McDonald: Lack of Trust is why Sound Transit Lost

Roads, transit -- Crafting Plan B

Friday, November 9, 2007
Last updated 12:14 a.m. PT

By JOEL CONNELLY
P-I COLUMNIST

He breathed fresh air into the state Department of Transportation and imbued it with sufficient credibility that in 2005 state voters ratified a 9.5-cent gas tax increase.

Doug MacDonald was squeezed out earlier this year, the victim of gray dullards on the governor's staff.

MacDonald has been invited back by this column, as a one-man Transportation Safety Board, to analyze the disaster of RTID-Sound Transit. The following is his cogent, pungent analysis:

"Voters' rejection of Proposition 1 makes the transportation crisis in central Puget Sound more urgent, not less.

"Crafting Plan B will take precious time. Meanwhile, costs for new projects will climb with inflation. Citizens' frustration with today's inadequate system will grow. And new people and jobs coming into the region will add even more pressure on the system's performance.

"As we leave Plan A and Prop. 1 behind, we might best limit the bad trip memories to a few family snapshots. There were good points in the plan. But that couldn't overcome some key flaws. One of which was the high cost and outdated vision of Sound Transit's corn-fed plan for light rail south of Sea-Tac, east of Lake Washington and north to Lynnwood.

"Another, on the road piece, was asking voters to entrust billions to a program whose most prominent feature was its glaring omission: no visible guidance or suggestion from political leadership about how or when to solve the two largest, hardest highway problems.

"Those would be, of course, getting people to, from and through Seattle on something other than today's failure prone viaduct and its younger, healthier but still overburdened I-5. And second, fixing the east-west, two-way commuting crisis where we desperately need a new SR 520. ...

"Now, looking ahead, it is time to offer thoughts on a new plan. Foremost, it must be a plan for tomorrow, not for yesterday.

"1) We need a single new board of directors for regional transportation. Governance is the best word in politics to put regular people right to sleep. But Prop. 1's failure is proof that we really must have a total change from the old, divided, turf-bound way of planning transportation.

"A strong, fresh, smart board of directors must be created for regional transportation. It must replace all the project planning and finance planning powers of Sound Transit and RTID, the never-suited tango pair.

"2) While we're here, we should start by drawing the new board's new transportation region as the actual crisis area that reaches from Lacey to Mount Vernon, if not beyond. It's not just about three counties. Regional elected officials, the governor and Legislature should commit now to give us a new board of directors in the 2008 legislative session.

"3) We need to invent and lead a world-class vision for modern public transportation. We around Puget Sound were lucky to be home to visionary leaders in computing and software. They seized on the world-beater insight that the future in moving information would be driven by desktop computers, not bulky mainframes.

"We ought to be able to grasp the parallel point in modern people-moving. People won't get out of their cars to ride light rail if it isn't coming near where they live and isn't going where they need to go as they lead their real-world daily lives.

"The problem with Sound Transit's light rail dream wasn't the benefits it would have given to the few people it would have served. The problem was the far larger number of people, made up of everybody else, whom it wasn't going to benefit at all.

"We can assemble a better, cheaper, more adaptable, more useful foundation for public transportation than a few light rail corridors. Tomorrow's systems will exploit fast, frequent buses operating on an affordable network of free-flow lanes crisscrossing the region. And also vans, private custom transit now coming to Microsoft, even modern-age jitneys. And probably yet-to-be-seen Web-matched ride sharing.

"4) We need to embrace new technology in our transportation vision. Why would we have a plan to spend billions for projects stretching two decades into the future without taking into account that today's cars, buses and trucks would look like rotary dial phones next to cell phones -- figuratively speaking -- in comparison to tomorrow's transportation vehicles?

"Think of the money we could save and the benefits we could deliver if we actually planned and built roadways for tomorrow's technology, rather than for yesterday's.

"5) We need, step by step, to add time-of-day tolls to all the region's most congested roads. Almost everyone loves 'freeways' -- a big idea that helped shape the landscapes and lifestyles of post-World War II America.

"But the luster fades when they don't work in and around all our big cities because of the jams caused by everyone trying to use them at once.

"Wouldn't it be better all around if we asked people to pay a bit with today's automatic transponders when the main roads are busiest, and gave people a break when traffic is light?

"6) We need a plan for the non-working SR 520 corridor across Lake Washington and the now and future SR 99/I-5 bust through Seattle. A new plan that is good enough to earn public support must include an action program for not just one, but both of the two 900-pound gorilla transportation problems that lie at the midst of the entire mess we find ourselves in.

"There is only one perfect plan. It is the perfect plan for disaster. It is called doing nothing.

"So, among imperfect options, it's time for choices to be made and leaders to be held accountable for making them. It's time for them to decide something. Together! Lock them in a room and send in no food, water or hot air.

"Make them come out with the program for SR 520 and the I-5/viaduct problem for which they would together seize leadership and stake their political futures. Only then will we start to earn trust and traction with regular citizens."