King County Council 6th District Candidacy Announcement.

It’s March and current office holders and challengers are announcing their decisions to file for this year's election.  Thus it’s time for me to announce my decision to file for the 8^th time;  this time for the 6^th District King County Council.   As with my previous 7 candidacies I have no expectations or desire of winning and will not ask for nor accept any financial support.   I’ll email the following to area newspapers and have posted it since they will likely ignore it. 

King County Council 6th District Candidacy Announcement

I’m filing as a candidate for Metropolitan King County Council 6th District to attract viewers to my blog http://stopeastlinknow.blogspot.com.

A few of the more than 500 posts have detailed my responses to current issues.   For example, posts have detailed the futility of advocating reducing the state’s carbon emissions when the entire country’s emissions are less than 30% of the total.   Or that Bellevue should not be a “relief valve” for Seattle’s failure to recognize that even compassion has its limits regarding homeless.  That the State Labor Councils mandated $60.09 prevailing wage for King County carpenters plays a major role in the high price of new homes

However the vast majority of posts detail the monumental failure of the Sound Transit Board's transit policies to reduce the area’s congestion.  The Prop 1 extensions, which Sound Transit officials called a “gift to our grand children” will go down as one of the greatest boondoggles in history.  They should have never been allowed to proceed.     

The Sound Transit Board simply ignored a 2004 PSRC Technical Workbook, "High Capacity Transit Corridor Assessment”.  It was a comprehensive evaluation of the transit capacity of 7 different HCT modes. Not only did Sound Transit fund the study, four of the participants, were Sound Transit Staff members.  It concluded the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT) limited light rail capacity to 8880 riders per hour per direction (rphpd).  

Central Link routed through the DSTT could have effectively used this limited capacity to provide additional transit capacity into downtown Seattle from UW and SeaTac; and could have been extended to West Seattle. However it made no sense to spend billions on Prop 1 extensions to Northgate when Sound Transit could have added that capacity with 100 additional high-capacity bus routes an hour.  Instead Sound Transit spent billions and years on Prop 1 extensions routed through the DSTT that will do nothing to increase light rail capacity into the city.   Any riders added by the extensions will only reduce capacity for current riders.

The East Link extension is particularly egregious since it halves Central Link capacity to SeaTac and confiscates the I-90 Bridge center roadway, inevitably leading to gridlock on bridge outer roadways. (In this case 50 additional buses an hour could have sufficed.)  The 6^th District has already paid a heavy price for East Link.  They've temporarily lost P&R's ending access to transit for many commuters and had the route into Bellevue devastated, ending its persona as the “City in the park”. 

Ten years ago Sound Transit could have added their 4^th lanes to the I-90 Bridge outer roadways for non-transit HOV and implemented two-way BRT on center roadway with 10 times East Link capacity at one 10^th the price. Instead congestion, which years of Bellevue surveys have shown was their primary concern, 67% last year, is only going to increase.

The read absurdity is the Sound Transit Board intends to use East Link to replace all cross-lake buses.  (The also intend to replace most if not all of I-5 corridor buses.) They apparently don’t recognize I-90 Bridge HOV congestion is not due to too many buses.  Thousands of east side cross-lake bus commuters will face the hassle of transferring to light rail in the morning and the chaos in the tunnel stations for the return trip. 

Not only will Sound Transit Board’s East Link increase congestion for the vast majority of 6^th District commuters, all residents will continue to be forced to pay hundreds if not thousands annually to fund Prop 1 extensions to Everett and Tacoma. They will do nothing to reduce congestion along I-5 but will require a huge subsidy to cover the extensions added operating cost. 

Not only have posts detailed the Sound Transit’s inability to recognize the limitations of light rail routed through the DSTT, they also detail the board’s failure to increase bus transit ridership. Sound Transit has spent 10 years refusing to increase bus revenue miles or add parking despite the fact existing parking with access to I-5 or I-90 have been full for years.

Residents throughout the entire Sound Transit service area should recognize the years and billions wasted on Prop 1 extensions are only a down payment to CEO Peter Rogoff's 2019 long-term budget plans.  It details his intent to spend $96 billion over the next 20 years on what he proudly proclaims is the “Most ambitious transit system expansion in the country”.  The fact it does nothing to increase transit capacity into Seattle and continues their decade-long refusal to increase bus transit typifies Sound Transit Board incompetence.

Again, as with all my candidacies, my goal is not to replace the incumbent, as she may be a fine council member in many respects. While she played a prominent role in getting the Bellevue council to approve the permits Sound Transit needed for East Link, replacing her on the King County Council will do little to stop Sound Transit from proceeding.  The impact of her past support for Sound Transit’s failed policies on Bellevue City Council and PSRC Transportation Policy Board pales in comparison to that of the Seattle Times, the WSDOT, and the House and Senate Transportation committee members.  There would be no Prop 1 extensions if they had not abided, if not abetted, Sound Transit Board incompetence.   

It's exposing those problems is why I run.