Gridlock is no longer a transportation option

County councils around the Puget Sound region must work fast to have a chance of placing a regional transportation measure on the November ballot.

After years of inaction on traffic, voters deserve the councils’ best effort at developing a regional plan. A statewide gas tax will be on the ballot then, but it won’t solve all of the metropolitan area’s transportation problems. If a regional proposal can be developed quickly, there would be advantages to voting this November and beginning work quickly.

It’s conceivable that the state’s new regional transportation legislation hasn’t been drawn well enough to allow any plan with a good chance of winning voter approval in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties. If that’s the case, the argument for changes in the law will be strengthened by a serious effort to put together a good package.

A better sense of the overall regional progress may emerge from a meeting Tuesday of representatives from the Snohomish, King and Pierce councils. Many of the toughest questions rest with King County. Huge projects, including the Alaskan Way Viaduct and I-405, are competing for dollars. Tolls will be required on some projects. And there may be more transit opportunities.

In contrast, Snohomish County has more clarity about its needs. All of the counties’ planning efforts benefited when the three county executives, Bob Drewel, Ron Sims and John Ladenburg, pushed the discussion ahead with project and revenue ideas. But Snohomish County had the added advantages that Drewel and council chair Gary Nelson, one of the state’s most experienced hands at transportation policy, work together well on the issue. Plus, the county already had drawn up a list of priority projects for the 2002 Legislature.

There is considerable agreement on the county council about the best projects, focused largely on improving overcrowded roads. Off of I-5, the only immediate answers are more adequate roads and intersections. This is no roads versus transit issue, however. As council members noted in a discussion last week, voters here have just invested heavily in transit improvements with last November’s sales tax hike for Community Transit. County voters within the Regional Transit Authority also supported the Sound Transit program.

The council is rightly looking to focus some regional dollars on park and ride efforts and traffic signalization projects that serve transit and drivers. Even though they are impressed by improvements at Sound Transit, council members understand well the problems with any request for more money for light rail. Still, Sound Transit’s effort to get commuter rail service to Everett on existing tracks could be a worthy candidate for funding.

A package that is heavily oriented toward road improvements here doesn’t at all mean paving over the county. It does mean intersection improvements and reasonable lane additions on existing highways. And it means that ballot-box support must come from broad segments of the population, including those who have already seen their favored transit projects supported locally.

The needs are clear to all commuters every day. So rapid efforts toward solutions make sense.

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