Wouldn't it be easier just to force all public employees to take public transit to work as a condition of employment? Afterall, aren't the planners all saying that you merely need to modify your lifestyle and work schedule to meet transportation planning goals? Lead by example, the public employee workforce represents a 10% reduction in traffic on our roads and bridges. This should cover electeds too. If you vote for it as an elected, you should be able to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

I prefer smarm to sanctimony.

Yes to Cameron and to BlueLight. I am sick of those sanctimonious jerks, our elected officials, insisting that everyone must take transit, particularly when transit serves only the north/south into and out of Seattle travelers. And this while at least some of "the electeds" (don't you love that name?) travel to and from work in the comfort of public cars purchased by taxpayers and driven by public employees.

It's approximately 7 miles from my front door to the middle of downtown Seattle. Bus fare at peak hours is $2.50 each way. My car gets 33 miles to the gallon. I last paid $3.61/gallon for gas. Any child can do the math here. The only reason driving to downtown could be termed expensive is because they keep raising the parking rates and eliminating parking spaces. And you'd have to have some need to go there in the first instance.

Perhaps we should shift the burden of transportation to the businesses whose workers must use it rather than requiring all of us to subsidize it even when it doesn't, and never will, serve our needs.

This disconnect between social engineering and reality is why Tim Eyman's initiatives get any traction at all.

As someone who drives from Seattle to Tacoma for work four days a week, I can say that I heartily resent seeing the empty HOV lanes, on the roads that I helped finance, that are not available to me because transit doesn't serve me and no one I work with lives near me to make ride sharing practical. For those of us who, like me, drive a reverse commute (out of Seattle in the morning and back into it in the afternoon), or who work evening hours, there are no good choices.

Soon enough I'll be faced with having to figure out a new way to travel past Seattle when they finish destroying the viaduct. I would never use the tunnel because, first, it won't go where I need to go, and second, because I will never pay the tolls. It incenses me that I would be asked to pay for the loss of a great and efficient roadway with fabulous views free for all by paying tolls to travel underground out of my way. Won't happen.

As a matter of fact, I don't foresee myself ever traveling any toll road. We should be re-examining our bad civic choices to discover why it is that we now need toll roads to begin with. Off the top of my head, it appears to me that the idea is that everyone will pay more to travel anywhere regardless of whether they use transit or drive because our governments cannot think through their priorities in the same way that every single one of us non-elected people must just to run our everyday lives.

I do kind of agree that Tim Eyman is a smarmy huckster, but I can understand the support for many of the things he raises, however imperfectly and despite whatever less than altruistic motives he may have.

After reading the voters' pamphlet for and against statements, I find both sides making dubious arguments, and my rule of thumb is that if an initiative does not do clear, positive good, I vote no. I just wish there was a way to vote no and kill light rail across the soon to be tolled "free"way bridges.

People vote for or against candidates and initiatives for widely varying reasons. I voted against I-1125 because I think there should be light rail into downtown Bellevue, and because it's Eyman.

But if the only provisions in that initiative had been to ban variable tolling, and to limit any tolls connected to construction and maintenance of only the particular highway being tolled, I would have been for it in a heartbeat, Eyman or no Eyman.

If this initiative passes, I won't consider it the disaster that people are calling it. If it fails, the dumbest miscalculation any public official could make would be to consider it a referendum on tolling in general.

We can't allow tolling, period, except for specific projects, and with a specific end date. Tolling is regressive. It's intrusive. Nobody is putting any transponder in my vehicle. It sucks money out of the state to fatten the coffers of tolling authorities, some of which are foreign.

To create, once and for all, a self-sustaining funding source for statewide transportation infrastructure, we'll need to revisit the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax. Only this time, instead of just levying it on vehicle sales price, it would also have to be on vehicle weight and on vehicle fuel efficiency.

Like sales price, weight and fuel efficiency are known at the point of manufacture, by make and model. The Department of Revenue could calculate these costs accordingly, and the Department of Licensing could collect them. All work would be done in-house and union, by public employees already on the job, with no out-of-state or foreign firms skimming profits from our state. Nobody's Hummer or Winnebago should be paying the same as somebody's motorcycle.

Politically, this is doable. As I look at it, it's even more doable if I-1125 passes. Because then the potholes and washouts would multiply in all corners of the state, with no way to fix them immediately. One fatal accident (let's hope not) due to bad roads would end whatever credibility Eyman has remaining. Even the gomers who vote for his crap need good roads.

A revived MVET would be more graduated, more "progressive." whatever the hell that means anymore, and one hell of a lot more fair than the system we have now, and infinitely more fair than tolling, in any form, would be.

Tolling is the lazy way out, even as a last resort, and advocating it as any long-range solution will be fraught with considerable political peril for those who advocate it who also stand for election. We can expect the elitist transpo wonks, the Roger Valdezes of the world, to disagree, with all the "eloquence" they can muster.

1125 is a stinker, however the sum of Tim Eyman as a historical figure demonized by too, too many, looms large these days, most notably in the legacy of I-900 and the departure of Brian Sonntag from public service...

Voting no on every initiative sponsored by Tim Eyman is a good rule of thumb. Actually, voting no on every initiative regardless of the special interest sponsoring it probably works too, and then you don't have to pay any attention to the ads at all. Mass media and paid signature gatherers have made this whole process corrupt, and initiatives should no longer be considered part of any "good govenment" effort.

Geez, Eric, could you possibly be any more self-righteous? In the end with you, it always gets back to Kemper Freeman having more money than you do. Poor, poor you. Boo-hoo.

As for poor people, well, they won't be riding light rail. It's too expensive. They'll be on whatever buses survive. Which is a pertinent question for the long run, because the operating subsidies for rail are enormous. They'll come out of the transit account, and in the real world that means out of the buses.

And guess what? The Lexus drivers can afford any tolls you throw at them. Not so much for those with lower incomes. Eric, the self-righteousness would be bad enough if it was genuine. But when you deploy it on behalf of affluent Seattle-area residents who wah-wah-want their rail, it's, well, smarmy.

How about the robo-call I just got asking me to vote "yes on Proposition 1, for faster transit and safer streets," when in fact it has nothing to do with either of those things? Selective outrage from Seattle smugsters, Eric? See ya on Wednesday, when we get to pick through the rubble of your "progressive" dreams.