Less-Than-Sound Reasoning

An About-Face

Admittedly, I'd been going along most of the year under the assumption I would be supporting and voting for ST3, the regional transit capital-projects initiative here, in the current election.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the devil really was in the details, and in this case, the details just weren't right. So, I've decided to oppose the measure instead, and I'll document my rationale.

Closest to Home: Risk

Here at the north end of King County, one of the major projects in the bond measure is a "Bus Rapid Transit" line along SR522 above 145th St., and then along 145th (SR 523) to the soon-to-be new light rail line along I-5.  This sounds great in principle, but in practice it comes with certain risks and inconveniences; in particular, hundreds, if not thousands, of riders each day use the existing 312, 372, and 522 lines along SR522, two of which are direct lines into Downtown Seattle, while the 372 is a direct line to the UW main campus.  A BRT line that cuts off at 145th St. means that all of those commuters using the new lines would have to make a mode switch at the station, and many of them would potentially have much longer trips in the process.  This doesn't feel like a capital improvement.  Even if the initial commitment were to attempt to keep the 372 in place, KC Metro (which operates the 3nn lines) doesn't exactly have the best track record in the face of perceived duplication of services in the suburbs.

Fighting the Last War

While it's a bit worn-out as an analogy, it certainly appears as if the planners who put ST3 together were trying to design for the region as it was in 1986, rather than the way it is today.  Consider the over-emphasis on extending services to Downtown Everett and Downtown Tacoma, in particular: Are these supposed to be hubs for people living, working, or both?  Meanwhile, the highest growth areas in both directions -- for example, Mill Creek and Snohomish to the north, and Covington and Puyallup to the south -- wind up underserved.  Overall, it feels like it was drafted in a headspace either unaware or ambivalent about how to connect commuters to their jobs and thus relieve traffic.

Speaking of Tacoma

Tacoma deserves better treatment than what it gets out of ST3, namely, a transit system only Boston could love: Mismatched-gauge rail lines converging at a forced transfer point near a stadium, while still leaving much of the city (in this case, including PLU, Bates, and everything else south of the Tacoma Dome) completely dependent on buses.

While We're at It

Without belaboring the fiscal side of the proposition too much, since this is mostly a criticism of design, it doesn't seem readily apparent (though it should!) that taxpayers in Pierce and Snohomish Counties are picking up the lion's share of the costs for their respective extensions.  If I missed that somewhere, great, but they didn't do a very good job of making a point of it if so.

Platypus as Metaphor

The axe that a platypus is "a duck designed by committee" seems particularly relevant here.  There's just enough in any given part of the region to give the ballot measure a shot at winning-over local constituents there... but not enough to provide any real, comprehensive, substantive traffic improvements in any of them.  When I lived near Hartford, the bus system there had a similar political proclivity: It was optimized, locals suggested, to get "from Frog Hollow to West Farms," thereby connecting a ghetto area with a suburban shopping mall. Hyper-localized political pandering transcends any particular region, in these instances, it appears.

There You Have It

Again, I had been supporting this all along, up until I looked at it more closely and decided we deserved better planning.  I like transit, I believe we need transit, but I can't get behind a plan this costly that appears likely to make life worse for my immediate neighbors.