Psst! Wanna see the Viaduct disappear?

The debate about Seattle's Alaskan Way Viaduct used to be a very public, contact sport, but as many local politicians were carted off the field, the controversy moved to a 30-person stakeholders group, who meet very quietly. Meanwhile, the politicians edge back onto the playing field and hint at solutions.

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Aubrey Davis: Rossi's transportation plan harkens back to the 1950s

• Seattle Times

Sound Transit did not hear us

Prop. 1 was soundly defeated, but the leadership of Sound Transit plans to deliver Son of Prop. 1 to the voters this fall. The agency better get used to rejection.

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Not that anyone would go for it, but widespread tolling could work magic, a study says

• Seattle Times

The Sierra Club and other groups will push for a 2008 vote on the Sound Transit plan

• Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle)

Does Dino Rossi's road plan pass the math test?

• Seattle Times

Is Dino Rossi a moderate?

I wouldn't call him that, but the Republican candidate for governor has no need to run to the right to beat Christine Gregoire. Just as he did in the election cliffhanger of 2004, he can present himself as a comparatively moderate candidate, one in touch with the state's mainstream aspirations. He's starting to do that.

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GOP gubernatorial hopeful Dino Rossi revives the idea of a waterfront tunnel

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Here's Dino Rossi's $15 billion transportation plan

• Seattle Times

Cordon blues: New York is no indicator of tolling's future

The sort of tolling under consideration here and elsewhere in the U.S. is completely different from that proposed for Manhattan. That was "cordon" pricing, and it fell flat in the Big Apple. True congestion pricing makes a lot of sense in metro Puget Sound, contends the author. He explains the difference.

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At last! Microsoft has a solution for traffic jams

• New York Times

Congestion pricing: Even New York's got a problem with that

The failure of an ambitious tolling plan there holds lessons for metro Puget Sound.

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More evidence that Washington infrastructure collapse is over-hyped

Okay, classify this as a pet peeve, but it bugs me when politicians, including Christine Gregoire, wave the bloody shirt of the Minnesota bridge collapse as an all-purpose rationale to boost infrastructure spending. Gregoire has done this often. She raised the specter of the Minnesota disaster as an argument in favor of Proposition 1 last fall; she raised it again to argue for a new toll bridge across the Columbia River, and yet again at a national governor's meeting in February. I have no quarrel with repairing or inspecting roads and bridges--please, let's do that. But the fact is, we still don't have the final word on what happened in Minnesota, so the lesson there is unclear.

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Sound Transit version 2.1

Imagine this scenario. Sound Transit comes back to ballot this fall with a shortened light rail plan and all three county executives within the voting district oppose it. Wouldn't that make for an interesting campaign season?

It might just happen. Right now, Ron Sims (King), John Ladenburg (Pierce), and Aaron Reardon (Snohomish) have grave reservations about Sound Transit's scaled-back proposal, which would extend the line up to Northgate and across the Interstate 90 floating bridge to the Eastside suburbs.

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Politics not as usual

A seminal campaign speech and a crisis on Wall Street mark a turning point in the national conversation, with implications far and near.

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Citizens from all sides agree a new Highway 520 bridge won't carry light rail

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle benefits by new policies in Bush's transportation department

• Washington Post

Governor: Work faster and shave $700 million off the cost of a new 520 bridge

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Traffic's so bad, we might actually be willing to pay a toll

Puget Sound policy-makers have been taking the public pulse. Their surveys reveal that people are generally pessimistic about the future, frustrated with traffic, and willing to pay to cross Lake Washington in a car — as long as it's really cheap.

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New cure for collapsing bridges: state and union pension funds?

With Washington facing mounting costs for roads, transit, and bridges, might the answer lie in tapping union pension funds? It certainly doesn't look like taxpayers are going to do much more. The Legislature is getting more tax averse and Eyman-minded. Bucking the costs down to a regional level, as in the defeated Proposition 1, doesn't seem to work either, as the local politicians load up any proposals with Christmas tree goodies. So if self-discipline won't tame the problem of too many claimants on too little money, maybe an infusion of money will do the trick? Enter America's second-biggest union federation, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), as well as an idea from super-dense Hong Kong.

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