Cascadia Report

Category: Politics

  • Seattle can learn from Portland on viaduct

    Seattle should follow the example Portland set by replacing a riverfront highway and proposed new freeway with transit, writes Floyd McKay, who covered the city in the 1970s:

    The challenge for Seattle is to take a giant leap of faith — as Portland did when it reversed those two huge highway projects — and commit to a future that is not asphalt-driven.

    He correctly notes that spending billions of dollars to boost car capacity along Seattle’s waterfront makes little sense because the true challenge is moving more people and freight. Meanwhile the region’s larger bottleneck is the 520 freeway bridge.

  • Sound Transit readies package — flaws and all

    Sound Transit begins a series of open houses this week designed to convince voters to pay for a series of rail and road projects.

    proposed transit projects; from rtid.orgIt’s critical that voters approve the roughly $11 billion in funding, which would extend the light rail starter system that’s currently under construction. That’s why problems with the proposal are so painful to discuss. Here are three examples:

    — The light rail line suffers from dimished expectations. For example, the Eastside line won’t open for almost 20 years (!) and the route already has been shortened, thanks to a dispute developing over how to route the future line through downtown Bellevue. It appears the line would end near Microsoft rather than in downtown Redmond.

    — Sound Transit appears to have taken the most expedient route — not the best route — for commuter rail south of Tacoma, where the project may interfere with redevelopment of the neighborhood. Dan Voelpel correctly notes that the agency wants to avoid any further delays that could hinder this fall’s vote.

    — Both costs and ridership are low-balled. The agency wants to keep the total bill down in order to avoid sticker shock. Meanwhile ridership figures appear based on current land-use patterns and don’t take into consideration future congestion or factors like tolls or more costly gasoline. It’s likely that density will increase around train stations, boosting ridership, and the region will need to spend more on the system once construction starts and people realize how much they really want it.

    These are serious issues but shouldn’t derail the overall projects. I plan to be skeptical at the open houses, vote for funding this fall and then demand the projects be built as efficiently as possible.

  • Seattle road wars may be nothing new

    The debate over replacing the Seattle viaduct and other transportation projects seems to have higher stakes than ever before, but the vehemence isn’t much different from earlier planning battles.

    Walt Crowley points out that there was a fight between Seattle and the state over building a highway through Woodland Park in the 1930s. Here’s one lesson of that history:

    In transportation policy, there is rarely an obvious “right answer” because issues like the viaduct replacement involve foremost competing visions and priorities for urban design, economic development and regional cohesion, and least of all the best way to get from point A to point B.

  • Sonics want more money than the arts

    If libraries, the opera hall, symphony hall and sculpture garden can all be built with mostly private money, why not a new stadium for the Sonics, asks Danny Westneat. “Maybe it’s because the business of basketball is simply broken. It can’t survive without being a ward of the state.”

    Surely the Sonics’ opening request for $300 million in state-authorized taxes last week was too much. Yet the economic benefit from a new stadium makes some public investment worthwhile. As the column above suggests, the real question is what’s the appropriate portion? Maybe 30 percent of the total cost?

  • How would Seattle handle a real emergency

    The political crisis over the viaduct, coming just weeks after a crippling snowfall, is cause to wonder how the Seattle area would handle a true emergency. Do we have what it would take to rebuild the city better?

    Seattle after earthquake; photo by airport-technology.comThe mayor, the city council, the county executive, legislators and the governor have all weighed in on the viaduct. The city is holding a non-binding election on the issues at a cost of $1 million. Yet there’s still no sign of a decision (which is why a surface/transit compromise seems likely).

    The fact that we can’t find a plan to fix a major transportation corridor that may collapse in the next earthquake shows what we’re up against.

    Consider that even resourceful residents are fleeing New Orleans, according to a New York Times article Friday: “Their reasons include high crime, high rents, soaring insurance premiums and what many call a lack of leadership, competence, money and progress.” Comparing Seattle and New Orleans may seem a stretch, but considering the mess we’ve made here, can we assume things would be any better if we had a disaster?

    In New Orleans, the dedication of residents to make the city better has been a key theme. The article quotes novelist Poppy Z. Brite on the peoples’ devotion to the city at all costs: “If a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don’t desert it just because it can kill you. There are some things more valuable than life.” At a time when so many people in the Seattle area are clamoring for the cheapest transportation fixes and seem unwilling to think more creatively, I wonder if the same claim can be made here.

  • Stalemate helps Seattle waterfront’s chances

    The political stalemate over how to replace Seattle’s viaduct freeway increases the chances of a comprehensive package of transit and street improvements because there is huge opposition to a new viaduct and the state apparently won’t agree to a tunnel.

    This is a very long-term issue, which is why the state’s insistence on replacing existing car capacity along the waterfront is so odd. The question ought to be how to move people and freight around the city and region — not vehicles.

    It’s also fascinating that Gov. Chris Gregoire is willing to alienate much of Seattle’s electorate by pushing for a new, more obstructive elevated freeway along the waterfront. She’s trying to salvage momentum in the current legislative session and must assume there will be no challenge from the left to her reelection in 2008.

  • Imports may squeeze regional timber industry

    As if the region’s timber industry weren’t under enough pressure, with slumping demand from housing dragging wood prices lower, some home builders are eyeing new supply from Europe and Russia.

    Looking for new suppliers is a consequence of the recently signed U.S.-Canada lumber agreement, which imposes fees and quotas on softwood exports to the U.S. when prices fall below a certain point. Builders are showing opposition to the agreement by making business ties elsewhere, according to a rare A2 story on the industry in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required):

    Jerry Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders, says the agreement will unfairly raise prices and add volatility to supply, and it is forcing his industry to look for new sources of lumber.

    ‘If I don’t get the price of milk at one store that I want, I go to another store,” says Mr. Howard, who traveled to Sweden and Russia last fall to begin courting lumber suppliers there.

    The group’s initiative is the latest salvo in a decades-long dispute. In past years, the trade group had pushed for an end to U.S. import duties on Canadian wood and urged Canada to continue fighting those duties.

    After the U.S. and Canada signed their lumber accord last year, Mr. Howard says, the builders “were upset that the Canadians caved in. We supported them the best we could. We continue to tell them we prefer to do business with our neighbors to the north. But we also want to put our members in the best possible business climate.”

    When the dispute flared up in the past, Mr. Howard said, the group responded by encouraging members to use alternative framing materials, such as steel. The latest strategy is to try to diversify their sources of lumber.

  • If California splits, is Cascadia next?

    California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing health care, economic and environmental policies independently of the federal government — precisely because the state is big enough to go it alone. Should Cascadia band together to do similar?

    A New York Times piece argues the U.S. is too big and needs to be decentralized:

    Scale also determines who has privileged access to the country’s news media and who can shape its political discourse. In very large nations, television and other forms of political communication are extremely costly. President Bush alone spent $345 million in his 2004 election campaign. This gives added leverage to elites, who have better corporate connections and greater resources than non-elites. The priorities of those elites often differ from state and regional priorities.

    When the U.S. was founded, the most populous colony was several times larger than the smallest. Now California has something like 70 times the population of Wyoming, yet the smaller state has influence far beyond its size. Gov. Chris Gregoire already is fond of referring to Washington as “like a small nation” when discussing trade issues, and has made steps to coordinate policy more closely with British Columbia and Oregon. It’s time to extend this effort to all policies that transcend the political boundaries of Cascadia.

  • Gates HQ project starts, traffic to worsen

    The Gates Foundation broke ground on its massive new headquarters north of downtown Seattle last week. The predictable reaction: Oh no, traffic is going to get worse.

    The foundation is kicking in some money for transportation fixes, but that’s ultimately the city’s job. To prevent gridlock, the city needs a formal plan — with time milestones — so development can grow around the future infrastructure. Mayor Greg Nickels wants to reconnect city streets across Aurora Avenue (when? with what funding?) and to extend the short city streetcar line currently under construction (when? it doesn’t appear to be in the public plan).

  • Land-use law faces challenges but isn’t dead

    Oregon’s Measure 37, the law allowing free-for-all development of property, faces major opposition. But it’s too soon to gloat over the demise of the law or a resurgence of something similar elsewhere in the region.

    A court ruled that the voter-approved measure doesn’t apply to the scenic Columbia Gorge because that area is protected by federal law. Gov. Ted Kulongoski has proposed changes to the law, and a new survey says most Oregonians wouldn’t vote for the measure if they had the choice today. Sightline Institute published a report on the law’s impact.

    Similar measures to roll-back land-use planning were defeated at the polls around the region last November. But there’s evidence that people still aren’t satisfied with property rules, which seem arbitrary to many yet still can’t focus growth and coordinate services. The debate is far from over.