From Crosscut: King County’s great city-suburban divide
Proposition 1 votes were hugely polarized between Seattle and King County’s suburban communities. … Unsurprisingly, the vote for the transit measure was strongest in King County’s most urbanized districts. … More car-oriented commuter areas of Seattle were more mixed.
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From columnist Danny Westneat in the Seattle Times:
Whatever they decide, it’s clear we’re entering one of those civic experiments. Officials threatened devastating cuts to services and now we’re about to find out if they were bluffing.
I voted yes even though I doubt the cuts will live up to the hype. What Seattle and the region really need — a lot more transit — wasn’t on the ballot. It’s not enough just to preserve what we have.
But I wasn’t surprised it failed. Nobody explained what positive changes you’d get for your money, only what you might lose. This was electioneering by threat: Vote yes or I’ll shoot this puppy.
Now the anti-transit crowd will spin this as proof voters have had their fill of transit. And that officials should focus on roads next time.
I don’t buy it. If anything, it was the $50 million in yearly roads repair money in Proposition 1 that had the feel of a slush fund. What would it be used for? Nobody said. It was just to be spread like political butter across 40 cities and towns. The website of the campaign didn’t list a single specific road or bridge that would get fixed using this money. …
Try a bus-only measure paid for solely by a small increase in sales taxes. Make it also expand and improve the system, not just bail water from the one we have.
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From Seattle Transit Blog – hoping that the No vote might possibly force structural changes:
It is always imperative that Metro spend its dollars wisely. The King County Executive and Council must exercise real political courage to overcome the forces that resist reform of our route structure. In an expanding service environment, it would be possible to rationalize the system and take care of the scattered losers from any restructure, but today Metro must focus on the serving the most people it can, and the casualties are regrettable but inevitable.
One effect of the cuts will to be consolidate desirable service into a few trunk lines. It is more important than ever that these lines function effectively to avoid the total collapse of the system. In these corridors, cities must ignore complaints from other stakeholders and remove parking or general-purpose lanes to ensure these buses are not stuck in traffic. Moreover, future city transportation levies must invest in priority treatments for buses. The returns from these projects are often astronomical, and if anything the case for them has improved.
In these struggles, we look forward to the support of the many Proposition 1 opponents who were concerned that Metro was not spending its dollars effectively.
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In the meantime, another proposition is on the way – this time a Seattle-only vote to raise property tax in order to purchase Metro transit service primarily benefitting the city: Transit Advocates Have Filed Their Initiative to Save Seattle’s Bus Service.
As I have said in a previous comment,highlighting the same excerpt, the Seattle transit blog makes a very good point.
I nevertheless didn’t mentioned that part:
“In an expanding service environment, it would be possible to rationalize the system and take care of the scattered losers from any restructure”
because, in fact a good restructuring unavoidably involve some looser…and it is politically very hard to explain to some people, that they gonna have service cut just after a passing referendum showering tons of money on the Transit system…but good rationalization often means that is a necessity:
case in point is the route 49…
rationalization of the system, means making the bus more useful for most, and that means suppressing useless detour such as the Champlain Height diversion on the route 49…that could means moving the bus stop 200 meter away (and still preserving very good level of transit coverage with route 26, among the top 20% most frequent bus route of the network)…but no matter how much the Translink budget is, there is absolutely no rational to justify the actual level of service in the Champlain area…
You will be more willing to put in order your financial house at time it is difficult to pay bill…and Translink doesn’t behave differently: “ignore complaints from other stakeholders” is easier when there is no other choice…
Aah, Voony, still on that. Read the commentary more closely. The way to get people on board with the cost of transit is to show them how they’ll benefit from it, not take away their service in order to “benefit” other people. The “agree with me or I’ll shoot the puppy” approach is unlikely to be successful anywhere.