WA Transit Spending: Worse than Iowa

I just wanted to thank Hawkeye for the articulate defense of Iowa.

I agree with "Hawkeye". Lay off the “OMG! Iowa!?” crap with the liberal elitism Erica.

As Hawkeye said, can gays get married in Washington State? NO. Well they can in Iowa.

On the environmental front, Iowa has had a "bottle bill" for decades. Can you imagine trying to get legislation that progressive in Washington? Of course not.

Who's the smartest state? Well, it ain't Washington State. According to Morgan Quitno Press, who published state rankings of the smartest states, Vermont ranks #1.

http://www.morganquitno.com/edrank.htm

Iowa, (or Idaho as they pronounce it in WA state), ranked #9. Where did Washington rank? #33!! Behind Indiana, Texas, Kentucky and Arkansas.

Yea, I'm a native Iowan, if you haven't guessed by now. It's always amazed me that people in Seattle particularly feel the need to diss on Iowa, when most of them confuse the state with either Idaho or Ohio.

If you want to make fun of a state Erica, at least pick one that's definitely less smart than Iowa, like Oregon or Alaska or Mississippi.

Knowing the the legislature messed up this opportunity is nice but what I really want to know is who's accountable. Does anyone know the number for the bill where these decisions where made? Who's responsible for pushing this through so quickly?

Most of the transit funds under ARRA went the MPOs and RTPO's. I don;t have a state wide number--but through the four county PSRC the total is $136 million. A big winner was METRO atover $75 million and ST got about $23 million the rest spread across transit agencies in the region.

WA spent 40% more than the average state on their allocation to transit.

The total was only $493 M for WA. ST recently was awarded something like $500M for the tunnel to the UW.

How much did the Feds give to KC Metro in stimulus money? Was it $100 M?

Everyone lay off the "OMG! Iowa!?" crap.

A quick review why we should not be surprised that is actually a pretty progressive place:
1) Gay marriage
2) Obama, whose race to the White House got a huge boost in Iowa.
3) The first state to allow women to join the bar.
4) One of the Iowa Territory Court's first decisions was to refuse to return an escaped slave to his owner. Iowa was one of the first state's to do this.
4) Allowed women to own property on their own decades before other states.
5) Outlawed the ban on inter-racial marriage more than a century before the U.S.
6) Iowa has gone blue in five of the last six presidential races
7) The Democrats control the Legislature and the Governor's Mansion.

Is Iowa the world's most progressive state? Hell, no, but it's not the backwater that coastal snoots make it out to be.

Educate yourself before you make sweeping -- and specious -- statements like every place in the Midwest is a political backwater.

Thanks, David.

One of the things about Olympia that can drive a person nuts is the number of players, number of communications required to get the simplest thing sorted out. And that's 'way before you get to the hierarchical, i.e., will it make it through leadership of both houses and past the governor's desk? Sequences can get VERY confused, with a lot of people trying to do the right thing ... as they understand it.

That stimulus money came 'way fast, IMHO ... maybe too fast. Lists of projects -- and rumors about the rules of the game, etc. -- flew around at warp speed. I'm SINCERELY sorry that more of it didn't get into ped/bike projects. Or transit.

Frankly, one of the BIGGEST ped/bike/transit needs are in the SR520 corridor ... and to the extent that we've got foot-dragging and questions remaining on that whole corridor project, well, not so good. Yes, I'm worried.

Keep fighting the good fight. /deb

How much money went directly to Metro and transit agencies?

Was this outrage over $14 M? That can't be. How much total are we talking about?

Deb:

I have the email chain, but I won't drop it here.

If there is a dispute as to the veracity of the accounts given, I suppose a disclosure request might be helpful. However, what was conveyed to us was that Local Programs was directed not to submit the list of projects they had developed because the chairs didn't want them. We were told that OFM conveyed the message to WSDOT.

None of the nonpartisan committee staff were aware of such a request by the chairs (per a conversation with Beth Redfield on House Transpo staff). Nevertheless, the fact remains that 70% ($10.3) of the Enhancement funds were allocated to the State. The Supplemental Budget used all $10.3M of the state's share for the Lewis & Clark Bridge painting - and not one penny for the billion dollar backlog of No Net Loss safety projects.

The remainder $4.4M was sub allocated to the MPOs and County lead agencies, who did an admirable job with the money.

The projects are noted as TE on the local listing on the web: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/funding/stimulus/ Note that the Lewis & Clark bridge was dead last on the State list and a backup project selected when the committee discovered that the first bridge they wanted to assign it to wasn't eligible to receive the funds.

I'd be happy to look into it further if you want.

David Hiller
Cascade Bicycle Club

We fund transit locally in WA. The state could collect sales tax and then give back to the locals for transit.

Seattle has a very good modal split - better than most all of the rail cities including Portland - and the buses run on roads.

I have no doubt that we spent less of the stimulus money on transit/multi-modal - than other states or than we should've. I have no doubt we could've done better (which seems to be what I say about darned near everything, but in this case, with a little more time, I have no doubt we could've done better).

ONE QUIBBLE: I would challenge the idea that the house transportation committee chair was quite that dismissive of ped/bike projects ... so as to tell OFM not to forward the projects for consideration? Doesn't sound quite right; it's not her style.

In other discussions, we've been wracking our brains about how to get more bang for the buck out of the 'safe routes to school' grants, since more of that money seems to go into stormwater retrofits than into surface reconfiguration. Not a BAD thing, mind you, but leading me to think we should re-name the program the "surface water + a little sidewalk program". So my experience w/the chair suggests that she wouldn't be so dismissive of those projects.

Where'd you get that info, David, that Judy told OFM not to bother?

/deb eddy

Trevor:

The transportation stimulus bill was on our radar - at least for the groups that care about transportation and land use Like TCC, Futurewise, Sierra Club and ourselves. However, the legislature rammed the bill through at breakneck speed, allowing us no room to lobby.

I met with the Governor's stimulus person a month before the bill came out, but it's clear he had no effect on the bill as written. For instance, the House committee heard and voted on the bill the same day the bill dropped.

For their part, WSDOT prepared a list of 20 critical pedestrian and bicycle safety projects that were shovel ready, but the house and senate committee chairs told OFM not to forward them...

Instead of using the $11m in the state's share of Enhancement funds to build those high-priority safety projects, the committees decided to paint half of the Lewis and Clark bridge. A project more than a year away, that creates fewer jobs and moves fewer people.

Only the locals put their money to good use. Kudos to PSRC for a balanced project list.

David Hiller
Cascade Bicycle Club

What did the enviro community do to challenge this? Was it on their radar? Not rhetorical questions. I don't know, would be curious to hear a recap of how this issue played out before the money was disbursed.