Washington Policy Center's Ambiguous East Link Policty

Washington Policy Center’s Ambiguous East Link Policy

The WPC describes their organization as “an independent, non-partisan think tank promoting sound public policy based on free-market solutions”.   It includes the WPC Center for Transportation that “researches and analyzes the best practices for relieving traffic congestion by recapturing a vision of a system based on freedom of movement”.  

They seemed like an organization that would be interested in my ST/East Link concerns so I sent them several emails detailing these concerns.  My last effort to garner their support was the following email I sent to the WPC board members on 8/15.

        Dear Washington Policy Center,

     Your recent letter asking for contributions to support your Center for Transportation efforts prompted me to respond.   You claim to be “promoting better, more responsible transportation policy” while apparently completely oblivious to the fact that Sound Transit and the WSDOT are attempting to perpetrate a monumentally flawed East Link light rail system.  

     The failure of my past efforts to expose these problems, which included several emails to the WPC, led me to file as a candidate for Position No 1 in the 48^th Legislative District.  I did so to use the Voters’ Pamphlet to attract voters to my blog, http://stopeastlinknow.blogspot.com.   I would hope you  consider it worthy of some study.

      Respectively,

      Bill Hirt  Candidate for Pos No 1 48^th District.

While they later used the recent State audit (see my 11/06 post for my audit critique) to advocate for changes to Sound Transit and pointing out unrealistic ST ridership forecasts, they never responded with any public criticism of the ST East Link light rail project.