Posted Sat, Oct 11, 7:04 a.m.

Clear Big Contrast: Moves by Gregoire to dramatically reduce the projected shortfall are good for state government, not just her campaign. They ought to demonstrate that she is a very effective leader, in addition to helping her get re-elected. In contrast, Rossi has no specifics for how he'd manage the ...

Posted Thu, Oct 9, 8:03 p.m.

The list of opponents to 985 is growing fast: Organizations representing 10s of thousand of people in the state are opposing Eyman's worst fraud ever, I-985. It has taken some time because people are busy and losing money to other scams. It is getting easier because Eyman's most stupid scam ...

Posted Wed, Oct 8, 9:26 p.m.

We already hired Sonntag. He's being re-elected.: I-985 wastes millions more on studies for Sonntag's consultants. Better yet, I-985 puts all the power for spending all the money I-985 shifts to state legislators. They'll decide. And you can bet they'll do their best to bring home the bacon. Why didn't ...

Posted Wed, Oct 8, 9:18 p.m.

Wrong again: I-985 doesn't fully fund city efforts to synchronize traffic signals. It tells cities they must do it and says state legislators should provide money to "assist" cities. Legislators would decide which cities get what. Why didn't you write a law that actually does what you claim Tim?

Posted Wed, Oct 8, 9:14 p.m.

Cha Cha Cha: All indications are that I-985 would waste hundreds of millions to make congestion worse where it is the worst now. That's what the state's engineers say. Sonntag's audit doesn't recommend opening up HOV lanes to everybody.

Posted Wed, Oct 8, 7:44 p.m.

Tim Eyman's big Earmark to Nowhere: Do you trust Tim Eyman? To know what the best use is of $600 million in tax dollars? He doesn't think so. That might be one reason why he fronts his I-985 with falsehoods about an audit by the state Auditor, which concluded that ...

Posted Tue, Oct 7, 7:40 a.m.

This is Serious: It might look like politics, and the timing is surely political, but this is a serious lawsuit. The decline of investment in investigative political reporting (and decline of state political reporting generally) may be behind the cynical activities that are alleged in the lawsuit. You can call ...

Posted Mon, Sep 29, 7:36 a.m.

Here They Go Again: Niles isn't telling the whole truth again. I suppose campaigns produce slight of hand hype by most everyone involved. It gets to the point where you can't trust the partisans on either side. People who present "facts" like this ought to be thinking beyond the campaign ...

Posted Thu, Sep 25, 8:10 a.m.

Love it?: Frank Chopp has been telling everyone they're going to love his design. Does anyone love this? I hate it. This is hugely disappointing. All this wheel spinning for something that would be more blight on the waterfront.

Posted Sun, Sep 7, 10:22 a.m.

You've got to be kidding: It is real clear that Palin isn't ready to be VP - a fact that will be material to rural and urban voters, and every other type of voter, by election time. The idea of Palin as President is a nightmare for most all who ...

Posted Wed, Aug 6, 6:59 a.m.

$7 for a shopping bag?: I have four. They were all free. They work great. I know of no economist who is predicting a sustained downturn here. And the data shows that the economy here is performing far better than the rest of the country. Who would pay $7 for ...

Posted Wed, Jul 30, 9:23 p.m.

RE: Better Now - Better Tomorrow: "Nobody is arguing (as you seem to believe) that we need to approve new taxing authority for more buses." Huh? I guess nobody is not less than Ron Sims, state transportation director Paula Hammond, former state director Paula Hammond, joined by Kemper Freeman and ...

Posted Wed, Jul 30, 8:04 a.m.

Better Now - Better Tomorrow: I went to the Madison Park beach the other day. It was the same as summer in 1975, thankfully. Getting there was the same too. There were more shops and things to eat. The view to downtown Bellevue had changed dramatically. Downtown Bellevue is now ...

Posted Mon, Jul 28, 4:51 a.m.

Finally, A Vote: This package is very likely to pass this year. All the polls indicate that it will. There is also logic in the high turnout expected and people wanting a viable alternative to high gas prices over time. Opposition will need to do more than blog posts and ...

Posted Thu, Jul 24, 8:42 p.m.

Oh Brother: Dig a little deeper and read a little harder Clark, especially on the toll thing. The whole intent of the toll thing on 520 tright now is to get people to pay attention and work out the right toll that will build a bridg instead of just leaving ...

Posted Wed, Jul 23, 6:30 a.m.

We Already Know That Sims and Ted Think: What is wrong with seeing what voters think about this latest (and best) proposal Sound Transit will place on the ballot this Fall? Even Dino Rossi is for that. Ted has combined several prior rants into one column that paints a fancified ...

Posted Thu, Jul 17, 8:20 p.m.

Just Vote: Thanks to David for providing the most concise and important analysis of the real prospects for a vote in 2008. (Why is this stuff not in the newspapers?) His reporting seems about spot on. Reardon coming on board seems a no brainer for him given that Sound Transit ...

Posted Tue, Jul 1, 8:17 a.m.

Non Partisan County Elections: Sims is up next year right? And isn't there a ballot measure (I-26) this year that would make county positions non-partisan in 2009 anyway? I suppose it isn't certain I-26 will pass this year, so top two could also matter. I am not sure that a ...

Posted Thu, Jun 26, 9:07 a.m.

New Capacity Needed: The state's transportation tax structure must evolve to support tomorrow's transportation systems. The current funding structures were designed to support a 1960s sensibility. If people want and need transit, they'll support the taxing capacity to get the job done. That will surely include more light rail and ...

Posted Tue, Jun 24, 9:28 p.m.

RE: Brevity?: Are the headlines and the summaries that appears below them Crosscut's? Or MacDonald's? There seems to be a lot of repetition going on here.

Posted Tue, Jun 24, 6:42 a.m.

Same Old, Same Old: MacDonald produces nothing new. He repeats the same tired rhetoric, with updated data, we've heard from Walking Will Knedlick, Jim Horn and Emory Bundy and concludes: more buses are better than rail. MacDonald writes as though he's holding a grudge. The overall feeling I get is ...

Posted Sat, Jun 14, 8:43 a.m.

Talk Welcome - Will he Walk?: As David points out, the DC speech is mostly all about influencing the upcoming debate in Congress on transportation. If Congress places higher priority on urban places, Seattle benefits. One big test of whether Mayor Nickels will actually deliver regionally is not cutting the ...

Posted Thu, May 29, 7:27 a.m.

Questions: Will the improvement proposed for Mercer make it a better neighborhood and attract job and housing growth there? Looks to me like it will. That's a huge benefit for everyone, not just Paul Allen. It appears to me that the currrent "mess" on Mercer isn't so much a function ...

Posted Wed, May 7, 6:30 a.m.

RE: It's grandstanding, and here's how I know: Actually, the Mayor was refering to a proposed law to prevent people with histories of mental illness from purchasing guns in the state, His reference was to the shootings at the Jewish Federation.

Posted Tue, May 6, 9:46 p.m.

The Facts: The State Senate Majority Leader is from Spokane and the Senate Minority Leader is from Walla Walla - both represent districts closer to Idaho than Yakima, which is still about 150 miles east of Seattle. The Speaker of the House is from Seattle, but owes his majority to ...

Posted Fri, May 2, 5:24 a.m.

Great Commentary: As I read David's piece on how the Viaduct fight might be successfully resolved, I could not help but wonder about the reason for the difference between today's hope for resolution, and the "exploding cigars" of times past. Let's look at the data on which players have changed. ...

Posted Wed, Apr 30, 11:14 p.m.

Nice Reporting: Ross is right, Chapman does have a right to his opinions. The rest of us have a right to disagree and keep ID out of biology class, where it doesn't belong. Chapman also has a right to free speech through his PR tactics, which have helped take down ...

Posted Sat, Apr 26, 5:30 p.m.

Just Vote: If we actually get to vote I'm sure we'll get to hear plenty more from the alliance of Sound Transit bashers, Knedlick and Douglas MacDonald, Freeman, Bundy, Ted and others who earn a form of fame for their obsession on the topic, yet seem to make little progress ...

Posted Sat, Apr 26, 12:19 p.m.

Bush Administration, Sonntag Preach Tolls: Didn't the Bush Administration just come out to Seattle and announce that they wanted tolls to replace the gas tax? I suppose you can say stuff like that when you are a lame duck. I looked at this study and it is a huge piece ...

Posted Thu, Apr 24, 4:31 a.m.

3100 words later.......: we find out from MacDonald that more compact growth is important, and that meeting aspirations on this subject will be extremely challenging, in part because growth has not always been trending as is now planned. This is air we've been breathing for decades. We also find out ...

Posted Wed, Apr 16, 7:28 a.m.

There's More: It is impossible to create a directly elected government in the four county region without the government being controlled by politicians from King County: one man, one vote. This is America. Lobbyists for big special interests (like the state's corporate lobby) often complain they can't "get to" Sound ...

Posted Wed, Apr 9, 6:43 a.m.

Eyman is Seriously Stupid: Tim Eyman's post is so much idiodic hogwash. He writes as if we all live in fear that politicians have nothing more on their minds than taking our money. Most reasonable people don't. It seems like most of the news media analysis about why Bloomberg's congestion ...

Posted Wed, Apr 2, 11:20 p.m.

It Is About Time: It is about time we had a gifted powerful politician in the right place. He may be wrong about a few big things (including Key Arena and the Sonics) but nobody hits every pitch. He's right to move for housing funding even if it means a ...

Posted Fri, Mar 21, 8:01 p.m.

It is Now - Or Never - For Sound Transit: Wow. The three county executives actually agree on something? Do each of them know they appear to be on the same side of a question? That's usually enought to scare one of them to the other side. Are they talking ...

Posted Fri, Mar 21, 7:36 a.m.

Skolnik's Self Serving Reach: Oh Brother. I don't get the Denny's decision, but it is no reason to create a "task force" or establish a "moratorium." Skolnik has been losing for his clients in a system that normally works pretty well for the rest of us, so he wants to ...

Posted Sun, Mar 16, 9:49 a.m.

Timing is Everything: There were next to no projects identified to make US 2 safer when the legislature enacted the last two gas tax increases. Back then, the big thing was the Monroe by-pass, which is mostly about congestion relief. The gas tax increases were tied to specific projects. On ...

Posted Sun, Mar 16, 9:28 a.m.

End the Hype: Maybe this conversation could be reframed. What will it take to make sure that Key Arena doesn't become a huge drain on city finance and is kept up to support all the things that happen there, not just the Sonics? How can we make sure that Seattle ...

Posted Wed, Mar 12, 8:17 p.m.

Sonntag Needs Auditing: The scandal involving the Governor of New York ought to wake a sleeping press to the idea that they are missing big stories. One big story is that Sonntag appears to be wasting tons of money on sloppy performance audits. His congestion audit of the state transportation ...

Posted Tue, Mar 11, 8:35 p.m.

Val Stevens Is What's Wrong with US 2: No one can remember Senator Val Stevens being much intersted at all in Highway 2 until right before this legislative session when the leader of the US 2 Safety Coalition announced he was running against her this year. That's what all her ...

Posted Mon, Mar 10, 8:05 a.m.

This One is Easy - Cut The Deal: There is plenty of time for the legislature to do its part to help keep Seattle Center (and the surrounding neighborhood) vibrant and NBA basketball in the Northwest. It doesn't cost the state a dime. There are no new taxes. The legislature ...

Posted Tue, Feb 26, 8:34 p.m.

What's Your City?: I'm thinking that there's really one big City around here and that it is everything that is connected and already urban. This perspective may matter a lot. We have no organized government with teeth to stick up for the people of the real City. The County could ...

Posted Fri, Feb 15, 5:22 p.m.

What Does the Coast Guard Think?: If the Coast Guard says the ferries are safe, I'll take that over the musings of a blogger "at the helm" and the spinning of the state GOP, which is trying to make ferries a partisan issue for all too obvious electioneering purposes. Look, ...

Posted Mon, Feb 11, 7:30 a.m.

How About We Save the Basic Ferries First?: Agnew has a lot of fun ideas but little to show of them. I'd be willing to consider a whole bunch more passenger ferries on the Sound only after the basics of running the overall fleet are secured for the long term. ...

Posted Sun, Jan 20, 11:38 a.m.

Not Over the Top: Funny that the design flaw on that Twin Cities' bridge didn't show up until many, many years after it opened. It sounds like a combination of age and design were the problems there. (It didn't take Galloping Gertie that long to fall.) Age and design are ...

Posted Thu, Jan 17, 7:39 a.m.

RE: Bold: The 520 bridge has been paid for, it has outlived its useful life and needs to be replaced. Tolls will pay for half of the replacement. The orgininal I-90 bridge sank. It was replaced with federal funds. It needs maintainance and tolls can help pay for that. It ...

Posted Wed, Jan 16, 11:07 p.m.

Cascadia Respected? Rubbish: The assertions that the Cascadia Center of the Discovery Institute both progressive or widely respected are laughable. In most places Cascadia is regarded as one big disorganized Republican-backed, headline-seeking, joke pretending to be a think tank. They are likeable pranksters. Occasionally Cascadia stumbles into something useful. But ...

Posted Wed, Jan 16, 8:52 a.m.

Pressure for P3s?: There are a few law firms, engineering firms and finance firms trying to build pressure for new privatization schemes in the state, but it does not appear that they are building much of a case to change the law here. They keep trying tough. There are dozens ...

Posted Mon, Dec 24, 6:16 a.m.

RE: Why is this about Sound Transit?: So it turns out Ted is right. This Stanton Rice push is really all about taking over Sound Transit. It sounds like the Eddy/Jarrett idea is all about taking over the PSRC. You can't have two government reforms of the government if your ...

Posted Fri, Dec 21, 6:48 a.m.

King County Thing: So where's all the support for reorganizing everything in all of the other counties? The band of bigger government promoters seems mostly a Seattle/King County crowd of Republicans disenchanted with their county and a democrat or two thrown in. People in the other three counties that would ...

Posted Thu, Dec 20, 8:03 a.m.

RE: For Whom the Bridge Tolls: It's your dream, so you are free to keep dreaming it. Meanwhile serious people need to get a few things done.

Posted Wed, Dec 19, 8:39 a.m.

RE: Husky Stadium light rail line: Good point jniles. The way Ted describes this slick old idea, there'd be no more subarea equity - in other words no real way to assure anybody outside of King County that their taxes wouldn't be eaten up by the overwhelming needs of Seattle ...

Posted Tue, Dec 18, 8:15 p.m.

Joke: Thanks to Ted's support for this mysterious proposal we can all take comfort in understanding that it is an effort to sabotage Sound Transit and light rail. That's what it sounds like to me anyway. The messenger in this case is just as important as the message. It also ...

Posted Thu, Dec 13, 8:48 p.m.

Sea-Vue Is Here, Get Used to It: The trouble with David's thinking is that Seattle, as Ellis now says he envisioned it, no longer exists. It is better in ways those guys never dreamed. I have this idea that reality is that Seattle and Bellevue are, in practical fact, the ...

Posted Wed, Dec 12, 7:33 a.m.

The Big Tax Killed Prop 1: This is interesting, but it seems that the big reason Prop 1 failed is that it was too big and complex: Cost too much, did too little. There is not much evidence that people who voted NO actually knew much about the projects in ...

Posted Thu, Nov 22, 8:31 a.m.

Bring on Ladenburg: John Ladenburg is a no nonsense former prosecutor who cuts through noise and get things done. He'd make a fine Attorney General. Let's hope Ladenburg takes on Rob McKenna. It'd be a wake up campaign that would pit two well qualified people against each other and a ...

Posted Fri, Nov 9, 4:36 p.m.

Fine. It Might Work in Some Places: But privatization won't work on the 520. There may be some other applications in other places that might make sense. Here's the deal: most of these deals involve generational payments like the gameplan that killed the monorai. You get something, but you pay ...

Posted Fri, Nov 9, 3:21 p.m.

Prop. 1 Was MacDonald's Baby: The funny thing about reading MacDonald's interesting spin is that there is probably no single person more responsible for Prop. 1 and the reasons for its failure than: Doug MacDonald. He chaired the RTID Board for most of its life. He insisted on holding the ...

Posted Wed, Nov 7, 5:13 p.m.

RTID Had Its Chance, and Flopped: The RTID as a regional idea is dead. If counties want to help fund state roads in each county, they can still do that, but let's say good bye to this oddball thing called RTID and its faux regional pitch. It never has been ...

Posted Tue, Nov 6, 6:02 a.m.

The Fight Between Cities & Counties: The fight between city government and county government is as old as the fight between roads and transit. Chris presents the standard county-centric view. What Chris seems to have proposed here is a takeover of Sound Transit by the RTID, which today consists of ...

Posted Sat, Nov 3, 9:29 a.m.

No answers here: This piece is an anti-Prop 1 brochure pretending to be thoughtful commentary. Most of it is a cut and paste of previous spin offered up in other venues over the past several years and repeats from anti-tranportation improvement web sites. This "can't do" thinking (full of jackassed ...

Posted Thu, Oct 25, 6:15 a.m.

Delay Sucks: Prop. 1 is large, but so are transportation problems in the region. David is right: Olympia won't fix things, and DC has other priorities. It is up to the region. The alternatives to Prop. 1 are bleak. Joni Balter wrote a dreamy "what if?" column in the Times ...

Posted Tue, Oct 23, 6:12 a.m.

Nice Try - But......: Unlike most of the Prop. 1 bashers, at least you have come up with an alternative. The trouble is that it would take 10 years at least for anyone to agree to parts of it, if ever. The last poll showed support for "congestion pricing" stood ...

Posted Sat, Oct 20, 9:10 a.m.

McIver Takes Honorable Path: One difference between the McIver case and the others is that it appears that McIver may well be found not guilty and will clear things up in an honorable way. Some people may take his enjoyment of drink as a terrible shortcoming. But I'll take his ...

Posted Sun, Oct 14, 10:31 a.m.

What If? Summit: Prop. 1 may well pass this fall. Something that might help would be to have a "summit" prior to the election featuring all the people who oppose the ballot measure offering their alternatives. This should be on television. That way Ron Sims would be forced to assess ...

Posted Sun, Oct 14, 9:41 a.m.

The 10 Year Plan: You make some good points but you present no methods for undertaking your revolution. Accomplishing most of the changes you advocate would probably take 5 years easy, depending on who is in charge, it could take much longer. You are more realtistically looking at 10 years ...

Posted Sun, Oct 14, 9:35 a.m.

RE: Proposition 2 RIGHT NOW!: You make some good points but you present no methods for expediting the revolution you propose. I'd say that if everything went your way, some of what you are dreaming about might be in place in five years. But 10 years is a more realisitic ...

Posted Fri, Oct 12, 8:23 a.m.

RE: Memorial Sadium "opportunity": It doesn't look to me like any critical mass is happening. And unfortunately Sims has positioned himself in an odd place, comes to the table too late again, and is likely to just extend this extended debate even further. I sorta like the idea Sims has. ...

Posted Fri, Oct 12, 2:25 a.m.

RE: The RAT Roads Package Generates 13X to 22X as Much Carbon as RAT ST2 Tunneling...: We won't need to encourage people to move here. Most of the population numbers for the future are lowballed. The track record is spot on. We degrade our quality of life by ignoring this, ...

Posted Wed, Oct 10, 6:41 a.m.

Growth Itself Has Carbon Costs: It is noteworthy that Sightline did not study the roads and transit that are on the ballot. And it did not compare Prop. 1 to alternatives, including doing nothing, which is the real choice at the ballot. We're growing. Growth will cause huge increases demand ...

Posted Mon, Oct 8, 8:47 p.m.

Still Jeering: It is ultimately an honest thing for a leading politician to tell it like he sees it, especially if it comes with an admission that he's been wasting our time and money towing a comfortable line and he's just fine with just tilting at windmills on his watch. ...

Posted Sat, Sep 29, 7:06 a.m.

Right Track: Mossback is on to something here. The economy is growing. Unemployment is low. Long-planned transportation improvements are being built. There's no evidence of corruption. The national traffic study from Texas recently pegged the region's traffic better than it should be based on its size and said congestion growth ...

Posted Wed, Sep 12, 9:53 p.m.

Who is Emory Bundy?: And what's with his stupid rantings? The guy seems wound up like a top when it comes to light rail and reaching for any shred of evidence, no matter how flawed, to flail at it. His article reads like he needs to get a life.

Posted Thu, Aug 16, 7:31 a.m.

Take The Money - Build a New Bridge: The 520 bridge has two problems: 1. it is a way too congested bottleneck and has been that way for over 25 years (it has only gotten worse) and 2. it is in danger of disappearing into the lake in a big ...

Posted Fri, Aug 10, 3:45 p.m.

Norm Dicks Rocks: When Congress earmarks, it is choosing how to spend the money instead of the political hacks that populate the upper reaches of the various agencies of the federal government. Who should choose? Elected representatives or political appointees? I'll take Norm Dicks any day. They guy is solid. ...

Posted Fri, Aug 3, 4:25 p.m.

Then there's the Turf Party: In thinking about this, Chris left out another party. It is non aligned but opportunistic and a force to be admired. It is the Turf Party. This party pops up whenever there is a major transportation issue and tends to cherry pick the ideologies of ...

Posted Fri, Aug 3, 7:14 a.m.

Nice Job: Vance has done an excellent job describing the real politics of this situtation. He just wrong about whether light rail pencils out. It does, depending on what you measure. The light rail numbers to Northgate and beyond are especially solid. Anyone who asserts that light rail isn't logical ...

Posted Wed, Aug 1, 5:18 p.m.

RE: ---??????-----: The fact of the matter is that Freeman opposes the ballot measure and is spending money to defeat it. NAIOP isn't controlled by Freeman - far from it. Freeman's anti-traffic improvement politics indeed make no sense from a developer perspective. His anti-transit ideology never has made much sense ...

Posted Wed, Jul 25, 7:58 a.m.

Bundy and Bikes: Yikes!: Emory Bundy seems to be advocating that we all bike to work and forget about light rail. What a bunch of hogwash. Bundy needs a fact checker. Seattle's rates of transit ridership might be higher than Amsterdam or Copenhagen already - 40% to downtown Seattle. Bundy ...

Posted Fri, Jun 22, 8:34 a.m.

Beyond Hopeless: The guy who wrote this article is a huge part of the problem in the Seattle area. If you don't see things his way - the whole future is hopeless. It is guys like this, and the media attention they get, that created the lousy traffic we have ...

Posted Fri, Jun 22, 8:25 a.m.

Are You Just Lazy?: Where did you get you 10,000 density figure? Kemper Freeman? That is just silly. Been to downtown Bellevue lately? Have you seen all the job density in addition to the new housing density? Light rail will be provide a much quicker commute along the proposed line ...

Posted Mon, Jun 11, 6:19 p.m.

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 ...