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I see 2008 as another year of complacency both in Seattle and in Washington state, but as one of transition nationally. I see 2009 as a year of difficulty but also of hopefulness.
Here at home our state and local tax codes remain stunningly regressive and our revenue base riddled by special favors for the politically connected, even though state and local governance is dominated by nominally liberal Democratic officeholders. The passage of Proposition 1 (Sound Transit 2) was an atrocity against regional taxpayers. Its cost goes well beyond that of Boston's Big Dig. The light rail system it will finance will take fewer passengers to fewer destinations for far more tax money than alternative bus systems would have done. It also will take many years to construct. It is an example of how special-interest money can overwhelm the public interest.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels proposes to make similar wasteful transportation investments in his Mercer Project and an extended streetcar system. We shall see the options chosen for Alaskan Way Viaduct and 520 bridge replacements/repairs. Our Seattle school system remains deplorable even though more constructive School Board members, and a new superintendent, are in place. Local elections in 2009 will give us a chance both to replace Nickels and City Council members who have over a long period talked like Henry Wallace but walked like Benito Mussolini. Candidates of quality need to step forward.
The Obama campaign and election were significant not just because old racial barriers were broken but because Obama's basic appeal — that of ending polarization and reaching across political and ideological barriers — had been badly needed over the past two presidencies. His temperament and intelligence appear to suit him ideally for difficult economic times when citizens will need to make shared sacrifice. His promising beginning could be sidetracked, however, if his unity platform gives way to the usual single-interest and single-issue agendas that increasingly have dominated national politics over two decades. His first test will come in a month when he will make decisions about the shape and form of the necessary financial and economic rescue measures. His Inaugural speech, I suspect, will be similar to John F. Kennedy's in 1961, asking us to consider "not what our country can do for you [but] what you can do for your country."
The times make good and great Presidents but Presidents also make their times. This is the opportunity facing Obama now. Just as our financial and economic systems are being forced into rationalization by the current crisis, Obama and Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders can recast decisionmaking constructively.
The biggest change in 2009 must come from ourselves. Greatest Generation and Korean War-generation members have known hard times and sacrifice. The more numerous boomers now running things are, for the most part, confronting such challenges for the first time. Will we move, as we should, from a culture of individual and group greed and excess to one of genuine community? External forces are pushing us that way. But will we do it? That is the big question of the year ahead.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Dec 30, 5:31 p.m. Inappropriate
Ted, Ted, Ted... How much longer are we going to have to endure your tired anti-transit rantings? Enough is enough. The people of Puget Sound have overwhelmingly approved the "atrocity" you so despise. You and your anti-rail friends have had your say during the campaign.
Now the people have spoken and it's time to move on.
You may not like it, but this region is going to have a light rail system that connects our major cities together. In a few years we will no longer have to embarassingly admit that we don't have a rail backbone in our fair city. Seattle will join the ranks of every other big city in America in having rapid transit that doesn't get stuck in traffic. It'll be a beautiful thing.
You may never ride Link, Ted, but you will benefit from it. Think about that.
As for your comment about Mussolini, spare us the references to fascist dictators. We get it. You don't like Greg Nickels. But don't even try to imply that he's anything like the guy who seized power in Italy in the 1920s. You damage your own credibility with such comparions.
Posted Tue, Dec 30, 6:07 p.m. Inappropriate
actually, i rather like the comparison.
oh, and, feel free to ride the rails in the off hours and become acquainted with the cities drug culture and homeless / alcoholics ! your rail system will be the biggest waist of tax dollars for something that is neither reconfigurable or scalable !
Posted Wed, Dec 31, 10:23 a.m. Inappropriate
A fine piece, Mr. Van Dyk. One thing I'd like to give brief comment on is the fact that people consider Obama black. When I voted for him, I didn't see a black man running for office, just an intelligent one, and one who wasn't the typical polarizing Sharpton or Jackson. And I saw a man who simply made sense and wasn't about the typical political machine that Washington churns out election year-after-year. So, I think it's more important that we not only elected a black/white president, but more importantly an intelligent one. It's been eight long tedious years coming...
And yes, we are in for some difficult times of sacrifice. It may be both good and bad. As a college professor, I can't help but think there will be pluses to the minuses. The biggest being that perhaps many of my students will (hopefully) lose the idea of their entitlement to the finer things without the output necessary to achieve them. Amen.
-Political
Posted Wed, Dec 31, 10:48 a.m. Inappropriate
Thanks for your comments. I continue to mention light rail because it illustrates perfectly how complacent we have become. Contrary to dahlstrom, the light rail system approved via Prop. 1 is not designed to connect cities of the Puget Sound region. Instead, it is an extension of the local Seattle light rail system---streetcars on rails-- which is years behind schedule, billions over its promised pricetag, and which has yet to carry its first passenger. It will serve only a handful of fixed-point stations in the region and will not, when completed years from now, reduce traffic congestion at all. Much smaller investments in bus systems could have done something right now, as well as in future years, to move more people to more destinations. Now our grandkids are saddled ith the perpetual tax authority granted Sound Transit. If we do not pay full attention, those with a narrow agenda (in this case the contractors, subcontractors and politicians deriving money from light rail) will spend enough focused campaign and other resources to have their way. If we are so careless to let them do it, we get what we have now: A grossly cost-ineffective public works project which will not begin to address traffic congestion.
I do not, of course, compare the mayor to Benito Mussolini because he is a fascist. I do so because he has pursued a corporatist administration which
rubber-stamps the wish list of a handful of developers and other major campaign contributors while not providing day-to-day good governance to
ordinary citizens and taxpayers. Like Mussolini.
I do hope, as stated, that our current financial/economic difficulty will shake us into more careful public choices---locally as well as nationally.
Posted Wed, Dec 31, 11:35 a.m. Inappropriate
Ted, Ted, Ted, Light Rail passed by very comfortable margins in Snohomish County, King County, Seattle, maybe with less support in Tacoma and Pierce.
But a win is a win is a win. There is very little left to discuss. GET OVER IT. This system will change - permanently - land use and housing patterns - and the commute -in the I-5/I-405 corridor. For a mere $15-$20 Billion more, we'll have a system that stretches from EVERETT TO TACOMA, looping around both sides of Lake Washington.
If you wish, take the bus. We'll wave from the train as we pass you, STUCK in the car pool lane.
Ross Kane
Warm Beach
Posted Wed, Dec 31, 11:47 a.m. Inappropriate
Ted makes some good points. I have seen the transformation of Seattle from a middle class family friendly city to an unaffordable city with an ever decreasing number of children.
The City has missed several opportunities to make infrastructure investments that benefit the broad base of people. Instead too much public investment is driven by ideology (vs effectiveness) and doing what is highly visible and supposedly 'prestigious'. I hope that priorities will get more in line for the leaner times we are all facing.
This City leans more and more heavily on public infrastructure investments that were made 40-60years ago.
Posted Wed, Dec 31, 12:39 p.m. Inappropriate
Excellent piece by Ted, as usual.
I hope Ted continues to rip Sound Transit, as they so thoroughly deserve.
As for the twits who say "get over it" about ST: I will get over light rail being built here as soon as ST stops taxing me to pay for their outrageously expensive boondoggle. In other words, never.
As long as I am being taxed for light rail, I will continue to rub Sound Transit's face in their lies, at every opportunity. Such as the lie that putting light rail over the I-90 bridge will increase its capacity, when it will greatly reduce it. And now that Prop 1 has passed, ST published the east link DEIS which says that light rail over the I-90 floating bridge will have 9-minute headways in 2030! That is 6.7 trains per hour per direction. That is the same capacity as 40 buses per hour. The I-90 90 bridge is carrying more than 40 buses per hour per direction in peak hours right now. What an utterly idiotic waste of highway lanes, not to mention billions of dollars.
I can't wait for light rail to start operating in our area. That will give people many more opportunities to bash Sound Transit for the liars they are.
Posted Wed, Dec 31, 1:09 p.m. Inappropriate
Fifty miles of light rail (including a subway to Northgate) is now a regional public commitment, and to many citizens (most of whom are not regular transit riders) it may be a beautiful thing no matter what it accomplishes.
However, the permanent two million dollars per day in Sound Transit taxes that will be consumed starting next April mark a project worth monitoring closely. Even if the first ten-year Seattle light rail construction phase that is incomplete and not operating after 12 years were not warning enough, there is lots left to discuss over the next ten years, as required by law and described in every Environmental Impact Statement that comes at us.
The first post-Prop 1 draft EIS is being read now, especially by Eastside citizens who have property in the path of the pending tracks. Individual elements of the this East Link draft EIS, such as light rail taking over two HOV lanes of the I-90 Interstate highway across Lake Washington, are going to be examined by both the Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration before being approved for construction. Approval is about 18 months away, with lots of environmental process in the meantime.
Looking more near term, while Ross Kane writes that Ted and I can take the bus instead of the train if we prefer, that may not be possible. Case in point, downtown Seattle to the Airport.
As noted by Steptoe.fan, while Link light rail is limited in its scalability (maximum of four-car trains, unlike BART's ten-car trains) and not reconfigurable (tracks are permanently where they are), the currently popular Metro 194 express bus from downtown Seattle to the Airport is now likely to be both reconfigured and scaled back ... as in, eliminated. This bus service is planned to be replaced by the two car trains that are supposed to start running in late 2009. (ST Express buses would serve Sea-Tac Airport southward.)
During most periods of the day, the Metro 194 bus takes several fewer minutes between downtown Seattle and the Airport than light rail will. But light rail makes the bus redundant, according to Metro.
Metro's plan to eliminate Route 194 is described at http://metro.kingcounty.gov/up/sc/plans/2008/102008-sesea-dtsea-seatac.html .
Metro notes as an advantage to this proposed change, "Link light rail will provide more frequent and reliable service compared to existing bus service. Link will have longer hours of operation than existing Route 194 service."
Metro also notes this disadvantage: "The distance from the Link light rail SeaTac/Airport Station to the airport terminal will be farther than the distance from the current bus zones to the terminal. The walk from the station to the airport terminal is about 1,000 feet and will take approximately four minutes."
Executive Ron Sims and the King County Council are now open to input on this proposed change. Executive Sims is planning to send a proposed ordinance making bus service changes to the Council for review and a decision in April or May 2009, according to the Metro web site.
King County Metro is going to be operating the Sound Transit light rail to the airport under contract, fully funded (hopefully!) by Sound Transit's ample tax flow. "Competing" bus lines paid for out of Metro's inadequate tax base are likely goners.
Posted Thu, Jan 1, 12:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Ted, I hope you'll take some constructive criticism from a would-be fan. Your obsessive opposition to light rail only undermines your thoughtful and measured opinions on other subjects. When faced with the uncertainties and complexities of designing an effective public transportation system, it's one thing to be a skeptical, but quite another to be a zealot.
I don't know why you are so personally invested in keeping Seattle train free, but you'd be doing yourself a favor by admitting that neither you nor anyone else can say with absolute certainty whether light rail is a better investment than the alternatives. There is plenty of room here for smart people to arrive at equally valid but incompatible conclusions.
Posted Thu, Jan 1, 4:13 a.m. Inappropriate
Sean: I final thought on light rail. I am not a zealot. I am a responsible citizen, who knows about transportation and other policy options, and has been just plain sickened by the degree to which ordinary citizens have been misled and, then, raped of their tax dollars by a
coalition of forces and people who have no regard whatever for the larger public interest. It is not a matter of smart people arriving at equally valid but incompatible conclusions. There is no national specialist in either public transportation or public finance who would tell you that Sound Transit light rail is not a massive waste of public resources and/or a worst-choice option to move people to their destinations in King, Pierce and Snohomish County. There are clever people who have sold a false bill of goods to voters. There are voters who have believed them and/or have
not paid full attention to the facts of the issue. The latter, regrettably, passed Prop. 1 narrowly in November after rejecting it a year earlier. A second defeat would have buried light rail as an option and forced pubic officials to focus on more cost-effective alternatives.
Posted Thu, Jan 1, 4:43 p.m. Inappropriate
Ross,
"But a win is a win is a win. There is very little left to discuss."
Isn't that a quote from the Monorail Project?
The Piper
Posted Fri, Jan 2, 8:30 a.m. Inappropriate
Mr. Van Dyk, please expand on your conception of "community." I haven't actually encountered a discussion in which you outlined one. Your right on Sound Transit in that the "discussion" has just begun. Sound Transit hitched their train to diminishing returns--namely, the sales tax. Nevertheless, "community" would be much more intuitive if it revolved around a transportation system; all the better an electric one. Unless one's intent on the continued support of social progress in Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Saudi Arabia.
One final note: Mr. Obama may appear calm; however, he seems prepared to panic along with the rest--"every economist across the ideological spectrum is agreed." Meanwhile, his counter-cyclical policies are problematic. Deficit spending requires the accumulation of reserves during booms. In fact, deficit spending has been the preferred policy for a generation, so his policy amounts to a lot more of the same, while the possibility of a t-bill bubble is ignored--"shelter in a storm;" The stimulus package--seemingly redundant given the billions returned to consumers pockets by falling oil prices--may very well turn into a debt-bomb.
Posted Sat, Jan 3, 12:04 a.m. Inappropriate
Mr. St. Clair, a win is a win. There are NO ties at the polls. Even if the final decision is made by flipping a coin.
The VOTERS have decided. Light rail is being built. It will continue to be built. Complaining that voters were "duped" or "mislead" - in short trying to de-legitimize the result - is certainly nothing new.
But perhaps you missed it: The franchise has been extended a few times since 1787. Perhaps you missed it: One man or woman, one vote.
Perhaps you missed it: Sound Transit was approved it all three Counties. VOTERS have embraced a new vision of a Regional future.
Now it's up to Joni Earl to get it built.
Ross Kane
Warm Beach
Posted Sat, Jan 3, 6:14 a.m. Inappropriate
To Ross: Of course we are guided by the Democratic process. That does not mean that decisions taken through that process are unflawed and cannot be examined. You may remember, locally, the monorail project. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which led us into fullscale war in Vietnam, was opposed by only two Senators. Whether approved by plebescite or ballot measure, or by a representative legislative body, all kinds of mistaken or misguided projects have been launched and sustained accordingly. The task is not to renounce the process but to strenghthen it by informing ourselves, demanding higher performance of our elected representatives,
and exposing those policies and actions---even after the fact---that are mistakes or which were sold to the people on false pretenses.
Light rail was and is an even bigger mistake than the late monorail project. It has been marketed and was sold as something which it was not: Namely, a cost-efficient means to seriously address transportation congestion in the three-county region. After being soundly rejected in 2007, it passed in 2008 because voters believed we had to "do something" about such congestion and saw Prop. 1 as the only offered option to do so.
Prop. 1 provided Sound Transit with open-ended taxing authority which will enable it to take as long, and spend as much, to complete the project as it wishes. Not only will many billions of dollars be diverted from alternative transportation purposes---expanded bus service, highway, bridge and ferry modernization, etc.---but from other public needs outside transportation.
The principal beneficiaries of this taxing and spending will not be
those who use regional transportation systems. They will be the contractors, subcontractors, law firms, financial houses, consultants, lobbyists and other who have a piece of the light rail action. Secondary beneficiaries will be the elected officials who take political money from the light rail crowd.
A lot of blame for Prop. 1's passage also lies with corporations, civic organizations, media and others who endorsed or who helped finance it without doing any kind of serious analysis about its costs and benefits.
They simply took at face value the misrepresentations and claims of those
sponsoring light rail.
Yes, it is up to Joni Earl, and her successors over the generation to come, to make light rail work. But it also is up to citizens to inform themselves, monitor Sound Transit's performance, and demand that their tax money be spent wisely. If and when they determine that is not happening, they can reverse what they have approved---hopefully, before
too many billions have been misspent. That also is part of the democratic process. It is never too late to correct a mistake and means exist through that process to do it.
Posted Sat, Jan 3, 11:41 a.m. Inappropriate
So, your basic argument is that Seattle voters should nix Nickels because he worked hard to get light rail onto the ballot and they voted for it enthusiastically. Sounds like a better argument to re-elect Nickels.
Ted, your critics don't want you to endorse light rail. They just feel that another round of sulking over your loss on the light rail issue doesn't constitute looking ahead to 2008.
Posted Sat, Jan 3, 11:42 a.m. Inappropriate
or 2009!
Posted Mon, Jan 5, 1:14 a.m. Inappropriate
Van Dyk constantly makes insane and wild claims about light rail, pretending he has looked beyond his lazy spoonfed conspiracy theories to inform his views.
He hasn't. And he won't.
In other words, 2009 will be just as predictable as 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008... in Van Dyk land.
The guy hasn't said anything new, useful or interesting on the subject of transportation for years. Nothing.
Hey, but at least he has gathered a handful of crank fans. Like Lincoln, who enjoys posting videos of African-Americans causing trouble on trains in Atlanta...then trying to scare would-be Link riders into believing "you're next." Lincoln also believes bicycles should be banned from public roads. Talk about enlightened.
Gives you an idea of just how far Van Dyk has fallen - although I'm beginning to get the idea this elitist/populist didn't exactly start from a strong position. The list of candidates he's done consulting work for over the years reads like a "who's who" of the political graveyard founders' circle.