lot of time on the road, and were concerned about the price.

I'm concerned about the system too - not the price to drive so much, but how, and with whom, the revenues are spent. Brewster thinks we've got adequate watchdogs around here, but I'd disagree with that. Making the system revenue neutral, or close too, would be a good thing. I think Sims may be ceding that the RTID bond measure is likely to fail, though I'd guess he would be happy if both passed.

We do need congestion pricing, we do not need RTID bonds funded through other measures. (I'm not sure what they are, but I believe they include the regressive sales tax.)

Properly done a congestion pricing scheme is business and is good for business, almost without saying .

People will choose to drive, and where to live, based on the cost of transportation. Properly set congestion pricing will set capacity at its most efficient levels, which is at full speed, just before congestion begins.

That of course is wonk theory, and Mr. Sucher is very definitely right in his current conclusion about the theory just being something to make the wonks happy.

Do the powers that be have the ability to manage this congestion pricing or are they just concerned with finding another way to get into the public's pocket with accountability.

The answer to that question is of course one that every voter needs to answer.

I for one, will cede that Ron Sims might well be the one to lead us out of the current mess - but the toughest part of that road is still to come.

Anyone else care to join us? No charge, now.

-Douglas Tooley
Tacoma, WA

Transportation indecisions: The indecision we have right now on transportation issues (see David Sucher's comments) is a tug of war between Seattle's reactionary old guard and the younger progressives that have been steadily arriving in town since the hey days of grunge.

The recent viaduct vote marked the moment at which the progressives assumed the majority, and demographic trends ensure that their lead will only grow. Now may not be the time for bold new measures like tolls, but in 3-5 years these kinds of measures will pass overwhelmingly.

RE: aising the I.Q. of the "stupid bus system": Adjusting service based on current ridership is precisely targeted to not serve people who are not served now.

One reason there's so little bus demand in many suburbs is the lack of service. Who wants to risk commuting on a bus route that stops running before you'd get off work on a late night, or that has such infrequent connections you'd be late to work on a regular basis?

If there is essentially no reliable commuter service, there will be very low ridership, and very low apparent demand. That doesn't mean that people would not use a reliable, convenient bus system if one existed.

RE: Get those excess people off the roads.: A toll works three ways.

First, yes, it does price some people off the road.

Second, it does provide funding for road and transit improvements.

But third, it takes the place of all those WW-II conservation posters: it asks people the question "Is this trip really necessary?" A toll of just a dollar or two might be enough to get some people to re-think their daily commutes, and other people to re-think some of their non-commuting trips.

If a small toll could significantly reduce congestion, it might actually save money for people who still drove -- stop-and-go driving wastes gas and increases engine and brake wear. If better traffic flow saved you a gallon a day, that would more than pay for a $3 toll. (More likely to work out that way for SUV drivers than for Prius owners.)

RE: What about non-highways?: I don't think anyone is proposing eliminating the gas tax for tolls. In which case, the gas tax would effectively be a toll on all driving, while tolls would be a surcharge for freeway driving. Diverting to surface streets burns more gas and takes more time, people will determine their own balance.

RE: Transportation indecisions: Sean, I agree with you whole-heartedly. Younger folks have a future orientation and a can-do orientation that overcomes obstacles. Older folks have a more conservative view of things and care about what people will think if things change. That's just the way of the world. And the demographic trend for the Seattle area is toward a lot of smart, rich people living in both Seattle and the Eastside from Microsoft, Google, AvenueA, Amazon, and Starbucks, not to mention the new young turks at Boeing. These are people who if they put their minds to it can understand the complexities of public finance, of infrastructure investment, of public technology, of privacy, of quality of life, of light rail, of tolls, of climate change, etc.

As these people start their own families they'll become more and more involved in our schools and our government and in solving real problems, not just the ones that politicians present to us.

I think you'll find that the solutions they come up with will be way beyond the existing boxes of current 18th century government. They won't be particularly ideological; they'll just simply work, and at reasonable cost to boot. A lot of the old guard will have vested interests to protect, but their "assault on reason" will eventually fail. Timing here is unimportant -- various unneeded gatekeepers will clutch to their fading power, and their death grip may endure for a time. But eventually, change will occur and it'll happen fairly rapidly as we collectively come to realize that the current power structures aren't about making things happen, but about making sure that people are paid for not stopping things from happening. That's government in this area now in a nutshell -- Pay to play.

The new folk wisdom is going to be -- Play and get paid if you do good. If you build a great light rail, you'll get paid because people will ride your system and pay for the privilege of doing so. If you build a great 520 bridge, people will pay to drive over it because it's worth it.

Contrast that to "I'll pay off the environmental lobby, the construction lobby, the unions, the legal firms who could otherwise sue me, the cities, the counties, the roads people, and the state people plus borrow so much money that the banks and the bond people will love me. Then we'll build some huge boondoggle that'll keep all these people driving around in SUVs forever. In this all too familiar scenario the quality of the solution is completely divorced from lining up a ridiculous set of public trough feeders, and not on solutions, not on efficiency or effectiveness, and not on meeting the needs of citizens as expressed by the will of the people. The times are a changin', thank God.

RE: aising the I.Q. of the "stupid bus system": I'm a huge fan of tolls. It's direct payment rather than indirect payment through a weird set of political intermediaries that happens with taxation.

You say that increasing bus frequency is not an option because the demand is not present. That's a reasonable response, but a defeatist approach to providing great bus service. The feedback from the public was that increased frequency was what they want. How about more smaller buses? That makes a lot of sense, particularly on the Eastside where often the big buses come around once every hour, and have one or two people in them. Make the service useable and more people will ride. Simple.

Rather than complain about the cost of light rail, as I usually do, I will say that I've seen reports that light rail would get twice the ridership of bus rapid transit. I tend to believe that because I think that the experience of riding in light rail is better than the experience riding a bus. This experience is what the bus system should be working on. In many parts of the city the perception is that a bus may be full of threatening people, so safety on buses and at bus routes is a huge issue. I believe I saw an article on Crosscut about video cameras on all buses in Portland. That's a good idea. That'll help promote safety. How about putting them at all bus stops too? And monitoring all the cameras centrally with the equivalent of 911 calls for any threatening activities.

Your notion that tolling will make driving more expensive and therefore make riding buses more attractive is right on. I don't say this because I want to degrade the driving experience (in fact, I want to fund it more directly rather than indirectly so that subsidies for driving aren't hidden), but because having different transportation modes COMPETE is the way to create better transportation systems. The bus system should be competing both against cars and light rail. It should compete on service. It should compete on price. It should fight for its ridership. It should provide on-board bus services. It should demand its fair share of the ST budget rather than getting shoved into the background.

I disagree with your notion that tolls should go to the bus system. The tolls should go to the bridge or the road that they're tolling, for construction, maintenance, operations, and rebuild. Once you open up the revenue to other uses, you're diverting money away from what the citizen rightly expects the tolls to be used for -- paying for the piece of infrastructure. I would give a little bit of leeway, maybe, to funding the particular buses and bus routes on a particular piece of infrastructure, but otherwise you've lost fiscal discipline, which is in general the biggest problem with transportation finance in the region.

Paton appears to want it Ron's way: After listening to Mr. Paton on the Dori Monson Show today it became apparent that he was fed the story of this "report" because of how he would play it to the public. He was already a supporter of congestion pricing and logically would move the study forward as further "proof " of the "need" for this program. His constant raves about how Mr. Sims is willing to take the "difficult " positions like this congestion pricing tax and the state income tax proves he is a visionary according to Mr. Paton. Well don't pass the kool-aid just yet sparky, Sims doesn't do anything that doesn't bring himself more power or control. If this fellow wants to be Ron's sycophantic spokesperson than let him. Bottom line is that this is a huge transfer of wealth, power and control of freedom of movement in exchange for perceived but not assured congestion mitigation.

If Ron's a real leader he will start with the obvious, his staff and employees, if they are not using Mass transit for commuting they should be fired. All of them, including Ron himself. How about we skip the whole big brother pricing model and put buck a gallon gas tax in place. It's collected at the pump, everyone including visitors pays it without the "I'll video thier license plate and send them a bill" nonsense. Maybe if everyone pays no matter which roads they drive, a renewed interest in accountability of our elected officials will result in true congestion relief. If it doesn't, fire the group that's been running the show here in Washington for the last 25 years. It's a start.

are tolls equivalent to gas taxes?: You raise an interesting point - why not just raise the gas tax instead of charging tolls?

From what I can tell, the differences between and a tax and a toll are:
1) tolls apply to specific roads whereas gas taxes apply to all driving
2) tolls apply at specific times, wherease taxes are always in effect
3) transit and police are exempt from tolls but not taxes
4) tolls are the same for all vehicles, whereas taxes favor fuel efficiency

You could argue that points 1 and 2 are why tolls do a better job of reducing congestion on bottleneck roads. I wonder if there are any data to back that up? On the other hand, taxes should at least in theory promote the purchase of fuel efficient vehicles, whereas tolls do not. Either way would be an effective fund raising mechanism.

The tar baby...or the briar patch...we're stucker or suckered either way: All this transportation policy stuff about congestion pricing, RTID's and how to rifle-butt us onto bicycles, buses, or trains is like Brer Rabbit's encounter with the tar baby: the more you swing, the stucker you get.

Shouldn't the point be to figure out how people can effectively and efficiently go from Point A to Point B? Shouldn't their interests and opinions govern? Not those of "holier than thou" (HTT) pundits, politicians, and green purity proselytizers?

This business smacks of a briar patch into which HTT's beg to be thrown. Like Brer Rabbit, they're born and bred in the thicket of mind numbing details, regulations, layers of government, and the inexorable, rapacious, and death-by-a-thousand-cuts, water torture drip, drip, drip nature of the government man picking away at our purses and pockets.

Ron Sims is the ultimate stirrer of pots - one of the cleverest politicians in town and one of the sloppiest. He's clever because nothing is done sans purpose, often hid from public view, and sloppy because occasionally he takes his eye off the ball of those skittering around carrying his water. I'll bet the TRAC/Booz-Allen study didn't find its way out of anyone's office; it got FedEx'd out on purpose. Where the hand grenade of Destination 2030 got tossed, however, and the collateral damage of its flying fragments were a matter of some indifference to His Executiveness. But he's always excellent theater.

As best I can make out from a cursory read of its 56-pages, this thing is one more way to get into our wallets, and better than one more way to eviscerate our freedom and liberty.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not opposed to tolls or improvement districts per se. But I smell a rat. With a gaggle of competing or overlapping or new governmental jurisdictions; a 52-card-pickup maze of taxes, tolls, and financing schemes; and a Machiavellian obfuscation of what people want and need (improve existing roads and build new ones), the average Joe Doakes is left with nothing to do but toss up his hands in frustration (thus preventing them from holding on to his wallet), utter "Huh???" and completely cede to his betters - HTT's - decisions over his life.

Each time we turn around we face another plan or scheme and a tax increase to end all tax increases. Like lambs led to the slaughter we succumb only to find the money spent, nothing built enough to actually get finished, and stuck (there's that tar baby again) having to pony up for overruns occasioned by deliberate low-balling of cost estimates. Exhibit A? Sound Transit. Exhibit B? The Viaduct, which the Wizard of Odd (that portion of the HTT collectively represented by Seattle's Mayor and City Council) seeks to talk out of existence and replace with the Mother of All Gridlocks, a surface street option. "Let them suck exhaust fumes."

An aside and question to bicycle advocates: How does one transport six 4 X 8' sheets of plywood on a bicycle? Or haul groceries for a family of seven? Or kids? Or dry cleaning? The average commuter doesn't just peddle from a downtown condo to a downtown office and back again; real people with lives and families and projects multi-task their way to and from work, and even a bicycle costing more than my first house is inadequate for the job. Secure your spandexed splendor to the most uncomfortable of all seats in the universe if you wish, but don't claim unctuous moral purity when others fail to grasp your enlightened truth.

Those of us among the great unwashed remain unmoved by the hullabaloo. But we are deeply suspicious!

What do I want? Respect - it's our need, our time, our money, and our lives getting dinked with - enough social engineering and moralizing over transportation. I'm tired of getting stucker and seeing HTT's take refuge in the briar patch.

The Piper

The Washington Transit Authority: Sims may be for tolling, but Sims doesn't care that much about roads, or about transportation. He and KC care mainly about Sound Transit, and revenue-generating propositions, and political capital. Tolling provides the revenue generating propositions that can fund Sound Transit, which he does because it feeds his base. Very Bush like.

I'm absolutely opposed to this sort of funneling of money to choo-choo trains. Instead, let's create a Washington Transit Authority (WTA) that is separate from King County and separate from Sound Transit and that tolls infrastructure, piece-by-piece, and dedicates the revenue from that infrastructure to maintenance, operations, and rebuilding. The WTA would also be responsible for developing a wireless tolling capability to bill all infrastructure down to the road and bike trail level so that each vehicle owner is sent a monthly transportation bill. Ideally, over time, this system replaces the gas tax and the transportation portion of the sales tax. The WTA would seek to implement legally mandated least-cost-planning so that minimal bonding was required for rebuilds of infrastructure such as the viaduct and 520. Least-cost planning inserts some financial accountability into all these agencies that have no current motivation to hold down costs. Similarly, actual profit from tolling should be used to generate funds for future expansion and building of new infrastructure projects. In a lot of ways this is the way that Moses built New York City's highway and park system. Although he eventually became a bit of a tyrant, in the early years he was focused mainly on getting things built and solving real transportation problems and not bowing to every special interest and political interest who showed up at his door step. His main goal early on was in achieving enough autonomy for his organization politically and financially that he could implement an integrated, consistent efficient vision. That's what Sound Transit has done right. Unfortunately, they care more about money than they do about solving transportation problems efficiently. I don't think the word "efficient" is in their vocabulary. Being accused of being "wasteful" is almost a badge of honor.

It was pitiful to watch the ST Board deliberating over the state of Rainier Avenue, which had been torn up for months but was waiting even more months for completion because the subcontractor had only ONE truck with two guys out paving each driveway by hand. The staggering disconnect between actual work, lack of dead-line pressure, the ongoing damage to businesses in the area, and the overpaid board of 20-or-so politicos expressing their dismay says it all.

In such a situation, there should be one guy at the top and 20 guys doing the work. The ST inverted pyramid bureaucracy explains all you need to know about why light rail and infrastructure projects in general cost too much. Instead, give authority to one capable engineering mind and let him drive the system. And lets do it with something rational like a Washington Transit Authority and not some political jobs program like Sound Transit. I don't think the word "efficient" is in their vocabulary. Their being accused of "being wasteful" is almost a badge of honor to them.

There is a better way than what we're doing now. To implement the better way you have to do something new in parallel with the old, but untainted by it. That's why we need a Washington Transit Authority.

Effects: The big picture..: I dont see how this is going to solve the problem.

So now instead of the freeways not being congested, the rural areas will be with normal traffic, rushhour bypass traffic, and backups for tolling. You arent going to be able to get to a freeway/highway. Its just switching the problem over to our public streets.

Another point is that people are going to lose jobs over this. People making less than 50gransd a year are going to be hurt, not even speaking of those making less than 30grand. If they worked close enough, they wouldnt need a freeway/highway, and the public transportation system is inadtquate to handle the masses that are going to be forced out of thier cars.

Driving is not a sin. It doesnt need a sin tax.
What we need are good ideas and real solutions. This is just another way for us to get screwed out of hard earned dollar by a State that is already taking too much. Tolls arent going to solve the problem. Infact, its going to create alot more.

So called visionarys waist time, money, ignore facts: To a certain extent, the people who have destroyed the
transportation system in greater King county are now
offering up a 'panic' solution that will only perpetuate the
problems the region faces.

The people of this region 'vote' each day as to how they
want to transport themselves. Why has this vote been
ignored for over 25 years ?

The current generation of personal vehicles are the most
pollution free and fuel efficient that roadways have ever seen.
Next generation vehicles will be pollution free ( hydrogen,
electric ) . Light rail will never serve more than 5 percent of
the region: imagine a pleasant trip late at night, with the dope
dealers, drunks, homeless or gang bangers. These are the
same types that plague what could otherwise be the one
bright spot of mass transit, busses. The bus can easily be
scaled, route reconfigured and uses existing roads.

Why is it I do not see demolition of right of way paths thru
neighborhoods in Seattle to make light rail even slightly
practical ? Is the King county exec fearful of the backlash
when democratic voters homes start getting bulldozed ?

Another pathetic feature of such 'vision' studies, lack of fully
detailed explanations of how the money will be spent. If you
think bike paths and light rail will ever be a SIGNIFICANT part
of mas transit, please move to Sweden. Live in London for a
couple of years and then come back and try to make such
silly selling points.

What these socialists are really afraid to point out to their
democratic party voting wonks, is that population control for
the region, one way or another, is a sure solution to transportation
and many other issues.

How about a one time 5,000 dollar tax on any person moving
into King county, payable within 30 days of entry ? This is no
more rediculous than the waste being offered up by idiots at the
local university. Sound Transit will never be 'sound' . Light rail
will only further waste transportation dollars.

For the record: Now that the regional transportation tax increase of Prop 1 has been defeated (Nov 6, 2007; NO=56%), electronically-enabled road pricing, fine-tuned to offer lower fees outside of rush hours to motivate off-peak trip-making, is more inevitable than ever in Western Washington.

The on-going collapse of the revenue productivity of the State's fuel tax as gasoline/diesel prices increase and vehicle mpg rises is another force for introducing pay-as-you-drive road user fees.

Tourists..welcome to Seattle: First of all I question the legality of a local government imposing a toll on a Federal Highway (I-5, I-405)

Second I agree the affect will be to funnel cars off of a highway onto surface streets and just redistribute gridlock and increasing pollution and gas usage

Third tourism would be fun.."Welcome to Seattle.. please do not drive on the highways as it is reserved for the rich. You should plan on taking buses and light rail or rent a bicycle"

Forth we have taxes on gas, taxes on restaurants, taxes on car sales taxes, etc to pay for transportation.

Fifth we are already seeing the effect of high diesel prices on food and other products dependent on truckers for delivery. This would be one more hit on independent truckers and the prices we pay for goods and services.

Lastly..Some like me will just say that it is no longer cost effective to live and work in King County and leave the area. This may solve the problem of congestion but also it may give businesses pause regarding locating in the Seattle area.

As the laws of Physics state "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction" there will be unintended consequences if this plan moves forward..