IKEA - you assemble something from there, you better not count on moving it or having much adaptability or it will collapse into press board crap. Is this really a model for government?

@ ruffner:

The "IKEA" model is better than the Sound Transit model of government.

With Sound Transit you have massive regressive taxing, staggeringly high up-front and ongoing costs, and absolutely no chance of "moving it or having much adaptability". Couple those flaws with how it provides marginal (at best) utility to the vast majority of the population and the local economy and it's fair to describe ST as a failed model.

I'd like to imagine a city that isn't dominated by an army of over the hill, 60's stuck, moon units. go retire to your yurts and let this place reflect the desires of a younger generation.

The future of Pugetopolis, inspired by IKEA, but with a twist: You don't have to be smart, just rich.

I recognize Mr. Berger's deep knowledge of local history and for that reason usually appreciate his writing even if (as happens only rarely) I disagree with its conclusions.

But to equate Seattle with Portland and Vancouver ("It's what Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are all about") is not only gravely dishonest but profoundly insulting to Oregonians and British Columbians.

As long as Seattlites (and Pugetopolans in general) retain their bigoted hostility to mass transit -- the venomous hatred of lower-income peoples that boiled over via anti-transit votes in Tacoma and Pierce and Whatcom counties and simmers in Seattle and King County -- the Puget Sound region will remain exactly what it is: a land of defiantly greedy car-huggers notorious for the worst urban-area public transport in the entire industrial world.

We use transit way more than Portlanders or metro Portlanders.

As for the Ikea model, it's important not to do things poorly just for initial savings. The Kingdome was an example of that.

@ lorenbliss:

It boggles the mind how far off-base your comment there is. Buses and trains are very popular with people here, and a relatively high percentage of the population uses them (at least occasionally). Your belief the people around here harbor “bigoted hostility” toward transit is nothing short of delusional.

The problem with transit around here is how it is managed and the financing plans employed by the agencies and taxing districts with overlapping and uncoordinated goals and service areas. The key flaw with how buses and trains around here are financed is the tax cost to the public is FAR higher here than elsewhere. That’s not due to “bigoted hostility” on the part of people, it’s just lousy management and a “shaft the poor” mindset held by the leadership of the state legislature. Are you from around here? I can’t believe you are so clueless about those realities.

The key factor driving Sound Transit’s bloated, punishing taxing plans is the way it pledges to collect its entire tax streams at or near the maximum rates while any of its 40-year bonds are outstanding. ST’s plan is to sell about $8 billion in long-term bonds. So far it has sold about $1.4 billion of debt. That is a massive amount of local bonding. It will be securing that mountain of debt by pledging in the bond sales contracts to confiscate about $85 billion in taxes, through 2052 or so. Those tax-collection pledges are the security for the bondholders.

The governor and the legislature rubberstamped that abusive financing plan, and they are letting it continue.

That's a uniquely abusive use of taxing powers. Nobody but the unaccountable political appointees running Sound Transit uses that kind of punishing financing scheme to pay for buses and trains anywhere else in the country. ST’s tax collection pledges will cause it to confiscate billions of dollars more tax revenue than it needs.

Metro, Sound Transit, and the transit governments in Pierce and Snohomish counties and the emergent SDOT transit agency expect to haul in something on the order of $1.3 billion in local tax revenue this year alone. All their peers do a great job of providing bus service, and expanding train systems, with far less annual local tax revenue:

- TriMet (Portland) - $233 million;

- DART (Dallas/Fort Worth) - $385 million;

- San Diego Metropolitan Transit System - $100 million; and

- RTID (Denver) - $241 million.

There is no good reason for this discrepancy. Maybe you want to try explaining it lorenbliss?

Not only is there far too much taxing for transit here, it is the wrong kind of taxing. That 1.8% aggregate sales tax for transit here, plus car tab taxes, are designed to target individuals. That’s exactly what we don’t need now. Sales taxes act as an anchor on consumer spending, and it is consumer spending that pulls areas out of recessions. We’ve got the most regressive tax scheme in the country here and that’s in large part due to transit taxes. Those harm the interests of the overwhelming majority of people.

TriMet serving three counties around Portland only needs about $230 million in local taxing each year to provide expanding bus and rail systems and services to roughly the same population as King Co. and the ST taxing area. The TriMet financing plan imposes taxes on businesses directly. The average family there pays $0 direct taxes for transit. The way it was designed up here though is nasty: Sound Transit and Metro taxes cost the average family of four here $455 every year, and that amount is set to increase for decades.

There’s an economics principle called the multiplier effect. Money spent locally sloshes around many times in the local economy. Not enough of that happens here. We’re not going to get that here either, unless things change. We aren’t going to experience a robust enough economy because of what would be done with far too much of the tax revenues to be confiscated in the name of transit over the next several decades.

Consider how much of the regressive tax revenue confiscated for “transit” is lost to the local economy, immediately. Sound Transit can’t ship sales tax revenue out of the local private sector fast enough. It makes huge payments to bondholders, non-local contractors, and engineering firms. Vast sums are sent to BNSF and Amtrak. Oversees contractors get hundreds of millions of dollars for railsets and tunnel boring machines. The size of ST’s payments to entities such as other local governments, state governments, and indirectly to unions are staggering – far larger than its peers make.

Local small businesses can not afford to hire new employees. New businesses will open elsewhere, where the private sector spending is more robust. This dynamic will continue for decades, and get worse and worse.

Those staggeringly poor features of transit governance flow from bad management and bad laws. There are economic reasons voters in Pierce County rejected a sales tax hike several months ago that have nothing to do with “avoiding bus service cuts”. If you sense hostility lorenbliss, it is rightfully directed at lousy government management, not transit.

Those places use mostly existing rights of way to build rail. Often existing rail corridors. Usually flat. Seattle by contrast builds tunnels and bridges, or rebuilds roads ala MLK.

Our roads are also way more expensive for the same reason.

Matt, ST's additional costs due to right-of-way acquisition and building several tunnels/bridges do not come close to explaining why the intergenerational tax costs it imposes on families and individuals here are many, many times higher than what light rail providers impose on people elsewhere.

Aren't you in the construction contracting business? The ST2 plan calls for capital expenditures of $13.5 billion. Do you agree with me that the tax cost to secure the approximately $8 billion in bonds ST intends to sell will amount to about $85 billion, and most of that will be sales tax collections that will continue at or near the current rates until 2052 or so? That's abusive, and it has virtually nothing to do with the costs of right of way acquisition, or building bridges and tunnels for the trains.

You've said you prepare bids for your employer in the construction business. Check my estimates and let everyone know whether or not you agree with them.

I write proposals, not bids. I'm not an estimator. More to the point, I'm not in finance.

But I do know that Sound Transit's process is pretty good at getting low and predictable pricing. And I have some idea of the factors that can add to cost. It all seems reasonable based on what I've seen.

IKrappa government? Shirley you jest!
Reminds me of this joke game to play at your nearest IKrappa.
http://e-pipe.livejournal.com/48828.html

As for being a viable city without massive growth, it's a tricky path to follow. Seattle as a deep water ice free port with fishing & Timber is rich in natural resources. The engineering talent is deep which is a huge draw for companies that design and make things. Both Software and Mechanical and civil. Key will be to continue to nurture these assets. That means not overfishing, not building on every acre of land, funding schools and the local University. Making it friendly for business to open and locate here. It should be a one step process facilitated by the city. ie one place to go get permits, fill out forms, pay taxes etc.

I've been here 30 years and so far Seattle has grown pretty well. We've missed a few key things like the Commons, which would have given South Lake Union a Central Park and a reason to live as well as work there. We missed the Monorail which would have connected West Seattle to Ballard, and allowed the growth of jobs to spread in a controlled way. After all it's time between offices that matters, not distance.

We are about to commit to a massive mistake with the Waterfront Tunnel. The wasted opportunity is again enormous. That money spent on rapid transit would be a gift toward our future, as it is we are spending on needs for the past.

"The future ain't what it used to be." Which reflects that we change our minds about what we want now that we know more. Good thing we have both Portland and Vancouver nearby to help us figure out what works and what doesn't.

Knute always makes his ruminations into interesting reading but, appealing as the image is, government is just not analogous to retailing. Take another look at Texas. Or North Dakota or South Dakota. Maybe someplace that hasn't tasted so much easy money.

Sorry I missed Crossrip yesterday. Belatedly, here are four points in response:

(1)--At least half the reason local transit costs are so high is the malicious rejection (via the Forward Thrust elections c. 1968 and 1970 and via the legislature's defeat of Sen. Ted Haley's regional transit bill a decade later) of federal matching funds of up to 90 percent. The other jurisdictions Crossrip names all took advantage of these funds, offered under the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA), which was of course destroyed by Reagan as part of his war against government services -- actually a war against lower income people for whom government services are vital.

(2)--The other half the reason local transit costs are so high is the state's refusal to make the rich pay anything even remotely approaching their fair share of taxes. (This refusal includes a sales-tax-based revenue structure that savages the poor while effectively exempting the plutocrats who actually run the state as their own private fiefdom.)

(3)--"Bigoted hostility" -- actually rabid xenophobia and hatred toward minorities -- was indeed the reason underlying the two Forward Thrust defeats, as anyone who has seen the unpublished post-electoral opinion research will attest. The same sort of xenophobic "we don' wanna be like New York" idiocy defeated Haley's measure in Olympia a decade later.

As I wrote at the time, the defeat of the Haley measure was the Puget Sound area's last chance EVER to build adequate transit.

“Bigoted hostility" also accounted for the defeat of the tiny tax increase -- say again TINY (three pennies on a $10 purchase) -- that would have saved Pierce Transit from what will probably be at least a 50-percent service reduction. Given today's needs, this is effectively a shutdown; it will deny tens of thousands of people any means of getting to and from work or running essential errands – literally a death sentence for some elderly and disabled people.

Anyone who doubts the hatred against lower-income peoples churned up by the anti-tax-hike agitators need only read the venomous comments generated by News Tribune online coverage of the campaign.

Or check out my blog piece on the election: "Hating Globally/Reacting Locally: Tacoma Voters Maliciously Nix Transit" at http://lorenbliss.typepad.com/loren-bliss-outside-agitators-notebook/2011/02/hating-globallyreacting-locally-tacoma-voters-maliciously-nix-transit-.html

I am told the same Teabagger hatred for lower-income people fueled the defeat of transit in Whatcom County. Obviously I was not there and am thus dependent on hearsay. But I have lived in rural Whatcom and will attest to the fact the anti-minority malevolence of its Fundamentalist Christian fanatics approach the intensity one encounters in the Ku Klux South, where I have also lived, so I don't for an instant doubt what my Bellingham sources have told me.

(4)—As to the region's car-hugging antagonism to adequate public transport, the record speaks for itself: since 1968, Puget Sound voters have rejected eight of 11 mass transit proposals, a record of nay-saying that surely belongs in Guinness.

"here are four points in response . . ."

None of those respond to the three items I asked you to address.

Try backing up these new assertions you just came up with:

“At least half the reason local transit costs are so high is [rejection of two ballot measures forty years ago and a failed bill thirty years ago].”

The average family around here pays $455 per year in direct transit taxes, and that amount is set to rise steadily every year for the next four decades due to how those taxes are pledged to secure bonds. Show me how you came to the conclusion half of that is due to those three events decades ago. You just made that up, right?

“The other jurisdictions Crossrip names all took advantage of these funds, offered under the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA), which was of course destroyed by Reagan”

The other jurisdictions I referenced have been building bus and train systems for the past two decades without any assistance from pre-Reagan era or Regan-era funds. They’ve been performing FAR better than the transit services providers around here. Portland in particular has leveraged much more post-Reagan federal funding recently than anything proposed in ST2.

“The other half the reason local transit costs are so high is the state's refusal to make the rich pay anything even remotely approaching their fair share of taxes.”

The government managers at the state and local level here have been targeting the poor with the most regressive tax structure in the country. To use your words, government managers in Olympia and Seattle created and fostered “a sales-tax-based revenue structure that savages the poor”. Contrary to what you assert, it is a cabal of statists “who actually run the state as their own private fiefdom” and the “plutocrats” among them are the entities and individuals who get rich off the taxing and spending that targets the poor.

What’s this forty-year-old poll you are talking about? Post it and prove it happened, explain who paid for and conducted it, etc. You seem to think we need the kind of light rail system ST is promising BECAUSE those two ballot measures were defeated decades ago. The better argument is that because no such system was built then the development patterns in the interim preclude what ST plans: imposing now a rigid, inflexible and obscenely expensive train line serving a couple of dozen stations located in places where not nearly enough people both live and work. We don’t have the needed density near enough of those stations now, and we won’t. What don’t you get about that?

You decry the defeat of the Pierce County ballot measure. People there pay far higher general taxes for transit already. Contrary to your premise what they rejected was a bid to increase regressive taxes targeting the poor, which is why our taxing structure already is the worst in the country.

Why did the government managers decide making that bad situation worse is the best way to go? The right questions – the ones you seem eager to ignore – are 1) why can’t the transit services providers in this neck of the woods provide good bus and train service with the far lower amounts of tax revenue, as all the peers are able to do, and 2) why do the government managers around here rely to an abusive extent on regressive taxing (unlike their peers).

You are pointing to inchoate “bigotry” and “racism” when there’s been a calculated effort to shaft the public with excessive regressive taxes by the governments leaders here for decades. Why does that simple truth elude you? This “hatred against lower-income peoples” is evidenced by the state and local laws fixing regressive taxes for transit that are more excessive than anywhere else in the country. It isn’t “anti-tax-hike agitators” who enacted those, it is the tax-hike-agitators who have been running this state and this region for the past three decades. You’re just offering up weak attempts at blaming scapegoats.

So there have been “11 mass transit proposals” since 1968? Let's see if you know your stuff: identify them, summarize the taxing and other financing provisions, and say who drafted each. I'll guess lawyers from the same law firm - the one that makes the big bucks as bond counsel for municipal governments - drafted each. A bunch of those bad measures were from old-Metro, an unconstitutional government. The monorail fiasco was one. These ST measures are abominations. Why are the proposals that emerge fundamentally flawed, overly-expensive, and not that effective? That’s a failure of government managers who’ve been running the show around here.

Crossrip is seemingly unaware the "government managers" against whom he rages so furiously are merely following the orders of the politicians who -- though elected by "we the people" -- are in fact wholly owned by the capitalist plutocracy.

Therefore (particularly here in Washington state and regardless of whether the politicians claim Democrat or Republican labels), government represents only the will of the plutocrats aka the capitalist Ruling Class.

While the voters could alter this despotic reality (even unto imposing tax reform), they (like their heroes Tim Eyman and the late Ronald Reagan) clearly favor the status quo of accelerated decline and ultimately murderous oppression of lower-income peoples -- never mind the permanent contractions of final-stage capitalism increasingly condemn these very voters to this same lower-income caste of victims.

Hence the methodical devolution of the Evergreen State (green only in the sense that money rules it) to what NickBob aptly labels "Mississippi on the Salish."

At least though Crossrip acknowledges the regressive savagery of the Evergreen tax structure even as he remains in denial about its capitalist origins.

But his claim "the average family around here pays $455 per year in direct transit taxes" is meaningless without additional data and thus -- at least to me -- reeks of Glenn Beck demagoguery.

And to use this sort of assertion as a rationale to obstruct or destroy mass transit -- which in most parts of the industrial world is tantamount to a civil right -- is like arguing that the cost of the judicial system necessitates abolition of the U.S. Constitution.

As to the identity of the 11 mass transit proposals since 1968, I refer Crossrip to my comments in the discussion generated by "Seattle isn't alone in its bike-lane bickering," which ran here on 11 March.

The rest of the response Crossrip demands is obviously beyond the scope of this space, rather like insisting I copy the entire U.S. Constitution onto a single 3x5 index card.

@beaky, good point.

@lorenbliss, oh my.

@crossrip, excellent.

lorenbliss writes like a macaroon: too much air; all confection.

- "the 'government managers' against whom he rages so furiously are merely following the orders of the politicians"

I was referring to politicians as well as senior staff when I used the term "government managers". But you knew that . . ..

- "his claim 'the average family around here pays $455 per year in direct transit taxes' is meaningless without additional data"

Here’s how I derived it. I began with Dan Satterberg’s recent estimate of sales tax impacts:

"[With a] 0.3 percent tax, Satterberg said, the tax would cost a family of four about $60 a year."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2011050967_salestax12m.html .

ST and Metro together impose a 1.8% sales tax, so that’s six times the $60 per year, or $360. Sound Transit’s car tab tax has to be entered in. It has been coming in at about one-eighth of ST’s sales tax stream, so that’d put it at about $22.50 per vehicle each year. The average family of four has two vehicles, so that’s $45 per year. Metro’s property tax (the 2006 “Transit Now” tax hike) has to be added in. That one costs the average family about $40 per year. Add ‘em up and you get $455 for this year. Got a better estimate?

lorenbliss has posted a pile of self-absorbed musings here. Notice the refusal to address ANY of the several issues about which I asked for some dialog. That kind of refusal demonstrates profound weakness of the merits of that individual's arguments and his/her character. Normal people respond in a cogent manner when their positions are challenged. lorenbliss appears incapable of doing that.