Act Locally
Calling the Seattle Times the SEATTLE Times is a misnomer. The daily has its heart in the suburbs. This was never more clear than on last Sunday, when the paper published its official anti-monorail endorsement.
It's annoying enough that the Times perpetuates the deception that the monorail tax is "timeless." (Hello! The tax, a 1.4 percent motor vehicle excise tax, will be the monorail's only source of revenue to pay off its bonds--which are capped, by the way. If the monorail folks don't pay off those bonds, they lose their ability to build the Green Line. If they're not building the Green Line, they lose their ability to issue the tax. That's a tax with plenty of guidelines.)
However, the kernel of the Times' anti-monorail stance is this: The Seattle-centric monorail abandons the guiding principle of regionalism. In short, the Times urges Seattle voters to prioritize statewide road projects like pavement-heavy R-51, expanding HOV lanes, and improving freight mobility regionwide. The Times' October 13 editorial stated: "The work begun with R-51's down payment will be enhanced by the regional effort.... The monorail competes for those precious dollars. A substantial monorail tax invites regionally disastrous taxpayer fatigue."
Given that the Times wasn't actually speaking to Seattleites when it offered up this bit of sage advice (they were addressing their suburban base), you can feel free, as an urban dweller, to ignore it, and prioritize "Seattle-centric" solutions like the monorail.
Thinking regionally--i.e., urging Seattle taxpayers to forgo spending money on our own mass transit system in order to save money for suburban projects--is ass-backwards. Why should Seattleites pay to subsidize the lives of suburban commuters? Why should Seattleites encourage sprawl? If suburbanites choose to live outside the urban core, and want public transportation to get them into Seattle, then they ought to pay for it themselves. And they will pay to get here, when they realize we've got an urban mass transit system like the monorail that they can connect to.
In fact, they might not even split town in the first place if this town had convenient public transportation. And don't tell me how difficult it is to raise a family in the dense city. Lots of families, rich and poor, live in real cities like New York and Chicago and D.C.--all cities with mass public transit. They can afford to live in the city because public transit creates cities that promote density (and more housing stock).
The real way to think regionally is to focus on making Seattle a regional center. The way to do that is to build a public transportation system. I don't know about you, but I'm not interested in funding suburban sprawl. I'm interested in solving Seattle's traffic woes.
