Offing McKenna, a Republican King County council member from Bellevue, set the plate for new Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels' top priority: making sure Sound Transit's light-rail project gets $500 million from the federal government. McKenna, 39, was an outspoken Sound Transit critic (not to mention a dissenting vote against the agency's latest awkward revision of the light-rail plan: one-third shorter, $500 million more expensive, three years late, and nearly double the cost per rider, grouses McKenna).
In order to get the dough (which has eluded Sound Transit for two years now), Nickels and his high-powered pal Sims will be visiting D.C. this year to make the case that Seattle is united behind light rail. Getting McKenna off the board served Nickels' mission. It will put an end to the fine-tuned, level-headed criticisms (and nay votes) that emerged from Sound Transit's own board via McKenna, who looks something like a younger and thinner Bill Gates (or a member of Devo).
However, as this Stranger Exit Interview makes clear, 86-ing McKenna from the board (some reward for being a responsible board member!) won't solve Sound Transit's problems.
What reason did Ron Sims give for dumping you?
He said he was replacing me because he wants to get new perspectives. He said that it was not personal, and it was not political. I'll accept that it's not personal. But it's obviously political. He wants a board that is compliant. He doesn't want people there asking uncomfortable questions. In January, I was the lone "no" vote on whether to commit ourselves to the federal government for the full fund grant approval. In September, I voted "no" when the board voted to change the plan to the new shorter version.
Why should you be on the Sound Transit board if you don't support it?
It's in the interest of my constituents for this plan to be successful so Sound Transit doesn't come over asking us to help subsidize it. In 2000 it became evident that the staff had not been truthful about the costs [it was $1.1 billion over budget--eds.]. I realized this was not the plan that we promised voters. It was either going to be a 21-mile, $4.2-billion plan, or as it turns out, a much shorter plan--14 miles, and only a third of the ridership.
Sims believes we can manipulate the budget and get to the airport and go north, just with the existing resources. We can't. And worse, we're going to be borrowing so much money that the debt load will not allow us to go to Sea-Tac until after 2015, or north of downtown until after 2015, unless Sound Transit persuades the voters to adopt a big tax increase.
If I'm Greg Nickels, I say, "But, Rob, we need to lay this down, and eventually, 50 years from now, you're gonna be thanking me for laying this down."
It won't take a lot of cars out of traffic 50 years from now for a very basic reason. Transit competes for riders in a marketplace of transportation options. Light rail competes in a very narrow corridor. You've gotta get people to ride the bus and then transfer or walk, and that's a pretty limited universe. It will mostly carry people who are already riding the bus. It takes almost no cars off I-5. So it's a bad investment. If I were the czar, I would optimize our bus system, and then secondly, start to extend the monorail. It's elevated, it is much faster, it's quieter, it doesn't disrupt neighborhoods the way tearing up the streets does, and it's cheaper. And because it performs better, its ridership would be better. So I'd start with the existing [monorail] segment. I'd extend it south through downtown. And make it a regional system. Monorail people are trying to make it a Seattle mover, but why not consider running it to the airport? Or running it to Northgate?
Any advice for incoming board members Julia Patterson or Chuck Mosher?
They should watch for the tendency of the agency, at the staff and the board level, to engage in wishful thinking.
