Sound Transit survey, take 2
As reported in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Sound Transit received complaints about their regional transportation survey, also criticized by some Crosscut readers. The agency has since revised the survey. You can now skip over questions. There are blank fields allowing you to give discursive answers — that's teacher-talk for answers that aren't driven by pre-set choices, which some of you complained weren't all that multiple.
However, Sound Transit spokesperson Bruce Gray also defends the survey in its original state:
Gray said the survey is 'not a research instrument' but a public-involvement tool whose purpose is 'not to measure public opinion in a scientific way, but rather to provide people with an easy, convenient way to get involved and tell our board... what they think about transit.' Public meetings also will be scheduled, he said; the results will be made public this month.
We'd like to know if those of you who found fault with the survey framework think the new incarnation answers your concerns.
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Mar 4, 12:54 p.m. inappropriate
Improved, still uneven, interpet answers carefully: The survey is somewhat improved. I think the quote in the PI was on target "Gray said the survey is "not a research instrument" but a public-involvement tool whose purpose is "not to measure public opinion in a scientific way, but rather to provide people with an easy, convenient way to get involved and tell our board... what they think about transit." As long as the survey isn't used to make claims about the general population, as opposed to whoever is taking the survey, and as long as people understand the quirks of some of the questions, I think this has potential to help prepare the way for statistically valid polling.
Some of the questions are still uneven though. If the goal is to get people involved, then at the end of the survey, there should be an invitation to go to a new page and signup for email announcing when community meetings will be held near you where you can give input. Note: I am not referring to meetings where people from Sound Transit show a bunch of proposals for projects in your neighborhood, I mean a meeting where there's a discussion about goals and objectives and alternative ways of reaching those goals.
Fundamentally, that's what is still missing from this survey: what problems do you want solved with a tax increase? What are your goals? For some people, travel time is key. For others, it is saving money (take the bus instead of driving) or reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other air pollution. I think the key to a winning ballot is a sense that we can spend money and actually get results.
Also still missing is anything about payment alternatives. Are there any other taxes besides the sales tax that are being considered?
I had not even realized the original survey didn't allow people to skip a question. That's an improvement too.
The survey still has some questions that are quirky. Question 5 for example, "Please indicate how urgent you feel it is to address the following transportation issues in Puget Sound. Use a scale of one to seven, where one means that issue is not at all urgent, and seven means that issue is extremely urgent."
Every choice is about "expanding" something. 520 and the Viaduct are in a sense expansion, but they are also very much a replacement. So the question is "when people fill out the survey what do they have in mind". There's a lot of room for people to have very different starting points when answering this question.
I'm going to pick on question 5 a little more. When a reader sees choices like this "Expanding mass transit in the Puget Sound region" (whatever "mass transit" is, this means different things to different people) , this "Expanding local bus service in your area", and other choices about light rail, regional buses, commuter rail all phrased with the same sentence structure, then reads this choice "Spending more money expanding roads instead of transit", one's response could well be "ugh, we don't want to spend more money", or it could be "why are we forced into this choice." Or there could be some other reactions too.
Ask a leading question, get a leading response. This question does not have a parallel structure, and part of it forces a choice that other parts do not.
Now, is this a problem for Sound Transit Board Members and others who get the survey results? Well, it all depends on what information the Board Members are presented with. I can guess the sound bites this question is designed to set up are "blank blank percent support expanding mass transit" and "only blank blank percent support spending more money on roads" (note: I dropped the part about "instead of transit" because in our sound bite world, I bet that text would be dropped).
Posted Tue, Mar 4, 12:59 p.m. inappropriate
continuation of comments: Before question 6, we get a blurb about Sound Transit, mentioning how it was founded in 1996 by the voters, is doing various things, and will have light rail up and running in 2009.
It is always interesting to ask "what assumptions do people have when answering a question." What if the text before question 6 added "Sound Transit has not delivered what voters were told they were going to get. The light rail line is far shorter, far more expensive, and several years late. The tax is lasting significantly longer than most voters believed would be the case. Commuter rail service is significantly different than promised to voters." What do you think would then be the response to questions 6 and 7 about future expansion of "the system" and of putting a ballot measure on in November?
This may not be exactly a push poll question, but the text preceding the question definitely influences how one thinks about the questions.
Next we come to service questions about whether should Sound Transit expand commuter rail along the I5 corridor, have a demonstration project along the BNSF corridor etc. The hard part in answering these is what's the relative cost of an option. What's the return on investment? What's the ongoing subsidy required per rider in the case of the various rail projects?
Questions 26/27/28 force users to make choices. This would be one area to add in a comments box. Question 29 has choice A (I90 light rail, more buses, BNSF in the future after 2020) or choice B (light rail, BNSF now, no more expansion of buses in that corridor). Well, what about having a choice C: BNSF trial project and more buses? Comments boxes are added in some places, but not here.
I can appreciate the need to force choices with questions 30, 31, 32 and 33. I had to re-read question 33 (33. If you had to choose one, which is the most important thing to you -- the cost, the time, or where it goes?) several times though. Presumably this refers to the entire plan, but I wonder if some people will interpret it as only light rail or light rail and commuter rail.
Question 34 asks about total costs. It quotes a figure of $9 Billion and 12 years at a cost of $125 in sales taxes per household. One of the questions that came up in the ST2/RTID vote was how long the taxes would really last. If the tax only lasts 12 years, that's a very different vote than if it will last 12 years plus 20 more years (or even permanently?) to pay off bonds incurred during the 12 years. So, I wonder how useful this question will be for decision making.
The closing section though overall is greatly improved. Sound Transit does a good thing in asking for open ended comments after each ballot choice, and in asking question "41 - What other issues do you think the Sound Transit Board should take into account as they consider a plan to expand mass transit in the Puget Sound Region?" This is an excellent end and hopefully will lead to some insights.
Posted Tue, Mar 4, 1:42 p.m. inappropriate
Sound Transit survey is improved, but ...: EMC has now improved the survey taking experience, to be sure.
However, one ongoing irritation to long-standing critics of Sound Transit's billions and billions in spending for so little transit ridership is this: an option promised in the 1996 election establishing the agency is no longer provided by Sound Transit in its questionnaires or anywhere else ... that of freezing the light rail program at some near-term point and rolling back the tax rate to simply operate and maintain what has already been built.
The current survey is most definitely push polling right past the freeze and roll back option. But now at least you can enter it on one of the open comment spots on the polling questionnaire ... if you know the option exists.
Because of Sound Transit's growing operation and maintenance costs (O&M; is the jargon shorthand), this promised option is likely not even possible if Sound Transit ends light rail construction in 2016 with Husky Stadium to Airport in operation. But Sound Transit won't admit the potential outcome of O&M; eating them (and taxpayers) alive.
High O&M; growth has only shown up in two places -- in the reports of the Citizen Oversight Panel appointed by Sound Transit, and in the NoToProp1.org campaign ... remember $157 billion? That number would be the result of O&M; growth, plus the periodic refurbishment of the trains and tracks ST would have built had Prop 1 passed. This will come up again in Son of Prop 1.
Posted Tue, Mar 4, 5:48 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Sound Transit survey is improved, but ...: That is because only car lovers like John Niles seriously want to stop light rail at the initial segment. John Niles has tried to kill light rail in this town for twenty years. He has nothing new to say.
Posted Tue, Mar 4, 10:04 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Sound Transit survey is improved, but ...: Mr. Tiptoe, when it comes to transit, I'm a bus lover and a van lover. Transit buses and van pools already accomplish more for Seattle than light rail accomplishes for Portland, San Jose, Denver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, and Denver.
Knowing ahead of time that this would be the case, yes, I've been trying to stop light rail in Seattle for 25 years! Sound Transit has spent the last 13 years actually showing us that light rail is a bad idea for Seattle. Providing more money to Sound Transit is a nutty idea until that agency actually puts the Initial Segment into operation.
The folly of Central Link Light Rail will become clear once it actually starts running, in 2009 according to Sound Transit. But folly may be late in arriving. According to the professional engineers paid by the U.S. Government to monitor Central Link construction, the Independence Day holiday 2009 opening day for light rail to Tukwila is at risk because of slow progress digging the subway tunnel and station under Beacon Hill.
Posted Wed, Mar 5, 12:03 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Sound Transit survey is improved, but ...: an option promised in the 1996 election establishing the agency is no longer provided by Sound Transit in its questionnaires or anywhere else ... that of freezing the light rail program at some near-term point and rolling back the tax rate to simply operate and maintain what has already been built.
John Niles is clueless, and always has been clueless. If he had any idea whatsoever about how the law works, he'd know that it is perfectly legal for proponents of ballot measures to shade the truth when they talk about their measures to voters.
Where's Niles been hiding - under his bed? The Supreme Court of the State ruled in October, 2007 that under the First Amendment (ever heard of it Niles?) voters could be told deliberate lies in the weeks before an election. The case is No. 77769-1, Marilou Rickert vs. state of Washington and PDC.
Not that I favor lies, but that's what the law is. So what if the agency lied to people in 1996? Get over it Niles -- and yourself. Geeez . . ..
Posted Thu, Mar 6, 4:12 a.m. inappropriate
Leadership lacking? Do a survey!: If politicians could win the public's trust, then they wouldn't have to do these stupid "surveys" about what the "public" does and doesn't want, and what they like and don't like. The general population would just trust the pols to have the integrity, and knowledge, and clarity to do what they believe is best and to do it in a cost-effective manner. But when the government can't gain the public's trust, they resort to tactics like "surveys"(which I'm sure are mostly taken by insiders and special interest groups), and then they can use the "results of surveys" as a talking point for why we need to pass this initiative, because after all, this is what the "public" told us they so-called wanted.
These so-called surveys are a tactic stemming from a lack of leadership and lack of ability to gain the public trust, and when you don't have leadership and public trust on your side, tactics are all that's left for the pols to play.
Posted Thu, Mar 6, 9:34 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Leadership lacking? Do a survey!: On that theme there is only one question worth asking -
Does the Sound Transit Organization merit a second chance?
That's not one for a self appointed lackie 'citizen' commission to answer for us so as to preserve the power at the source of the problem, it is a question to put to a public vote and for the responsible parties to take accountability for the result.
Posted Thu, Mar 6, 10:04 a.m. inappropriate
RE: Leadership lacking? Do a survey!: But when the government can't gain the public's trust, they resort to tactics like "surveys"(which I'm sure are mostly taken by insiders and special interest groups), and then they can use the "results of surveys" as a talking point for why we need to pass this initiative, because after all, this is what the "public" told us they so-called wanted.
I'm not involved with this sound transit effort, but the main reason for this poll probably is something you didn't mention. The poll "results" are used as a marketing tool by those who'd make money off of the ballot measure passing. Those who'd make money off of "ST2version2" would say to the engineers, contractors, unions, materials suppliers, etc. "look, we are popular, there is great interest in this by the public, so give us $xxxxxxx so we can run the campaign and then you'll get massive public contracts."
From what I can tell, this poll might be useful for that, but not much else. It isn't trying to get results from a controlled OR random group of respondents, for example.
Posted Wed, Jan 7, 5:11 a.m. inappropriate
no there are no issues about it...
firoz_john
Cash Surveys
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