The front room at the Triple Door was almost uncomfortably crowded on Monday night, as supporters of the Transportation Choices Coalition jostled amiably for position at the open bar. Overheard amid the din:
"If you're looking for good municipal government..."
"So, when did you and your wife start carpooling?"
"Well, you don't have a right to live in Maple Valley and still have a 20-minute commute!"
But despite the wonky conversation among the activists, the crowd at TCC's annual gala was, on balance, as establishment as a CityClub Friday luncheon—a stunning transformation for a group that had, as recently as a year ago, been fronted by lefty environmental advocate Peter Hurley, and supported largely by crunchy-granola activists. On hand to support the green nonprofit this time were such luminaries as former Governor Gary Locke; state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald; Sound Transit Executive Director Joni Earl; and Charles Knutson, public-affairs VP for the Seattle Chamber of Commerce.
It's hard to imagine a more symbolically pure culture clash: the transportation and business establishment (MacDonald; Knutson; sponsors like Starbucks and Preston Gates & Ellis) versus the activists who built the organization. The most telling moment on that score came when MacDonald—the head, as few in the room needed to be reminded, of a highway department frequently at odds with the coalition's mission—asked from stage whether Hurley or Futurewise Director Aaron Ostrom was in the house. Several uncomfortable moments passed before MacDonald broke the silence.
The presence of the state transportation secretary onstage at the gala event for the state's premier pro-transit organization was a shock, even to the jaded. "This is hardly the little scrappy grassroots group I joined four years ago," TCC board member Christian Sinderman said, peering in awe at the star-studded crowd. Meanwhile, the living symbol of that transformation, TCC Policy Director Rob Johnson, bounded from row to row of seats, beaming jubilantly as attendees (all of whom had already forked over $75 a ticket) spent thousands more in the boisterous live auction MC'd by actor Matt Smith. Transportation Choices had arrived.
Earlier in the day, Mayor Greg Nickels had delivered his annual budget address to the council—a speech saddled, as usual, by leaden prose ("The results of our actions are showing in ways big and small") and plodding diction ("The wear and tear on our patience... And our pavement... is showing.") Overall, the budget is a Santa Claus bag filled with one-time-only goodies for nearly every constituency, the result of good economic times that no one, including the mayor, believes will last.
Nickels pledged in his speech to make "the most significant investment in our environment upon which the city has ever embarked," and vowed to add six more cops this year. Both promises rely on half-truths. The "new" police officers are actually traffic cops at Sound Transit's bus-tunnel construction site; Sound Transit previously funded the positions. As for the "most significant environmental investment": $13.3 million of the $18.5 million proposal would come from November's transportation ballot initiative, not the budget; only $5.2 million would be new. Of that amount, more than half—$3 million—would pay for trees: An important investment, to be sure, but far less important than reducing our dependence on automobiles—something the mayor's Alaskan Way tunnel, with its capacity for 140,000 cars a day, does nothing to accomplish. 
