Seattle: Smug, Arrogant, Delusional?

The Seattle P-I Virtual Editorial Board highlighted an excellent comment to an editorial about the $1.6 billion tax package. A reader going by the handle "Face Reality" made the following insightful observations:

Seattle has no coherent "tax plan": Or finance, revenue, fiscal or spending plans for that matter. It hasn't for over 20 years. A succession of irresponsible Councils and Mayors (that we insist on re-electing) seeking short term gratification has seen to that.
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Instead of a measured, predictable tax package for very specific, prioritized needs we get an endless, open ended "all at once" debacle and xmas tree wish list that still includes money for needless things like Paul Allen SLU beautification.

Reckless tax and fiscal policies make this city that much more unaffordable for all but those who can blithely pay for our "new urban" paradise while unwittingly contributing to the very sprawl they decry: When everyone else is driven to more affordable areas outside Seattle – along with many of the businesses that employ them.

There is a direct correlation between taxes, sprawl and affordability. So many people here are in denial about that reality - you can't simply tax, grow or densify your way to affordability and a quality city. The concepts are mutually exclusive if badly applied - as in Seattle.

Poorly applied and rapid ramp ups in taxes raise housing prices and mortgage qualifications, stagnant business growth and cause decline in real revenues as the increased taxes are eaten up by more service demands that density creates. If this continues, a city inevitably declines as demographics and businesses leave for cheaper pastures, ie, the 'burbs.

The real bill will come due in just a few years, when the inevitable economic downturn combined with higher taxes that narrow the base and discourage businesses will bring both an actual DECLINE in tax revenues across the board and a grinding halt in City business and population growth.

With the usual Hobson's choice of cutting services vs raising taxes even higher, setting up the potential for the classic revenue "death spiral".

An experience well documented in just about every other American city the last 30 years – including memory challenged Seattle, once again the caboose on the train of national experience.

Smugness, arrogance, delusional growth projections, pseudo - environmentalism and the attitude "its different this time" are no defense against the lessons of history.

You should really go read the entire comment.

This was cross-posted on both Seattle Bubble and Seattle Traffic.

(Face Reality, Seattle P-I (comments), 08.16.2006 )

Study Funded By Tunnel Supporters Supports Tunnel

Would building a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct cost insane amounts of money? Yes. But wait, according to a new "study," the super-amazing fantastic tunnel of love would return that all of that expense (and more!) back to the city . Just like magic!

Replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel instead of a new elevated highway is well worth the extra cost, according to a study released Wednesday by a Seattle business group.

Tunnel opponents quickly criticized the Downtown Seattle Association study, and some were not even willing to concede that the current viaduct needs replacing. A state Transportation Department official warned that the project would soon stall without a decision on which option to pursue.

A tunnel along the downtown Seattle waterfront would cost $3 billion to $3.6 billion — at least $1 billion more than a new viaduct there, according to state estimates. But it would increase area property values by $450 million, stimulate $1 billion to $2 billion in development on "severely underbuilt" land and spur an extra $162 million to $325 million a year in tourism, according to the study, which economist Glenn Pascall presented at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center.

The association, which supports a tunnel, hired Pascall to review the effect of building one. Pointing to benefits that resulted from tearing down the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco and even from the construction of the notorious Big Dig in Boston, he said a tunnel would "create a magnet event."
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In response, the No Tunnel Alliance noted that the study used the low end of the state's estimated cost difference between a tunnel and a viaduct and said it did not account for cost overruns and delays that some have said would be more likely with a tunnel. The group also questioned the study's conclusions regarding increases in property values and tourism, said a lack of tunnel exits downtown would increase congestion and harm businesses and worried about delays from city efforts to find the extra money for the tunnel.

So there you have it. Now we know that a tunnel would be worth the insane cost, because a study funded by the tunnel-loving Downtown Seattle Association says so.

Bah. I still want a bridge over Elliot Bay.

(Aubrey Cohen, Seattle P-I, 08.17.2006)

The Neverending Story

I was quite surprised to read the following article in the Seattle P-I about the City Council-proposed tax package. The tone of the article doesn't really "fit" with the general mentality in Seattle—a city that has never met a tax it didn't like.

Seattle politicians can't show you a price tag for the massive transportation measure they're pitching on the fall ballot.

But this much is clear: The unprecedented proposal could boost by as much as 34 percent how much the city collects from property owners — nearly six times what current law allows.

And it might be permanent — a first in Seattle for this type of tax increase.
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City officials predict that over the lifetime of the 20-year package, the typical homeowner would see a tax-rate increase of 38 cents for every $1,000 of property value. For a $400,000 house, that would be more than $150 annually.

But that's only an estimate.

"It's an unprecedented levy in its size and duration," said City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck. "It's seriously lacking in public accountability and taxpayer accountability."
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Activists, special interests and politicians often ask citizens to agree to temporary increases to pay for specific initiatives, such as affordable housing, school improvements and park construction.

This proposed levy has two noteworthy distinctions:

• It could last forever.

Most levy increases expire in about five to seven years, although voters sometimes approve extensions. After the measure expires, the city's tax base reverts to its previous level.

In this proposal, after six years of increases of as much as 5 percent a year, the levy would not roll back. It would continue to grow 1 percent per year for 14 years. The City Council has approved a resolution stating that it wants to return to lower levels after 20 years, essentially to today's level plus the annual 1 percent increase allowed by state law, compounded over 20 years.

But future councils are not bound by that resolution.

"That was obviously appealing to many of my colleagues and the mayor — not to me, though," said Steinbrueck, who unsuccessfully tried to get his peers to set an expiration date to the tax increase. "Aside from the commitment to an oversight group handpicked by the mayor and council you don't have the same kind of broad public accountability that comes with a six- or eight-year levy, where the public has an opportunity to evaluate the promises and the results over a reasonable period of time."

Hey, if the residents of Seattle want to saddle themselves with this kind of unending overbearing tax burden (on top of the RTID, Sound Transit, and the plethora of other tax programs that have their hands in the pot), I suppose they'll get what they deserve. I still haven't been convinced that all of these additional taxes are even necessary. Isn't basic transportation infrastructure upkeep supposed to be one of the primary functions of government? Shouldn't they be spending general funds on roads, and putting things like arts promotion "affordable housing," and the Mayor's chauffeur up for public votes?

Of course, it might just be me, but it also seems like all these excessive taxes aren't going to do much to help the Mayor's plan to increase the city's population 60% by 2040. But what do I know, right?

(Angela Galloway, Seattle P-I, 08.16.2006)

City Passes Two-Pronged Roads Plan

The Seattle City Council yesterday passed a (perhaps unwittingly) clever two-pronged plan to tackle road improvement projects throughout the city.

The Seattle City Council approved a $1.6 billion transportation funding package Monday to pay for repairs to the city's bridges and roads.

Councilmembers approved a 10 percent commercial parking tax and business transportation tax that totals $18.25 million a year. Voters will decide whether to add higher property taxes to that mix in the November election.

The package is part of Mayor Greg Nickels' "Bridging the Gap" plan. He says the transportation budget has declined from $37.5 million in 1995 to $13.1 million in 2006. The city's $500 million maintenance backlog has continued to grow as a result, and it needs money to repair aging roads and bridges.

"Unfortunately, this backlog could not be addressed before tremendous holes were shot in the budget with the loss of state funding and the Eyman initiatives," said City Councilman Richard Conlin at the meeting Tuesday.

Councilmembers voted to pay for those repairs Monday through a business transportation tax that places a $25 per year tax on each full time employee. They also passed a 10 percent commercial parking tax. The funds would pay for major projects like a new rail overpass on South Lander Street and the widening of the Spokane Street Viaduct but business owner Heather Fitzpatrick says it would cut into her bottom line.
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Seattle Chamber of Commerce President Steve Leahy says Fitzpatrick isn't alone. He says this tax is a formula to drive businesses out of town.
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The funding package does not include repairs to the Alaskan Way Viaduct, and voters still need to decide on tax proposals for the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) and Sound Transit.

Add the taxes up, and Leahy says it sends a message to businesses that Seattle is not a "business friendly" city.

Fitzpatrick plans to pay the taxes but says she'll think twice about staying in Seattle, when the lease at her Fremont office expires 18 months from now.

The most obvious and stated purpose of this plan is that it will raise a very large pile of cash that for the city to spend (allegedly) on roads. The less apparent key to the plan is hinted at in the article: drive people away from downtown, so the roads take less abuse. That may not be an intentional effect of the plan, but it's certainly a real one, given the quotes in the above article. It's even possible that the negative effects on businesses is an intentional aspect of this plan. Maybe it is a clever part of how the plan is designed to work. Either that or the Mayor and the city council are oblivious to the likely effects of their actions. You choose.

(Akiko Fujita, KOMO News, 08.07.2006)

Forget Tunnels, It's Bridge Time

It seems like every other story I post is about the Viaduct, but I just have to mention this Seattle Times editorial by guest columnist Earl J. Bell. If you thought you had heard all of the Viaduct replacement options (tunnel, rebuilt, tear-down, retrofit), you were wrong. Try this on for size: build a bridge over Elliott Bay.

Restricting the viaduct alternatives to two, equally unsatisfactory, options — rebuilding an elevated structure in the existing right-of-way, or digging a tunnel — is unnecessarily narrow and destined to produce a foregone conclusion. The expert panel should look at other alternatives, including a bridge over Elliott Bay.

In a classic decision-making approach, the alternatives would be weighed against something like the following criteria:

• Costs should fall within "assured funding" limitations;
• No damage should be done to existing businesses (they are extremely sensitive to disruptions);
• Any "improvement" should open the waterfront.

The first criterion, in the absence of greater assured funding, would exclude the tunnel, while the third would exclude rebuilding the elevated highway structure; the second would preclude both a rebuild and the tunnel.

Evidently, neither of these two alternatives is "achievable" if the above criteria are to be met simultaneously. It is not sufficient for an alternative to meet only one or two. Thus, "achievability" would require relaxing, modifying, or removing one or more criteria.

The only way to comply with these criteria simultaneously is to include one or more additional alternatives. Truly viable alternatives have not been included and thoroughly explored. We are bogged down in a phony dichotomy of "tunnel vs. rebuild." In the classic problem-solving scenario, the objective would be to find the least-cost alternative among those that are "achievable."

Many of us believe that there is but one way to meet all the criteria — a bridge over water. A new class of bridges, "cable-stayed," has surfaced in a variety of places to provide a potential solution. Cables are used not to suspend the bridge but to provide additional structural stability, where needed, to assure the bridge's integrity during high wind or seismic activity.

Costs less, doesn't disrupt traffic, looks cool... I have to say, Mr. Bell's idea is the best plan I've heard yet. Which of course probably means that the chances of it being implemented are somewhere between zero and "when Hell freezes over."

In other Viaduct news, the tunnel is apparently unpopular enough that a coalition of citizens has formed with the sole purpose of preventing a tunnel.

A group of citizens began organizing Thursday night to fight a tunnel-replacement proposal and demand an up-or-down public vote on it.

The vote must be agreed to by Seattle City Council members, who haven't yet declared themselves on the issue. Thursday, a group of about 50 people, most of them appearing critical of the $3.6 billion tunnel proposal, decided to form a committee to push for a tunnel vote this fall after a panel of experts reviews a plan for replacing the 53-year-old structure.

The critics said the tunnel was too costly, its construction would be too disruptive to waterfront business, and not enough thought was being put into less expensive alternatives as Mayor Greg Nickels continues his tunnel campaign.

"Seattle has a history of things that people didn't want and they got them shoved down their throat anyway," said Chip Marshall, a developer and longtime political activist. "Other solutions are dismissed."

I don't see why we can't have a public vote on all the viable options. Put the following choices on a ballot:

• do nothing
• retrofit
• rebuild
• tear down
• tunnel
• bridge Elliott Bay

Let the people decide. How hard is that?

(Earl J. Bell, Seattle Times, 07.26.2006)

(Not So) Cycle Friendly Seattle

As someone who cycles to work 60% or more of the time, this article in the Seattle Weekly about the state of cycling in the Seattle area was fairly interesting.

...suddenly you're noticing all those people who are commuting to work on their bikes these days—and it seems that there are a lot more of them. And you notice that a lot of them nowadays are just normal schlubs like yourself.

Suddenly, riding a bike to work seems to make a lot of sense.

After all, Seattle has a national reputation as a bike-friendly city. It should be fun and easy, right?

Well, um . . . yes and no.
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In other words, the Seattle area's oft-touted bicycling system is actually a happenstance, an often broken network that doesn't function particularly well, especially when it comes to providing a complete infrastructure that could encourage people to take up bike commuting.

Andrew Galbraith, who moved here last year from the San Francisco Bay Area—where he also used to commute by bike—has found, in his year of commuting from Fremont to Pioneer Square, that Seattle's bike-friendly reputation isn't everything it's cracked up to be. "I think that it probably got that reputation because people look at things like the Burke- Gilman trail or Green Lake and think, 'Oh, there's bike paths,' because that's what the city is promoting, but the reality of actually commuting is different," he says. "It's one thing for people like myself who are avid bicyclists, but certainly somebody who doesn't bike much and thinks it might be a new way to commute, they might find it frightening. Especially downtown."

I'm quite fortunate in that I live just 2 blocks from the Burke-Gilman / Sammamish River trail, and my work is less than a mile off the trail, making my 13.6 mile commute roughly 90% trail. Whenever I ride other places though, I do find myself wondering how Seattle ever got a reputation for being "cycle friendly." Are other cities just absolutely awful for cycling, or does the Burke-Gilman trail all by itself make us deserving of the title?

This bit of the article also quite amused me:

"The challenge we have is convincing people," says Kirste Johnson, a transportation planner for the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), "because we see these really small percentages of commute trips from census data [the average in King County has for years been about 2 percent to 3 percent]. When it comes to divvying up pots of money for transportation projects, it's like, 'Why should we spend any more than, say, 3 percent? Why should we put more money towards this when nobody's doing it?'

Let's apply that same logic to, say... transit. Maybe 10% of commute trips are on transit, so why spend more than 10% of transportation revenue on transit? I can't locate actual figures (if anyone reading this knows where to get such numbers, please let me know), but I've got a feeling that more than 10% of transportation dollars are spent on busses, rail, and ferrys. If there are people making such an argument against spending money for bicycle improvements, it's bogus. More trails & dedicated bike lanes = more bicycles on the road. More bicycles on the road = less cars, less smog, and more money in the pocket of the cyclists that aren't paying through the teeth for gasoline. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

(David Neiwert, Seattle Weekly, 07.26.2006)

NewsFlash: Living Close To Work Not A Priority

Here's a shocker for you: most people in the Seattle area don't live all that close to where they work.

Despite the dramatic surge of new jobs in suburbia over the past three decades, most people in this and other metropolitan areas don't work in the same communities in which they live.
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A commute that crosses city limits isn't necessarily lengthy. Still, census estimates, based on information collected in 2000, help explain why traffic in the Central Puget Sound area can be such a mess.
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Seattle is one of just three cities and unincorporated "census designated places" in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties where a majority of residents live and work in the same community. The other two are military bases.

The geographic divide between home and work is most pronounced in bedroom communities where there simply aren't many jobs.
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In the 1980s, a concept called "jobs-housing balance" arose in urban-planning circles.

If government policies promoted building new houses, condos and apartments close to offices, stores and factories, the thinking went, people would commute shorter distances and be more likely to walk, bike or take the bus to work.

Traffic and air quality would improve. Energy consumption would plummet.

The census estimates for places like Redmond and Issaquah suggest "there are limits to that notion, and they should be recognized," says Dan Carlson, a senior lecturer at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs who studies transportation and land use.

It's a nice thought, isn't it? The truth is, I bet most people would still drive even if they lived less than two miles from work. People are just that attached to their cars. When it comes to the decision about where to live, I think "length of commute" is an mostly an afterthought. All the planning in the world is unlikely to change the perception that certain neighborhoods are "desirable," while others are what you settle for if you can't get into the nice places.

Forget big freeways, bus frequency, and light rail. As long as people continue choosing to live far from where they work, we're going to have crappy traffic.

More thoughts at Seattle Bubble.

(Eric Pryne, Seattle Times, 07.22.2006)

City Council Trims Mayor's Tax Proposal

Remember the Mayor's big fat tax package that I've mentioned here a couple of times? Apparently the City Council wants to put it on a diet. The tax package, that is.

Seattle City Council members are poised to cut Mayor Greg Nickels' $1.8 billion transportation improvement package by 23 percent in hopes that the slimmed-down proposal will be more acceptable to voters.

The council on Monday will discuss the counterproposal, which would trim the mayor's 20-year spending plan for major road projects and street and sidewalk repairs by more than $15 million annually.

The taxes to finance the work also would be shaved under the council proposal. It would retain the $25 annual per-employee tax on businesses in the mayor's plan, but would reduce its property tax, which would need voter approval, by 26 percent.

The council plan also would cut the mayor's proposed 10 percent parking tax to 8 percent while phasing it in over three years, instead of imposing it immediately, and would add some exemptions.

The council proposal also calls for an oversight committee to conduct an evaluation — most likely after the first six years of the program — of how well the money is being spent and possibly to recommend whether the taxes should be continued.

The changes reflect discomfort among council members with the original size of the mayor's proposal and a strong lobbying effort by the parking industry against the parking tax Nickels proposed.

"Our concern was voter fatigue," said Councilman Richard McIver, who said he supports almost all of the revised package. "I think (the change) gets it down to a cost I think is reasonable to the taxpayer."
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Nickels' staff has said in the past that to cut the mayor's package would mean the backlog couldn't be eliminated.

Is there any doubt that the line will be "pass this huge tax package or watch the roads crumble"? That's pretty much the usual mode of operations around here lately, right? It hurts my head to think of how many new transportation taxes we'll be blessed with here in the next few years. It's not that I'm against transportation improvements/maintenance, it's just that I'm still not convinced that the 1.4 billion dollars they're already collecting is being well spent, so why should we trust them with billions more?

(Larry Lange, Seattle P-I, 07.15.2006)

City Ignores People, Selects Own Worst Roads

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels recently ran a publicity-stunt public poll, allegedly to allow the public to have a say in which city roads are most in need of repair. Last week, he held a press conference to announce that the people's voice has been heard. Twelve road improvement projects were named... one of which was actually identified by a large number of people in the survey.

Of more than 700 people who responded to a city survey last month, 50 named North 45th as one of the worst traffic blots in the city, more than any other location.

So that's where Mayor Greg Nickels held a news conference Wednesday to announce the "dirty dozen" — 12 sore spots on the city's streets, bike trails and sidewalks that he pledged to fix within the next year for about $20 million. The survey was far from scientific — nominations were sought online or by snail mail — and seemed ripe for manipulation by organized neighborhood groups.

Given that, the mayor's dirty dozen didn't correspond exactly with the people's picks.

Other than North 45th, the other 11 projects were among those identified in the survey but were not necessarily the top vote-getters, said Gregg Hirakawa, a spokesman for the city Department of Transportation.

Instead, the projects were those for which money was available or that were on the city's priority list for street repairs already, he said. Wednesday's announcement, with a carefully selected fall timeline for some of the work, had the feel of a campaign stop.

Until I learned that 11 out of the 12 announced projects were in fact chosen without any regard to the survey, I was quite confused at how Mercer Street next to I-5 could have possibly not been in the top 12. Taking a public poll to determine the worst roads was a good plan. On the other hand, ignoring the poll and choosing projects arbitrarily seems like a slap in the face from our public "servants."

Maybe it's just me, though. Oh well. Given how infrequently I actually visit the city proper, it's not as though I have much skin in the game anyway.

(Mary Andom, Seattle P-I, 07.13.2006)

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.
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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)