Earth to Governor
It has been quite a news week, from Mayor McGinn's naked cronyism in hiring David Hiller to a transit advocacy position, to Garfield High School's phantom, Seattle Mariner Milton Bradley and his twelve-million dollar contract for doing fark-all, to the laughable idea that the city of Seattle was going to require small businesses to give sick time to their employees.
And then, like coins from a slot machine, we get news from the Governor of the state that the public will need to pay more for roads.
Washington state is already near the top of the chart when it comes to gas tax per gallon. We're going to have tolls on the 520 bridge this summer on a bridge that's long since completed for a bridge that hasn't even been started. Tolls that at their peak will be $35 a week for a single driver, amounting to $1,700 over a year. We spend money as a region hand-over-fist on Sound Transit, a transit authority that has underperformed, wasting both time and money.
To say during a recession that we all have to dig a little deeper demonstrates just how disconnected from reality our governor is. If we took the Sound Transit money and divided it between buses and actual road repair, we'd be flush with cash and not needing to raise taxes, fees or tolls to keep the roads drivable.
We now have to handle this like grownups. We have an albatross of a transit program that does nothing but glorp money at an astounding rate, while delivering on few of the stated promises. Most of the ridership on Sound Transit, Light Rail and the South Lake Union Trolley has been cannibalized from buses, so there's not really a gain there. We can actually spend money efficiently and get some stuff done, buy and repair some buses and fix the roads, or we can keep on doing what we're doing, spending and getting zero return on investment.
What we cannot do is continue to blindly throw money at the problem while taking no steps to fix the underlying causes. Piling on taxes and fees will not solve the underlying problem of ineffectual management of the region.
And then, like coins from a slot machine, we get news from the Governor of the state that the public will need to pay more for roads.
Washington state is already near the top of the chart when it comes to gas tax per gallon. We're going to have tolls on the 520 bridge this summer on a bridge that's long since completed for a bridge that hasn't even been started. Tolls that at their peak will be $35 a week for a single driver, amounting to $1,700 over a year. We spend money as a region hand-over-fist on Sound Transit, a transit authority that has underperformed, wasting both time and money.
To say during a recession that we all have to dig a little deeper demonstrates just how disconnected from reality our governor is. If we took the Sound Transit money and divided it between buses and actual road repair, we'd be flush with cash and not needing to raise taxes, fees or tolls to keep the roads drivable.
We now have to handle this like grownups. We have an albatross of a transit program that does nothing but glorp money at an astounding rate, while delivering on few of the stated promises. Most of the ridership on Sound Transit, Light Rail and the South Lake Union Trolley has been cannibalized from buses, so there's not really a gain there. We can actually spend money efficiently and get some stuff done, buy and repair some buses and fix the roads, or we can keep on doing what we're doing, spending and getting zero return on investment.
What we cannot do is continue to blindly throw money at the problem while taking no steps to fix the underlying causes. Piling on taxes and fees will not solve the underlying problem of ineffectual management of the region.