March 20, 2013

McGinn Sticks It in Burgess's Hole

Political Skirmish Over Potholes Promises a Helluva Fun Mayoral Race

Kelly O

LEFT VERSUS RIGHT Which one wants to build light rail?

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Seattle City Council member and mayoral challenger Tim Burgess's new transportation proposal has Mayor Mike McGinn feeling nostalgic. "Really, it's a great transportation plan," insists McGinn, "for 1975."

Ouch.

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"There's no rail transit in it," McGinn complains about a "Plan for the Future" that apparently sees little future in rail. The topic of rail did come up at Burgess's March 12 press conference—specifically the question of extending rapid transit to Ballard—but Burgess claimed to be mode-agnostic. "Rubber or rail," said Burgess, whatever the studies recommend.

Promising to "fix what we have and finish what we started," Burgess unveiled his proposal while standing in front of a Boylston Avenue pothole. But McGinn describes Burgess's focus on pothole repair as both sudden and unworkable.

"The first time Tim Burgess showed any interest in potholes was when he found one outside his campaign office," quips McGinn.

Burgess proposes abandoning the city's current complaint-based pothole-repair system for a grid-based system modeled on Seattle City Light's successful program of fixing streetlamps one neighborhood at a time. But McGinn worries that this could leave the worst potholes unfilled while crews are busy patching less severely damaged streets. "It's a public-safety issue," emphasizes McGinn.

Burgess also points to the City of Olympia's "Least-Cost Strategy to Pavement Management" as a model, but McGinn counters that these strategies are already in place in practice, if not in name. It was on McGinn's watch that the city reinstituted "crack seal" and "chip seal" programs in an effort to prevent potholes before they appear. "We've invested $28 million over the past two years in spot repairs," claims McGinn.

As for the only transit proposal in Burgess's plan—a call to negotiate with Metro to assure that savings from city-financed transit improvements flow back to Seattle residents in the form of better service—McGinn is equally dismissive. "His plan is to ask for $6 million more from Metro at a time they're headed over a fiscal cliff," scoffs McGinn.

Who you think won this first policy skirmish of the mayoral campaign probably depends on where your loyalties lie. But if they can muster such feistiness over mere potholes, it promises to be one helluva fun race.

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Comments (15) RSS

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Burgess is a pandering schmuck.

Posted by Baconcat on March 20, 2013 at 2:15 PM · Report

Goldy, Ya made me laugh again. Real Motley Crew aren't they.

Posted by Gray Panther on March 20, 2013 at 3:19 PM · Report

I don't understand why Burgess would try to go after transportation at all. McGinn has a cohesive vision that's winning federal funds (and that means jobs for us) and working with Sound Transit to accelerate more light rail. We know we can't do all this with buses and pothole fixes. McGinn is dealing with the day to day, which Burgess seems unaware of, and he's looking way past that at ways to build infrastructure that will last.

Posted by Ben Schiendelman on March 20, 2013 at 4:47 PM · Report

McGinn is a piece of freedom hating New York shit that needs to take his fat, bearded ass back to Long Island where he belongs.

Posted by Cascadian Bacon on March 20, 2013 at 5:36 PM · Report

#3, the least you could do is swallow all of McGinn's splooge before opening your mouth.

Posted by Unbrainwashed on March 21, 2013 at 1:22 AM · Report

And this entire time no one has yet to give a good answer for why a light rail is more effective then a bus. The last time trains were as slow as the Seattle Light Rail was 1835. The purpose of a train is to go fast - 35 MPH isn't fast. Even the Dallas light rail manages 50. And why do you have buses and light rail sharing a tunnel? Doesn't it make more sense to have the bus line end at the rail line? Unless, of course, your train is no better than a bus and considerably more expensive.

Posted by Jeremy Janson

on March 21, 2013 at 1:56 AM · Report

Not that Burgess's plan is much better. Frankly, it's about time that Seattlites just realized that their planners are worthless idiots, gave up, and saved a whole lot of tax money (or public service money, or parks money, or education money...) spent hunting unicorns.

Posted by Jeremy Janson

on March 21, 2013 at 1:59 AM · Report

Light rail in the abstract is great. Virtually everything about Sound Transit -- its unaccountable board, its abusive regressive taxing, its glacially-slow pace, its inability to foster private development near the stations -- is completely FUBAR.

Posted by stop the madness on March 21, 2013 at 9:46 AM · Report

#6 the same is true w/Portland's MAX. It takes 50 minutes to get from downtown to Hillsboro, a distance of 18 miles.

Posted by Unbrainwashed on March 21, 2013 at 9:48 AM · Report

LOL!! Like anyone's proposal will ever materialize as reality. But keep on dreamin' gang!!! LOL!!

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger on March 21, 2013 at 5:54 PM · Report

Fuck McGinn. The guy is an epic piece of shit. How can you understand a word that guy is saying when he has so much SPD penis shoved into his fat foaming mouth?

Posted by seven on March 21, 2013 at 9:32 PM · Report

The cost of (including right-of-way) for at-grade rail travel per passenger mile does not, and never will, support rail transit in the Seattle area.

Rubber-based variable-energy-mode vehicles can travel over dedicated surface, general access, all-purpose, AND elevated surfaces, unlike trolleys or light rail.

They're just more utilitarian on multiple surface types and grades. Plus, they can be built in Washington to our specifications, rather than adapted from some other system design.

Posted by Texas10R on March 22, 2013 at 11:31 AM · Report

@12 and they can sit in traffic behind Bellevue SUVs!

Posted by douchelord on March 24, 2013 at 12:25 PM · Report

both will continue to believe that Seattle ends at Northgate way to the north, and Genesee to the south, unless we see otherwise.

We won't.

Posted by wilbur@work on March 25, 2013 at 7:45 AM · Report

what "wroks" the world over is subways and elevated lines that go fast. and you need the whole system; lines covering various parts of the city and meeting in and around downtown. what we are building here is not such a sytem. it's basically "one line" in seattle; you need really several. then, it goes on the surface ensuring slower trains and limited capacity. when we build the ship canal tunnel, guess what, it's capacity is maxed out meaning no other lines from north seattle can be hooked up to help that system growth. and we will be putting more stations in bellevue than in north seattle, so we're not really building the normal kind of system. add to this the sounder north fiasco, a billion in capital wasted for 6000 rides a day (on days without mudslides), and sound transit really isn't doing much -- oh wait, they did help kill the monorail in a fit of pique. in this context mcginn is no hero. he has NO plan for rail to ballard or west seattle -- and we're going to get rail to ballard quicker by waiting for skytrain from vancouver to be extended there than we will by hoping that seattle politicians do it. seriously, you want more rail in seattle, just hand over authority to skytrain in vancouver, they are adding lines about 3x faster than we are.

Posted by mcginn not adding rail on March 25, 2013 at 8:50 AM · Report