All Dirt Roads Will Lead Away From Seattle
Last Wednesday, I volunteered to take a road trip to our state capitol, Olympia, and lobby my State Senator and Representatives on the importance of maintaining public transit. Yes, that position serves me well since I drive transit; but that is something I would support even if I didn't. All one has to do is live in Seattle to see how important buses and trains are to our economy. If all the people in those conveyances had to switch to cars, there wouldn't be a way to drive in our fair city half the day. Our roads would become near-permanent parking lots.
Thanks to a persistent tooth ache, I haven't been following State Legislative politics lately. Last I checked, the Democratic party had slim majorities in both chambers; that has changed in the Senate. Sen. Rodney Tom and Sen. Tim Sheldon have decided to switch their caucusing affiliations and vote with the minority Republican Party, creating what's being called a "majority coalition caucus." The Democratic Party, no surprise, censured the two. The GOP granted Tom the post of Senate President and Sheldon a seat on the Senate Transportation Committees.
This has led to a rash of far-right GOP nonsense bills that garnered quite a bit of coverage from the media but that has no real chance of passing, let alone getting signed into law. I'm referring of course to what supporters call the "Family Second Chance Act," which would extend the mandatory waiting period on no-fault divorce filings from 90 days to 1 year, and to a move to effectively outlaw abortion in a state where it was legal even before Roe v. Wade.
Do these bills have a chance to even make it out of committee? Probably not.
But that might not be the point.
Perhaps some background on our fair state's state is in order, especially when it comes to transportation issues. As I've pointed out before, people are driving less, probably thanks to higher gas prices. They are also parking or selling the gas guzzlers and buying more fuel-efficient vehicles. For our fair state, this means that the money to build and fix roads is shrinking. The Washington State Constitution is very clear on how highways and roads are to be funded. Head down to SECTION 40 HIGHWAY FUNDS, and you will read that all gas taxes go to roads (except for fuel tax refunds and the cost of collection). The section that dictates this requirement is actually after the "Provided" at the base of the section, which is known as the 18th Amendment. Those exceptions to road revenues specifically do not involve gas tax revenues.
Got that? This means that gas taxes cannot go to funding buses, trains, bike lanes, or most ferries (a big expense in a State whose western section is split by a hundred miles of inland ocean water, the source of my former profession).
(I say "most" ferries because the main cross-sound routes are actually legal extensions of highways. The ferry pictured above makes the Interstate 90 extension from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, the actual western terminus of that highway. The history behind this classifying ferries as highway extensions is both fascinating and beyond the scope of this post. Sorry.)
With a shrinking transportation pie, competition for each remaining slice gets fierce. The people out in the non-urban areas are especially hard hit simply because people in these areas drive more than people in the more populated cities. We in the cities, after all, can take the bus, train, or even the SLUT. The 'burbs have no such options.
Which brings me to my little trip to Oly.
When we got there, we gathered in a meeting room and were given the various tools of the lobby trade, including talking points, how to behave and address the legislator, how to follow up, and specific law we find a bit concerning. Two big and hairy problem bills making their way through the committee process were HB 5088 and HB 5093 (links to the process page; a PDF summary of each bill can be got here and here respectively).
The first concerns "high capacity transportation corridor areas," or HCTCAs, quasi-governmental agencies that cross state and county borders to fund and build transportation infrastructure other than highways. This bill specifically attacks the HCTCA that wants to run a light rail across the Columbia River from Portland, OR to Vancouver, WA, but would defund any state HCTCA, including ones that funds rail, light rail, streetcar and bus service outside of Clark County. The summary says it all: "All provisions authorizing the creation of HCTCAs and granting them authority to issue bonds are repealed."
HB 5093 is likewise Draconian. It would take any motor vehicle excise tax or fee funds collected by a "transportation benefit district" (TBD) and redirect the money. From the summary again: "A vehicle fee imposed by the governing board of a TBD after January 1, 2013, must only be used for highway purposes."
Again, neither bill is likely to get to the house or senate floors for debate, and certainly won't be signed by the Governor. But that may not matter, not in the long run.
These bills, in my humble opinion, are designed to "protect" not just highway money, but a way of life.
Have you ever been to an American-styled suburb? There is no city center. There is no center, not of any kind. There is only road leading to road. One can drive from one's front door to the front door of any service one wishes to visit, or at least to the parking lot in front of the front door. The only thing one needs is a car. Dmitri Orlov says it best:
American society is classless, at least in theory, since there no one wants to admit to being either upper or lower class. There is, supposedly, one large and homogeneous middle class: in fact, though, there is a small upper portion and a large and rapidly expanding lower portion.
The wonderful thing about the American middle class concept is its malleability, because it is almost entirely symbolic. You could be middle class, own an ancestral mansion in an old brick and fieldstone suburb, drive a Mercedes and send your children to an Ivy League school. Or you could be middle class, live in a dolled-up trailer home, drive a souped-up pickup truck, and send your children to a community college that teaches them how to milk hogs. The least common denominator is that you have to drive a motor vehicle, otherwise you can no longer perform this charade. . . .
Not having a car makes one, within the American suburban landscape, a non-person.
The universal right to drive a car is the linchpin of the American communal myth. Once a significant portion of the population finds that cars have become inaccessible to them, the effect on the national psyche may be so profound as to make the country ungovernable.
(Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse, New Society Publishers, 2008, 24-25.)
King County, therefore, doesn't understand what the car means for Clark County or any of the other non-urban counties. People ride buses, trains and streetcars, or (worst of all!) ride bikes for more than recreation, not unlike overgrown children. They have therefore turned their backs on the American Dream.
And here we find Orlov calling it exactly right. The "effect on the national psyche" is ramming legislation through the bill mill in the hopes that some of it might pass, and further introducing decorative hot-button issue bills concerning marriage and abortion that takes the already myopic media eye away from the more important transportation money grab that might, just might save suburbia from creeping urbanization or-more likely, returning ruralization, where former farmland might just rid itself of the overpriced McMansions with their expansive lawns and driveway basketball court and swing set in the back yard, and once again plant crops. Land owned by current commuters will revert once again to former Washington State residents Ma and Pa Kettle with all the attendant class associations attached thereto.
And the roads leading to these rural enclaves? One cannot expect a rural road traveled at best a few times a day to generate enough gas tax revenue to fund paving. At best, expect gravel, or more likely dirt. If King County is allowed to keep the gas tax money it generates away from the State General Highway fund, the 'burbs will once again enjoy the roads their grandparents drove . . . or, more likely, walked.
X-Posted to talk_politics.
Thanks to a persistent tooth ache, I haven't been following State Legislative politics lately. Last I checked, the Democratic party had slim majorities in both chambers; that has changed in the Senate. Sen. Rodney Tom and Sen. Tim Sheldon have decided to switch their caucusing affiliations and vote with the minority Republican Party, creating what's being called a "majority coalition caucus." The Democratic Party, no surprise, censured the two. The GOP granted Tom the post of Senate President and Sheldon a seat on the Senate Transportation Committees.
This has led to a rash of far-right GOP nonsense bills that garnered quite a bit of coverage from the media but that has no real chance of passing, let alone getting signed into law. I'm referring of course to what supporters call the "Family Second Chance Act," which would extend the mandatory waiting period on no-fault divorce filings from 90 days to 1 year, and to a move to effectively outlaw abortion in a state where it was legal even before Roe v. Wade.
Do these bills have a chance to even make it out of committee? Probably not.
But that might not be the point.
Perhaps some background on our fair state's state is in order, especially when it comes to transportation issues. As I've pointed out before, people are driving less, probably thanks to higher gas prices. They are also parking or selling the gas guzzlers and buying more fuel-efficient vehicles. For our fair state, this means that the money to build and fix roads is shrinking. The Washington State Constitution is very clear on how highways and roads are to be funded. Head down to SECTION 40 HIGHWAY FUNDS, and you will read that all gas taxes go to roads (except for fuel tax refunds and the cost of collection). The section that dictates this requirement is actually after the "Provided" at the base of the section, which is known as the 18th Amendment. Those exceptions to road revenues specifically do not involve gas tax revenues.
Got that? This means that gas taxes cannot go to funding buses, trains, bike lanes, or most ferries (a big expense in a State whose western section is split by a hundred miles of inland ocean water, the source of my former profession).
(I say "most" ferries because the main cross-sound routes are actually legal extensions of highways. The ferry pictured above makes the Interstate 90 extension from Seattle to Bainbridge Island, the actual western terminus of that highway. The history behind this classifying ferries as highway extensions is both fascinating and beyond the scope of this post. Sorry.)
With a shrinking transportation pie, competition for each remaining slice gets fierce. The people out in the non-urban areas are especially hard hit simply because people in these areas drive more than people in the more populated cities. We in the cities, after all, can take the bus, train, or even the SLUT. The 'burbs have no such options.
Which brings me to my little trip to Oly.
When we got there, we gathered in a meeting room and were given the various tools of the lobby trade, including talking points, how to behave and address the legislator, how to follow up, and specific law we find a bit concerning. Two big and hairy problem bills making their way through the committee process were HB 5088 and HB 5093 (links to the process page; a PDF summary of each bill can be got here and here respectively).
The first concerns "high capacity transportation corridor areas," or HCTCAs, quasi-governmental agencies that cross state and county borders to fund and build transportation infrastructure other than highways. This bill specifically attacks the HCTCA that wants to run a light rail across the Columbia River from Portland, OR to Vancouver, WA, but would defund any state HCTCA, including ones that funds rail, light rail, streetcar and bus service outside of Clark County. The summary says it all: "All provisions authorizing the creation of HCTCAs and granting them authority to issue bonds are repealed."
HB 5093 is likewise Draconian. It would take any motor vehicle excise tax or fee funds collected by a "transportation benefit district" (TBD) and redirect the money. From the summary again: "A vehicle fee imposed by the governing board of a TBD after January 1, 2013, must only be used for highway purposes."
Again, neither bill is likely to get to the house or senate floors for debate, and certainly won't be signed by the Governor. But that may not matter, not in the long run.
These bills, in my humble opinion, are designed to "protect" not just highway money, but a way of life.
Have you ever been to an American-styled suburb? There is no city center. There is no center, not of any kind. There is only road leading to road. One can drive from one's front door to the front door of any service one wishes to visit, or at least to the parking lot in front of the front door. The only thing one needs is a car. Dmitri Orlov says it best:
American society is classless, at least in theory, since there no one wants to admit to being either upper or lower class. There is, supposedly, one large and homogeneous middle class: in fact, though, there is a small upper portion and a large and rapidly expanding lower portion.
The wonderful thing about the American middle class concept is its malleability, because it is almost entirely symbolic. You could be middle class, own an ancestral mansion in an old brick and fieldstone suburb, drive a Mercedes and send your children to an Ivy League school. Or you could be middle class, live in a dolled-up trailer home, drive a souped-up pickup truck, and send your children to a community college that teaches them how to milk hogs. The least common denominator is that you have to drive a motor vehicle, otherwise you can no longer perform this charade. . . .
Not having a car makes one, within the American suburban landscape, a non-person.
The universal right to drive a car is the linchpin of the American communal myth. Once a significant portion of the population finds that cars have become inaccessible to them, the effect on the national psyche may be so profound as to make the country ungovernable.
(Dmitry Orlov, Reinventing Collapse, New Society Publishers, 2008, 24-25.)
King County, therefore, doesn't understand what the car means for Clark County or any of the other non-urban counties. People ride buses, trains and streetcars, or (worst of all!) ride bikes for more than recreation, not unlike overgrown children. They have therefore turned their backs on the American Dream.
And here we find Orlov calling it exactly right. The "effect on the national psyche" is ramming legislation through the bill mill in the hopes that some of it might pass, and further introducing decorative hot-button issue bills concerning marriage and abortion that takes the already myopic media eye away from the more important transportation money grab that might, just might save suburbia from creeping urbanization or-more likely, returning ruralization, where former farmland might just rid itself of the overpriced McMansions with their expansive lawns and driveway basketball court and swing set in the back yard, and once again plant crops. Land owned by current commuters will revert once again to former Washington State residents Ma and Pa Kettle with all the attendant class associations attached thereto.
And the roads leading to these rural enclaves? One cannot expect a rural road traveled at best a few times a day to generate enough gas tax revenue to fund paving. At best, expect gravel, or more likely dirt. If King County is allowed to keep the gas tax money it generates away from the State General Highway fund, the 'burbs will once again enjoy the roads their grandparents drove . . . or, more likely, walked.
X-Posted to talk_politics.