The latest democratic budget proposal for transportation is a disaster. It actually steals money from badly needed road maintenance. It will cripple our transit systems that we so desperately need. It dumps enormous sums into three new road mega-projects.
These special interest projects are unnecessary and will forever burden future state budgets with even more maintenance costs, as well as Puget Sound cleanup and air pollution costs.
Washingtonians enjoy a beautiful green spaces and clean air. Highways create water runoff that pollutes our rivers and lakes. Cars spew dioxin that ends up hurting our health and the health of Puget Sound. Roads create sprawl that destroys green spaces.
What existing voters need are well-maintained existing roads. If you want freight mobility for the handful businesses that need it, the best way to get this is to invest in great transit infrastructure. This will also help solve the most daunting challenge of our time – climate pollution (that we’re all so tired of hearing about).
Public investment should solve this problem, not create more of it. Individual choices can do nothing about climate, especially if you take away our option to use public transit and we are forced to drive our cars more.
More driving is what the highway construction lobby wants, of course. They want to increase the gas tax by 10-cents a gallon and line their pockets with this increase as they build unnecessary highways.
We need politicians who will do what is right and best for our environment and improve our lives. People can enjoy taking high-speed trains and bus rapid transit if it gets them where they need to go without the hassle of a car commute. This also would leave the existing roads capable of handling business traffic. In addition, cutting transit when there are blind and disabled people and others who cannot drive is cruel and irresponsible.
Rep. Judy Clibborn, of my own district, has plastered the state Democratic legislative web page with nonsense about how spending all this money to build roads will create jobs and growth.
Doing the needed road maintenance also creates jobs. Investing in wind farms creates jobs. Investing in great transit creates jobs and enables more people to get to work. And all of these things don’t end up destroying our environment to do it.
Representative Clibborn and the House Democrats need to come up with real solutions and stop wasting money and creating pollution.
Kristen Bryant, Bellevue
