By Joshua Adam Hicks
Bellevue Reporter
Mass transit is back before voters after a drubbing in last year’s general election.
The $18 billion regional measure that appears on ballot this November will be smaller and less expensive, but opponents are no less determined to see it fail.
King County Executive Ron Sims says Proposition 1 would be too slow in providing relief. He’s pushing instead for a dramatic and immediate increase in bus service.
Others, like Bellevue developer Kemper Freeman, oppose the light rail component of Proposition 1.
The last time a train-laden mass transit measure passed muster with voters was in 1996.
That’s when the Sound Move plan rebounded from its defeat a year before, bringing the promise of a light rail system serving downtown Seattle, the University District, Capitol Hill, and Sea-Tac Airport.
Proponents of this more-recent plan, known as Sound Transit 2 (ST2), are trying to pull off a similar rally in 2008.
But the recovery will have to be greater this time around. Last year’s Proposition 1 measure failed by more than 10 percentage points.
Supporters say the 2008 version is more likely to succeed because it doesn’t include a roads element.
Last year’s measure was a $47 billion package that combined roads and transit elements in a 20-year plan.
“We’ve determined that people like transit, but they either don’t like the roads aspect or they’re split on the issue,” said Mass Transit Now spokesman Alex Fryer. “This latest proposal has been pretty popular since it got out of the gate, and it remains so.”
Highlights of the new ST2 package include:
• East Link light rail, connecting downtown Seattle and Redmond by way of I-90 and Bellevue
• More express bus service, including 49,000 extra hours for the Eastside
• Additional Sounder commuter rail service between Seattle and Tacoma
Sound Transit claims that the plan would cost $18 billion and take 15 years to complete.
Freeman claims the public can’t trust these estimates because of Sound Transit’s performance in implementing the Sound Move plan.
“Every promise they made turned out to be dramatically false,” he said. “It costs far more than they said, it’s taken far longer, and its now expected to produce far fewer riders than they claimed it would.”
Sound Transit readjusted its projections in 2001, and has been on time and on budget ever since.
“We have a lot of confidence in our numbers now with all the years of experience we have under our belt,” said Sound Transit spokesman Bruce Gray.
Freeman has shown a long-standing distaste for light rail campaigns, having fought them for over a decade.
“I’ve never seen any phenomenon quite like it,” he said. “It has a life of its own, independent of any facts.”
Freeman is working to devise an alternative to ST2 that would cost a fraction of the time and money.
The centerpiece of his plan is a free-ride bus rapid transit system that uses dedicated HOV lanes.
Sound Transit officials say Freeman’s idea wouldn’t move people efficiently.
“You can run buses nose-to-tail on I-90, but they’d be stuck once they get to the downtown areas,” Gray said. “You lose any kind of reliability and speed benefits that light rail offers.”
Other features of the Freeman plan include road improvements, additional bike lanes, and an expanded van pool program.
Light rail service between downtown Seattle and Sea-Tac is expected to begin in 2009.
Construction for the Capitol Hill and University District extensions is scheduled to start sometime later.
Next in line is the East Link light rail line, which would pass through the backyard of Freeman’s downtown Bellevue developments if Proposition 1 is successful.
“I don’t think there’s a single human being in metropolitan Seattle who would stand to benefit more than I do if this plan works,” Freeman said. “It doesn’t work.”
One thing both sides of the Proposition 1 debate agree on is that relieving traffic gridlock is vital to the region’s health.
“If we don’t get our congestion and mobility problems under control, we’re going to see a screeching halt to what has been, for the past 10 years, the brightest economy in the United States,” Freeman said.
• Prop 1 web sites
www.notoprop1.org
www.masstransitnow.org
www.future.soundtransit.org
