Local transportation leaders sent a letter to officials at City Hall yesterday, chiding them for interrupting the city’s transit plan by passing a law freezing the mayor from spending any money. They say in the letter (.pdf), the city needs that funding to be fluid to deal with issues relating to light-rail planning, mitigating impacts of Metro bus service reductions, and appeals for federal transportation grants.
The groups—including Transportation Choices Coalition, Futurewise, Cascade Bicycle Club, King County Conservation Voters, and Seattle Transit Blog—call out the toxic politics at City Hall, which stem largely from a clash of planning on the deep-bore tunnel, that are obstructing transit planning.
“We ask the Council and the Mayor to put aside their differences on other issues and remove the taint of politics from the transit planning process,” the groups wrote to council members Richard Conlin and Tom Rasmussen, and Mayor Mike McGinn. “In the end, our ask is simple, that the Council remove its funding restrictions while continuing to support this planning effort and that the Mayor agree to reasonable conditions necessary to assure a full modal component in this year’s planning process.”
And more evidence all is being sacrificed – transit, road repairs, bridges – for the vanity of the Billionaires Tunnel that we Seattle Voters never approved …
Read the letter. This is at least as much a kick in McGinn’s ass as it is council’s. McGinn wants the plan to be first and foremost a document that backs up his promised vote on a city West Seattle to Ballard light rail plan (something the city doesn’t have the financing tools to do by itself).
The letter says the mayor should agree to “reasonable conditions necessary to a full modal component.” In other words, he needs to agree to council oversight to prevent the Transit Master Plan from becoming a tainted study.
Aren’t we staring down a $60M debt? Aren’t we at this moment figuring out which firefighters and police officers to lay off?
I say the council is well within their right to tell the mayor to stop playing sim city and start running Seattle
I say the Mayor is within his rights to tell council we can’t build a tunnel and sacrifice everything else the city does for it, especially when there is little popular support they won’t put it up for a Public Vote of the Citizens of Seattle.
You only say that because you agree with the mayor on this particular issue.
I agree the mayor should demand an ammendment to the cost-overrun issue.
This is not the issue at hand. Where does the mayor get money to study transportation options when we’re so far over budget on everything else?
When you have a $1 BILLION to $4 BILLION elephant in the room, sucking up all the transit, fire, parks, roads, sidewalks, bikes, and libraries money – you pay attention to the fracking elephant.
Period.
1) The funds being discussed have, for the most part, already been targeted for transit planning.
2) Many of the funding sources being discussed to promote walking, biking, and transit use are not really conducive for use on other priorities.
For example, the public doesn’t seem to favor funding police with a Motor Vehicle Excise Tax on cars or paying for schools with an increase in the parking tax.