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Bike Advocates, Environmentalists File Legal Challenge to Region’s 2040 Transportation Plan

News   June 23, 2010 at 5:57 pm Josh Cohen

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH A STATEMENT FROM THE PSRC

Bike advocates and lefty enviros joined forces this afternoon against the Puget Sound Regional Council. The Cascade Bicycle Club, Futurewise, and the Sierra Club filed a legal challenge with the King County Superior Court against the PSRC’s adoption of Transportation 2040 on the grounds that the plan does not meet state environmental laws. If the challenge succeeds, the PSRC will have to remand T2040 in order to comply with state laws.

The PSRC is a regional transportation planning and policy organization. T2040 is the 30-year plan for the Puget Sound region’s highway, road, rail, bicycling, and walking infrastructure growth. The final draft was adopted by PSRC in late May. As Publicola reported, T2040 is highway-heavy with almost 1000 miles of expanded highways planned.

Cascade, Futurewise, and Sierra Club contend that T2040 has too many provisions for cars and too few provisions for mass transit and alternative transportation like bikes and walking. As such, they say it will not meet Washington State greenhouse gas greenhouse gas reduction laws, which require a reduction of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a 25 percent reduction of 1990 levels by 2035 and a 50 percent reduction of 1990 levels by 2050.

“Failing to meet the state’s standard means that it will be more difficult and expensive for both the state and the
region to address the problems of global warming in the coming years,” added Tim Trohimovich, Futurewise director of planning and law.

Because T2040 was adopted, 2020 would be the next chance to revise the long-range plan, which the group says is too long to wait.

“This plan doesn’t foster transportation choices for people,” said David Hiller, Cascade advocacy director. “We can’t wait another 10 years to revisit the issue.”

Despite the legal challenge and stated concerns, the group acknowledges that T2040 is still the most progressive transportation plan in the country.

“It’s arguably the most comprehensive assessment of climate and transportation in an adopted plan in the United States. But it doesn’t get us to where state law says we’ve got to go – and that’s a problem,” said Chuck Ayers, Cascade executive director.

UPDATE:

Rick Olson, PSRC  communication director, refutes the claim that it will be 10 years before the next revisions to the plan. According to him, federal law mandates revisions every four years, and state law requires revisions every two.

“We’re really proud of the Transportation 2040 plan and we’re confident it will stand up to any challenges,” said Olson. “The plan offers a balanced, sensible and realistic approach to meeting our region’s transportation needs. It is one of the most proactive and progressive in the nation in the area of climate change.”


  • giffy

    Can someone explain the effect of this plan? It was my understanding that the PSRC was not really a legislative body and its plans were only advisory but I could be wrong on that.

    In other words does this really matter?

  • http://twitter.com/richjensen richjensen

    This is terrific news! The 2040 plan basically locks the region out of any practical move toward climate health and stability.

    Re: The Powers of the PSRC (source: http://bit.ly/PSRCmandate )

    FEDERAL LAW

    “The PSRC is designated as a Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) under federal law. The metropolitan planning process must be fol- lowed in order for federal transportation funds to be distributed to the region. (23 U.S.C. §134)”

    STATE LAW

    “The PSRC is designated as a Regional Transportation Planning Organization (RTPO) under state law. (RCW 47.80)
    In urbanized areas, the RTPO is the same as the MPO designated for federal planning purposes. (RCW 47.80.020)”

    INTERLOCAL AGREEMENT [Authority in respect of County and Municipal juristdictions - rich]

    The Interlocal Agreement provides the PSRC with the authority to carry out MPO and RTPO functions.

  • http://manywordsforrain.blogspot.com/ Mr. Baker

    Good luck with that.
    Maybe I'll get a bus out of it.

  • AutoDependence

    Calling T2040 the most progressive transportation plan in the country is a truly laughable assertion. Seattle is a decade or two behind cities like Portland and about 50 years behind San Francisco, New York and Chicago.

    Our transportation/land use planning is frankly pathetic, even before one considers the (very real) failure on climate emissions. When can we just start acknowledging reality and stop grading on a curve?

  • huh

    more insufferable activists

  • biliruben

    I prefer my sheep passive.

    And tender.

  • Lyrianguards

    You know that's no longer legal in WA right? :p

  • http://spifflines.blogspot.com/ John Bailo

    1. By 2040 we'll all be driving hydrogen powered fuel cell cars. Zero pollution.

    2. By 2020 we'll start seeing autopiloted cars which will replace all forms of intracity “mass transit”.

    3. New highways take cars off the neighborhood streets and make them better for bike-peds.

    4. WA has inadequate highway infrastructure, forcing highway level traffic on to city streets, suburban neighborhoods and country roads that are not designed for the load.

    1,2,3,4. We need more highways.

  • Hans

    This has Mayor McGinn's finger prints all over it…the only elected to vote against the plan, tight with that crowd.

  • Edog

    Yes, birds of a feather, but there is nothing sinister about all this. Thats kind of how interest group politics work. I mean, with McGinn's election these groups are riding high trying to make the most of things.

  • David Hiller

    In no way is the plan only advisory.

    Only projects in the plan are eligible for funding, and PSRC is the conduit for those funds.

  • http://twitter.com/DJStroky DJStroky

    Excellent move, I'm very happy these organizations are taking this action.

  • Narrows Bridge

    I believe another elected voted against it because it foresaw more tolling on highways, in general, just the opposite

  • Jimmiepat

    Does it say anything about re-paving Seattle Streets ? Some day we hope

  • T_Chen

    Umm, why do you say Seattle is behind cities like Portland for transportation?

    18% of commuters in Seattle use transit; in Portland it is 13%. On the West Coast of the US, only San Francisco is higher than Seattle. And with Link's expansion, Seattle will likely increase its lead over Portland in coming decades.

    Now we could do a lot better, but let's get the facts straight.

  • T_Chen

    1. Hydrogen is not a fuel. It's a storage medium for energy, like a battery. What energy source are we going to use fill our hydrogen tanks?

    2. Autopiloted cars still run into problems of congestion, and not everyone is going to be able to afford their own autopiloted car. We'll still need public transit for the masses.

    3. Transit, small walkable communities with work, school, stores and parks near homes are better at taking cares off the road, are cheaper, better for health, and better for the planet that building more highways.

    3. WA has more than enough highways. We should be reducing highways, adding transit and density, not expanding highways.

  • Data yes

    http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/…

    our transit share is only good if you rig the stats by excluding

    1. all of the usa except the west coast, and
    2. the entire rest of the world.

    Even then the carbon emissions per capita in LA are lower than in Seattle.

  • T_Chen

    I assume you're responding to my post. Not sure what rigging you're talking about. Are you denying that we have more transit riders than Portland? I never claimed we were a world leader in transit usage.

  • Misha99

    That's a very misleading stat that has no reflection on the quality of our transit systems for 4 main reasons:

    1) Portland is a much larger city than Seattle in area. It has over 60% more land for transit systems to cover.

    2) Despite the cities being roughly the same size in population, Seattle has 3 million people in the suburbs compared to 1.5 million in Portland. If you include the suburbs, I am sure Portland's ridership would trump Seattle's.

    3) Seattle is much more dense. Better land use here which leads to more ridership, but that has no reflection on transit quality.

    4) Portland has over 6% of their population who commute by bike, Seattle has about 2%.

    Anyone who has lived or spent much time in both Portland and Seattle knows our transit system is not even in the same league.

  • kurisu

    Current commute transit mode split is not necessarily the best measure of a plan nor of an infrastructure. PDX gets points in my book for the existence of infrastructure – multiple rail lines and a much more comprehensive bike master plan. There just isn't the kind of congestion we have to drive Portlanders to other options.

    And by your logic, I'm not sure that just extending Link will increase the mode split by that much. As Portland has added 4 light rail lines, transit mode share has declined slightly. What is certain is that it will be a viable and valuable choice.

  • T_Chen

    1) So by that logic, we can't compare Vancouver, BC's transit to Seattle's because it's significantly smaller than Seattle in geography?

    2) Seattle's Metro population is about 50% larger than Portland. I'm not sure how you can be so sure that folks in the Portland suburbs commute more. The biggest single suburb of Portland is Vancouver, WA, and it is a mega-sprawling, freeway-dependent place. I'd like to see some figures.

    3) You can't disentangle density and transit; density enables better transit with greater frequency. That's a big reason why Vancouver, BC and San Francisco have higher transit use than Seattle, and why New York has higher transit use than San Francisco, etc.

    4) Well that's great; I admire what Portland has done, but even when you add in cyclists, more people in Portland are getting to work in their car than in Seattle. By the way, the figures I've seen are 3.5% in Portland to 2.3% in Seattle. And if Seattle weren't so darned hilly we'd probably be even closer.
    http://bikecommutetips.blogspot.com/2007/06/us-…

    And if you don't think transit share is a good metric of transportation system quality, what would you propose?

  • anotherneighborhoodactivist

    “You can't disentangle density and transit; density enables better transit with greater frequency.”

    Yes, but “enabling” doesn't mean it gets built. Misha is right; Seattle's land use and transportation infrastructure suck compared to Portland. I don't need stats; just experience tells me this is so. Portland's sprawl (yes, Vancouver WA is a horrid blot) is not great, but that just tells you how bad Seattle is by comparison.

  • T_Chen

    Well, then we're just going to battle with our subjective impressions then, which isn't very conclusive. I like Portland, and I like it's light rail system. I like trains. But Seattle has a modest light rail system that is already better than Portland's in some ways (e.g. grade separation through the downtown core, station platforms for 4-car trains) and will grow to dwarf Portland's ridership numbers in the next 10-15 years.

    Seattle also has buses–lots of buses (over 1600 buses for METRO and ST compared to 660 for TriMet), coming all hours of the night to neighborhoods like Capitol Hill, U-District, downtown. It has ferries. It has a monorail. It has a street car. It has electric trolleys.

    Would I prefer a consolidated, tri-county agency to handle everything? Sure. Are there other changes I would make? Absolutely, but so far the arguments for Portland's system is decades ahead of Seattle's is not at all clear.

  • joshuadf

    New whitepaper from Transportation for America:
    “Not only is VMT reduction the primary way to impact climate change, but as our Green Dividend research shows, it is also a significant way to recapture money otherwise spent on gas and vehicle maintenance.”
    http://www.ceosforcities.org/blog/entry/2840