Transportation Choices’ Review of the Session: From Bad to Worse

You know who *is* on the Transportation committee? Seattle's own Ken Jacobsen. The guy has been in Olympia as long as I can remember but I don't remember him doing a damn thing to work on 520 or keep Seattle from paying the cost overruns on the tunnel. Luckily, he's up for re-election this year. Can we please stop sending legislators to Olympia who work against what voters in Seattle want?

But Ken must be OK he was for puppies in saloons!

I wasn't born this way, I live in the 46th.

Thank you Ken, now blue haired ladies can be buried with their poodles.

This has to stop.

Erica just gets done telling you that Haugen rules her committee with an iron fist (which is true), and you're taking it out on Jacobsen? That's like coming home to find that your house has been burgled and kicking the dog. Blame Lisa Brown. She selects the committee chairs.

While we are calling people out, Rodney Tom's dozen amendments on HB 2912, WTF was that.
Frank Chopp was working on getting some money for workforce housing near mass transit. The housing policy bill passed, was signed, too freaking bad Rodney Tom sandbagged one of the few bills that could help fund putting “density” where the private market has not.
King County is in no position to help make that happen.

Well, I'm pissed off.

I can blame Lisa Brown but I can't do a damn thing to change her– I don't live in her district. I can blame Haugen, too, but again– I don't live in her district. I *can* vote for the guy who's taking on Jacobsen, however, and maybe elect someone who will actually do something. Iron fists can open if the right voices are speaking up. Jacobsen speak out… except to allow us to be buried with our pets and drink with our pets… Seattle has to stop thinking this isn't our problem. We deserve the government we elect.

You don't speak for “voters in Seattle,” and don't pretend that you do.

What are the odds of unseating Haugen? She's not up for reelection again until 2013. Did anyone run against her last time?

Hopefully stories like this will start getting Seattleites to pay much more attention to what is going on in Olympia. It seems perfectly reasonable to ask why Ken Jacobsen hasn't done more for mass transit, just as it's reasonable to ask what can be done about Haugen – primary challenger? Move to strip her of her committee chair?

For most in Seattle, the state government is this foreign institution that doesn't really exist except when you glimpse the gray dome of the Capitol driving by on I-5. Yet it is becoming more and more of a threat to the basic values and goals and services Seattle prizes. It's time to start focusing on Olympia and devising strategies to change what goes on there.

David Frockt appears to have more of a clue on transportation than Jacobsen – admittedly, not a high bar. But if we can't get rid of Haugen, at least perhaps we could get another Senator besides Ed Murray who's a transit supporter.

There's nothing, repeat, nothing to be done about Haugen. Her District is heavily Republican. She takes care of her constituents and screws over the rest of the state. She'll be gone when SHE chooses to be gone, and not before. Just hope she retires after her present term, after which the seat will almost certainly go Republican.

The best anyone could hope for would be that Lisa Brown grows a backbone and strips her of her committee chairmanship. But she won't, because there's no likely successor presently on Transportation at all, except — wait for it — Ken Jacobsen. How would Publicola commenters like THEM apples?

As for “the basic values and goals and services Seattle prizes,” exactly what are those, and who is to decide? The Cascade Bicycle Club, maybe? Mike McGinn? Erica C. Barnett? Publicola commenters? People who think those are “representative of 'Seattle values' ” can put their crack pipes down right now.

Get a grip, Robert. You know better than this. Seattle is 8 percent of the state's population, only three (THREE!) of the state's 49 Legislative Districts lie entirely in Seattle, and only three more are partly in Seattle.

That's six of 49. Exactly what clout do you think the Seattle delegation has, or could muster, even if they voted as a monolithic bloc, which they don't. ? I can name you two of them right off the bat who favor rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Exactly what strategies do you expect Seattle legislators to devise, and exactly what do you think the quid pro quo should be?

I'll tell you what the quid pro quo will be for suburban and rural legislators. 1. Roads. 2. Roads. 3. Roads. That is the political reality in Olympia. Do people here seriously think that they can deny suburban and rural districts their roads? Good luck trying. Pass the popcorn while I watch the show.

Yes, we can deny suburban voters, excuse me, I mean suburban legislators (suburban voters like transit just fine), and rural voters their roads.

The only way we're ever going to build more roads is through a tax increase. Rural and exurban voters will never vote for a tax increase, even if it's for their beloved roads. And, as we know from the RTID vote vs. the Sound Transit 2 vote, tax loving urban and inner suburban voters won't vote for a tax measure that's all about roads. That's especially true if environmental groups like the Sierra Club tell urban and suburban voters that the taxes will only fund projects that warm the globe and decimate what's left of marine life in Puget Sound. Mary Margaret Haugen, Paula Hammond, the road lobby – they're all fucked. And good riddance to them.

Thank you Senator Jacobsen for your advocacy for transit solutions and your support to protect the arboretum from adverse impacts from the new 520 bridge. You have doorbelled my house a few times in recent years. I feel like you listen and are a true champion for the people of the 46th! (If we are going to blame anyone, blame that hag Dickerson in the House. She is on House Transportation and doesn't do squat!)

You are indulging in some serious fantasizing. I'm telling you right now that every single road that was in that 2007 RTID package will eventually be built, and that you are powerless to stop it. all your opposition does is drive up the cost, and incur hostility directed at you and your groups.

People's jobs depend on having those roads, and they will have them. Just wait and see. That means widening I-405, that means extending SR 509, and yes, that means Cross-Base. Tough shit if you don't like it.

Don't mistake my opinion for hostility to rail, or for other modes of public transit. I favor all of them and I vote accordingly. But further expansion of mass transit will mean further expansion of highways. We won't make the RTID mistake again.

The RTID roads only get built if the taxes (or tolls) are passed to fund them. Over the last 10+ years,voters have shifted their thinking on what transportation priorities they're willing to fund. At least in the central Puget Sound, new transit investments are now more highly valued than road investments.

Even on the roads side, bridge and highway maintenance projects are beginning to financially overwhelm any possibility of building new roads – the sub-structure of I-5 through King County is failling apart and needs to be reconstructed sometime in the next 10 years – right now that's estimated to cost $2billion. That estimate is based on virtually no engineering. That's on top of a $2billion gap in rebuilding 520 and $5B or more for Columbia River Crossing. Cross-Base Highway looks like a pretty stupid way to spend hard-earned tax money with all these road needs, along with probably $30-40billion more in needed transit investment over the next 40 years in the Puget Sound area alone (to build a transit system with the coverage of San Francisco's or Boston's).

I'd like to provide a bit of context for the statement above re: the
state senate. This is not a problem of leadership or Lisa Brown in particular. It's a problem of chairs and members who disregard leadership and the interests of the caucus as a whole.

As I discussed at the forum, upper chambers of legislatures around the world are more conservative and slower moving, in part because seniority is so paramount in these bodies. Their members, especially, committee chairs, tend to be long-serving and more entrenched and therefore more out of touch with popular opinion. This results in committee chairs who are more independent of their leadership than in lower chambers.

Lisa Brown represents the urban core of Spokane and is herself as
pro-transit as any legislator from Seattle or anywhere else. She is much less provincial and more urban than previous Senate leaders. She gets that the future of mobility for Washington residents and support for
Democrats as leaders on transportation depends on a better mix of
transit and roads than we now get from the state. She understands that more investment in transit will better allow the state to meet its growth management and climate goals. But Lisa Brown more than Frank Chopp has to deal with some remaining senior members who came to power in the Senate long before she did and simply do not feel a responsibility to act in concert with their leadership, the interests of their caucus or, as in the case of transit funding, the interests of the state as a whole. They focus more on their own perceived self-interests. In the long run, Lisa Brown is capable as anyone of taking advantage of retirements and demographic changes to remake the transportation committee in the same way she has been able to remake other senate committees to better represent the values of the more forward-looking state Washington has become over the last twenty years.

With regard to Jacobsen, didn't he co-sponsor the measure that would have prevented Seattle from having any say in state transportation projects within the city? I think the real problem here is that most people simply don't know the first thing about their own representatives, at the state and local levels. But if someone is running against Jacobsen, they could change that— by going door to door, and letting people know that their own state senator wanted to disenfranchise them.

Advocacy like eliminating Seattle's input on state transportation projects? Really? Jacobsen is a vote, not a leader. We have a chance to replace him with Frockt, who is doorbelling harder than Jacobsen has since the beginning of his career and actually has the energy to try to find solutions. (Have you checked out his Facebook page? He has new pictures every day of him doorbelling across the district.)

ivan, I don't mind support roads for jobs, but unfortunately that's not the pattern. Maybe at first a new big road connects an industrial area and everything's great. Then the drive-thrus and subdivisions go in and the traffic goes to hell. It's called sprawl, and it works that way all over the country.

It's fair to hold Jacobsen accountable for this actions regarding transit because he serves on the committee. It would be one thing if he was supporting and proposing solutions for our transit crisis and he's been struck down by Haugen, but is that even the case? What's he doing about the transit crisis? Our city is starving for transportation alternatives.

Indeed. It's an election, not a coronation.

What's he doing? Have you thought about asking him, instead of jumping to conclusions that just might be faulty? Why don't you get back to us when you, uh, KNOW what his positions are, instead of having to ask what they are in a comment thread on a blog that few people read?

Ken doesn't need me to make excuses for him, and his position might not be what you want it to be. That's fair enough. But if you take an honest look at what you just wrote, you're drawing a conclusion from a position of ignorance — and it shows.

So we should starve industrial areas for roads? Are you on crack?

There are other solutions:
http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/traffops/trucks/ops-gu…

Frockt also seems to be listening on transportation issues in ways that Ken simply does not. E-mail conversations with him leave me far, far more hopeful.

Indeed, and that's definitely a part of the story Frockt is telling.