News Jun 29, 2011 at 4:00 am

His Latest Tolling Initiative Would Prevent Light Rail from Crossing Lake Washington

Comments

1
What a horrible, horrible "person", running yet another horrible, horrible initiative, with horrible, horrible consequences, in an ongoing horrible, horrible perversion of our state initiative process.

At least this time, if shortsighted, low information or at least somewhat evil voters pass this, we can all scream, "HA! HA! Suck it, Eastside!"
2
Oh, fuck Tim Eyman. Simple as that. Can't say it enough. I hope he gets run over by a bus.
3
I believe I-90 was built with 90% federal funds with the stipulation that the center lanes would be eventual convereted to transit use.
4
michael dunmire, in addition to being Eyman's erstwhile sugar daddy, is also presently the one of the plaintiffs in another Freeman-financed lawsuit filed in Kittitas County to kill East Link.
5
I guess I'm actually okay with this Eyman initiative. Fuck Bellevue. They're just going to run light rail to a dead zone freeway offramp anyway.

Spend the money to run it up to Northgate sooner/faster or make a nice Belltown, Interbay, Magnolia, Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, U-district loop.
6
Why isn't Light Rail a "highway purpose"? Yes, I know that it isn't a "highway," but its purpose is to take cars off of the highway and thereby allow cars to move faster or allw additional cars that previously would not have been able to use the highway--because of congestion--but instead would have gone around to make use of the shorter bridge span. That is the equivalent of "widening the highway" for all practical purposes. I think with some creative lawyering--and I know that the state government is full of them--we could get around that provision.
7
So spending heaps of cash on just cars with little to no transit funding is bad when Eyman does it, but when WSDOT does the same thing with City Council on board, it's "moving forward" on a "green" tunnel?

Hypocrites.
8
Agreed, @2
Tim Eyman’s head is so far up his ass it’s a wonder he can even drive these days. Once again, I’m offering to help him move to Texas where he and Rick Perry can be best buds. I’ll put in the first $100 into a Tim Eyman moving-to-Texas fund. If he objects to Texas, then AZ might be the next best place - he and Russell Pearce can cook up more shortsighted, hateful legislation and play dodge-the-ethics-rules with their funding sources. Besides, Tim’s prettier than Jan Brewer, so he can take over the sound bites that KPHO/KPNX and all the other crappy “news” stations in Phoenix insist on showing time after time after time.
9
I really try to be a nice person but with how hard (only a portion) of the east side is fighting light rail I'd rather just have it in northgate and up to lynnwood faster. We northsiders desperately want the light rail.

I do realize there are normal every day people in Bellevue who really do want the light rail, I just wish they would try to yell louder than the developer douche bags.
10
@5 and @9, killing Sound Transit projects in Bellevue does nothing to speed up projects elsewhere. Sound Transit has subarea equity and each subarea gets to spend all the money raised in that area on projects in that area. So without a new 520 and without East Link (and far away from any commuter rail options), that means bus service for the Eastside and not a penny more for anything in Seattle.

Also, a majority of voters in Bellevue and the Eastside support East Link so screwing them because of an obnoxious minority or prejudice about the 'burbs is pointless and counterproductive.
11
As for the point about 520, it seems to me that without tolling I-90, the state needs to drastically scale back its plans for a new 520, which is a good thing. That thing's ridiculous.
12
That's right, without tolling all the lanes of I-90, there is no money for the Seattle section of 520 (and even tolling I-90 is probably insufficient to close the gap.)

If both I-90 and 520 are tolled, then it's easy to adjust the toll rates of both so that the traffic never exceeds the capacity of the bridges. That way, we could get 520 to flow without HOV lanes. WSDOT has thus far refused to look at that possibility, despite many requests and a City Council resolution (31109) in favor of I-90 tolling. Instead, WSDOT prefers solutions that require more pavement, more debt, and more destruction of wetlands, views and parks.

I-1125 passage would dramatically lower the already grim funding prospects for WSDOT's massive and highly dysfunctional 520 expansion plan (see http://sustainable520.org). So least one bad outcome would be prevented if it passed.
13
Let's close down the Mukilteo Ferry, sell all the boats and buildings, and use the money to pay for 520. Tim doesn't need anything but roads around him anyway.
14
Wow. I've been away from Seattle for nearly 10 years now. Something else brought me to The Stranger's site today, but when I say Eyman's name in a headline I had to read this.

I can't believe that asshole is still waging his ignorant campaign against public transport.
15
I'm surprised that no one has pointed out a fallacy to your argument - it is illegal for the state to toll a federal highway. So, I-90 will not be tolled, people really will take the free bridge vs. the expensive toll bridge, and traffic will gridlock.

Tim may be a horse's ass, but this also may be the only way to crush the 520 boondoggle aka highway for rich people.
16
@15: Federal highways CAN be tolled. e.g I-394 and I-35W (Minneapolis), I-15 (Utah and San Diego), I-680 (San Francisco Bay area), I-85 (Atlanta), I-10 (Houston and Los Angeles), I-95 (Miami), I-595 (Fort Lauderdale).
17
If it was just Seattle, the rest of Washington would understand that you have created your own traffic messes since 1962. However, Eyman's initiative covers the WHOLE state and here in America's Vancouver we want to replace the last draw-bridge on the I-5 corridor and build an new bridge to cross the Columbia River that would include congestion pricing tolls. That would end the new bridge but as mentioned, Eyman doesn't care. It's just another paycheck for the man.
18
@15, someone has never been to the east coast. see the new york (i-90), new jersey (i-95) and massachusetts (i-90) turnpikes, all tolled by the mile through the entirety of the respective states

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