Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said recently that Sound Transit needs to move ahead with the light-rail line between Tukwila and downtown Seattle because of a need to create construction jobs.

In his late-September budget speech to the City Council, Nickels said that the project would create 4,200 jobs within two years.

So, suddenly, the light-rail line has become a make-work project.

If it is, we’d be better off creating jobs building something helpful, building a transportation system that people would actually use. If the point is to get people from the airport area to downtown Seattle, is it best to take them through the streets of Rainier Valley?

If you were driving downtown from the Airport, would you drive through Rainier Valley?

The most direct routes into downtown are along Highway 99 and Interstate 5, and that seems to be where a mass transit system from the south end would do the most good.

It would avoid the danger of running trolley cars down busy Rainier Valley streets, and it would avoid expensive tunnels.

Of course, even if it would be extended the extra distance to the airport, it would not just take people from one end to the other; rather, it would take people to and from stops along the way. If those stops were along 99 or I-5, they could be connected by bus to all sorts of spots east and west of the line.

A make-work Seattle-Tukwila light-rail line would commit us to a much more expensive make-work extension under Capitol Hill and over the Ship Canal to the University of Washington and Northgate.

Jobs projects have an honorable history. Old timers will remember the wide bridge built across the Stillaguamish River in north Snohomish County during the depression of the 1930s. It proved useful when U.S. 99 came along and later when it became part of Interstate 5.

I see no such value in a make-work light-rail project.

Light rail blackmail

In the attempt to get money for the 14-mile Seattle-Tukwila light-rail line, Mayor Nickels and other Sound Transit officials seek unanimity and seem to view dissent as treason.

Nickels can’t stand having one member of the state’s 11-member Congressional delegation oppose the plan. So, he is threatening to oppose projects important to U.S. Rep. Jennifer Dunn’s district.

Dunn has opposed federal money for the project; so Nickels has threatened to oppose money for projects important to Dunn’s Eastside district, particularly improvements to the bridges across Lake Washington. Such projects should rise or fall on their merits and not be subject to blackmail.

In addition, cross-lake transportation is almost as important to Nickels’ Seattle constituents as it is to Dunn’s Eastside constituents.

Finally, Dunn has good reasons to oppose the Seattle-Tukwila line:

• She has a rightful concern that money for buses or other projects in her region may end up going for light rail in the Seattle and South King County regions.

• She has a rightful concern that the federal government can’t afford the half billion dollars to support the project.

• She has a rightful concern that in a few years, the region and the federal government will face requests for even more money to pay for an even more expensive extension line under Capitol Hill and across the Ship Canal to the University and to Northgate.

• She has a rightful concern that the light-rail line may be the wrong route or the wrong technology or both.

• She rightfully believes that the line is not likely to reduce congestion.

All of this leaves Sound Transit Board Chairman and King County Executive Ron Sims struggling to keep a lid on the dispute.

Nickels has threatened to withdraw city support for two new car-pool lanes on Interstate 90 between Seattle and Bellevue unless Dunn, R-Bellevue, drops her opposition to a federal grant for Sound Transit’s proposed Seattle-Tukwila light-rail line.

The Sound Transit board was scheduled to endorse the I-90 project at a meeting last week, but Sims delayed that vote. Sims said that the discussion would have turned so emotional that it would have undermined regional cooperation.

I can understand why pro-light-rail politicians don’t like the delays in getting a $500 million federal-grant agreement to begin construction this fall of Sound Transit’s $2.44 billion “Central Link” but they shouldn’t resort to blackmail to get it.

U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook, R-Okla., who chairs the House transportation-appropriations subcommittee, has blocked the agreement, at least for now. Rail backers say he did so at Dunn’s request.

In a Sept. 22 letter, Nickels asked Dunn to ask Istook to relent, warning that “failure to move now could do serious harm to the regional decision-making process,” citing I-90 specifically.

Nickels fired another shot during his annual budget address, telling Dunn “it’s time to stop playing politics.”

I say that it’s time for Nickels to stop playing blackmail politics.

The hero on light rail

Rep. Istook is doing something, as an outsider, that no member of the Sound Transit staff or board is able to do, say that this is not a good project, that in this case the emperor has no close.

War demands sacrifice

After my comments questioning our federal government’s changing rationale for its actions in Iraq, I got a personal note from a reader who reminded me that our nation is at war. When our country has gone to war in the past, our presidents have asked us for sacrifices — higher taxes or a draft. When will the president ask us for some sacrifice?

Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor.