Legislators Ignore Constituents’ Concern

The July 5^th Bellevue Reporter article “State lawmakers discuss 2019 session” exemplifies another year of the area’s legislator’s decade-long failure to address their constituent’s biggest concern.  It’s not as the article suggests, the state’s budget, the need to fully fund the McCleary decision, or the increase in the B&O tax or graduated real state excise tax.  It’s congestion on the area’s roadways.  67% of those in a recent Bellevue survey listed it as their top concern, nearly four times the 17% concerned about the cost of housing.   Residents throughout the east side would likely concur. 

East side commuters are some of the biggest losers from the legislator’s failure to ever recognize the adverse affects of routing Prop 1 light rail extensions through the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel (DSTT).  There would have been no East Link if legislators had demanded Sound Transit be audited.   Even a cursory audit would have concluded a 2004 PSRC study, funded by Sound Transit, limited DSTT capacity to 8880 riders per hour in each direction.  That east side cross-lake commuter’s share of that capacity would never be sufficient to make up for the loss of the I-90 bridge center roadway from East Link. 

Thus there was never any justification for allowing Sound Transit to confiscate the bridge center roadway or devastate the route through Bellevue, ending the city’s persona as the city in the park.   An audit would have confirmed east side cross-lake commuter’s share of DSTT capacity was a fraction of what they could have added 10 years sooner with two-way BRT on bridge center roadway. 

Even worse, Sound Transit, rather than using East Link to add I-90 Bridge capacity, plans to use it to end cross-lake bus routes.   It shouldn’t take an audit for lawmakers to recognize I-90 Bridge congestion is not due to too many buses.   Sound Transit exacerbates the problem by agreeing to a Mercer City Council demand they halve current I-90 corridor bus routes in order to terminate buses there.  Those no longer able to ride buses will be forced to drive, adding to the inevitable gridlock, not only on I-90 Bridge outer roadways,on the entire I-90 corridor.  

I-90 commuters aren’t the only losers from the failure to audit.  An audit would have also shown Prop I extensions routed through the DSTT would not have the capacity needed to justify spending billions on Central Link extensions along I-5.   Especially since the extensions do nothing to increase DSTT capacity so any riders added will reduce access for current riders.   

Again, rather than using light rail to add transit capacity into the city the extensions will be used to replace existing bus routes, doing nothing to reduce I-5 congestion.   Current Central Link commuters will lose and residents throughout the area will continue to be forced to pay for fatally flawed Prop 1 extensions.

Those payments however pale in comparison to what they’ll have to pay for the 2015 legislation enabling Sound Transit 3.   Most of which will be the result of the legislators continuing to allow Sound Transit to base car tab taxes on inflated car values.   Sound Transit CEO Rogoff used the ST3 approval for his 2019 budget plan to spend $96 billion between 2017 and 2041 to implement “Prop 1 and Beyond” light rail extensions.  

Any legislator with a modicum of concern for constituents would have concluded Rogoff’s 2019 budget was grounds for an audit.  Most of the $96 billion was from $64 billion in taxes, dwarfing the $1 billion a year for 15 years the legislation enabled.  Rogoff’s budget was far more about creating the “most ambitious transit system expansion in the country” than in reducing the area’s congestion. 

Any legislator with a modicum of transportation competence would have concluded his light rail ridership claim in the budget was delusional.   That he demonstrated even more incompetence with the budget proposal to continue Sound Transit’s decade of refusing to increase bus transit capacity for the next 20 years.   The Sound Transit Board,who should have fired him, renewed his contract for the next three years with a hefty raise.  Yet it didn’t even generate the need for an audit.

Again, there would have been no Prop 1 extensions if the legislators had required Sound Transit be audited.  East Link is just the most egregious example of that failure.  The July 5^th Bellevue Reporter article is just the latest example of that failure.