Light Rail For Everyone!

Here's a real shocker for you: Sound Transit board votes to send light rail across the lake. I bet you totally didn't see that one coming.

Light rail is the best way to connect Seattle and Eastside communities, Sound Transit's board of directors agreed unanimously Thursday, adding momentum to a $3.9 billion project that would include the world's first transit rails on a floating bridge.

Board members said the electric trains would attract more travelers and move them faster than another option they dropped — a "bus-rapid-transit" system that travels on its own lanes and overpasses.

The Eastside line, crossing Lake Washington on the Interstate 90 floating bridge to Bellevue, the Microsoft campus and downtown Redmond, is the biggest piece of a huge regional transit package that voters will be asked to approve in 2007 — which also could extend light rail north to Lynnwood and south to the outskirts of Tacoma.
...
Voters may be asked to double their current Sound Transit taxes. The transit board voted to drop its do-nothing and low-cost options, ensuring the request will be at least $75 a year for a typical household, or $125 per year if the full plan is approved.

If $30 tabs round 3 passes this November, does that mean that the $75-$125 will be collected through things like gas taxes or road use fees? I really hope so, because taxing someone who drives 20,000 miles per year the same as someone who drives 5,000 miles per year through yearly vehicle registration fees is pretty bogus, in my opinion. I actually make an effort to live close to where I work, and to get my butt around with something other than a car. So why should I be paying just as much to subsidize transit as someone who commutes 30 miles both ways from Everett to Seattle, just so they can own their 2,500 square foot home on a cul-de-sac?

I'm not against transit, but I am against foisting the cost of transit on people that make wise decisions to avoid being part of the traffic problem and don't want or need transit.

(Lisa Chiu & Mike Lindblom, Seattle Times, 07.14.2006)