Yesterday voters in Seattle voted down plans to build an elevated transit line through the city. The same plan had won four prior elections, only to fail on its fifth and final (?) vote.
On the day before the city-wide vote, USA Today reported:
Voters in [Seattle, a] traffic-clogged city of 575,000 have gone to the polls four times since 1997 and said “yes” to a monorail, coercing a reluctant City Hall into backing the project. A citizen governing board oversaw design of a 14-mile route through the heart of the city and spent $140 million buying right-of-way and land for stations.
It was a struggle to get the monorail to the point of collecting taxes, buying right-of-way and getting a contractor to build and operate the transit system. And then it faced another vote, another hurdle.
At the time that the monorail was being first considered by city voters, the region had already passed a massive suburb-to-city system, which turned out to deliver far less than promised – with trains running at surface level and not going very far. But the suburb-to-city plan had the support of regional powerbrokers, and only required one election to get built. Unhindered by accountability, the suburb-to-city system baited and switched the region, offering a shorter route that moved at street level instead of speeding over or under cars. Additionally, the project was able to rip through a mostly low-income and historically African-American neighborhood.
The monorail was Seattle’s reaction to the suburb-to-city “street car.” City activists wanted a system that linked city neighborhoods and that offered a faster way, by going over traffic. But to do this, they had to give up federal funding. That’s because the federal government doesn’t fund systems that move people within a city, instead requiring new systems to go to suburbs – keeping cities dependent on cars and buses. Moreover, the federal government encourages regions to build “kiss-and-go” systems that require users in the suburbs to get in their cars and drive to the transit system.
Seattle voters wanted something different. We wanted a true alternative to the automobile – through density and alternative transit. Density by connecting neighborhoods and developing inner-city transit systems. Alternatives by building systems that are faster than roads, and faster than surface-level systems.
So why did Seattle give up on the monorail? My answer: We couldn’t afford to go it alone. Without federal aid, Seattle didn’t have the money (as a city) to pay for its monorail. This became clear when the citizen-run Monorail Board presented the final numbers: In order to build the monorail we’d need to borrow tons of money, and even issue high interest junk bonds. Even after tweaking the numbers, shortening the line and cutting other costs, it was clear that Seattle could not afford the monorail. So the voters, wisely, said no.
As a city, Seattle’s is an $18-billion economy. Each year, billions of those dollars leave the city to pay federal taxes. Some come back, but with strings attached and priorities that don’t match the city’s own values and priorities. As a state, Washington pays $41-billion to the federal government each year, while only paying $19-billion to the State. Washington gets back 90% of the federal taxes paid, but doesn’t have much say in how the money is spent. Being a (barely) deep-blue state, we are in the minority in the Senate with two Democrats, minority in the Electoral College having always voted blue since Reagan, and our governors have been Democrats since we last elected a Republican in 1980. (I say barely because the margins are moving closer and closer, especially in state-wide elections).
I realize that the US is a national economy. That requires that we pool our resources and make priorities as a nation, not a collection of mini-fiefs in the form of states and regions. That said, we are also a federal republic. The function of states is to keep some power local. Now that Democrats are out of power, we see why Republicans wanted more power to go to the states. Our money and other resources are going to a federal government that wants things we oppose. We’d rather keep that money for things like building Seattle’s monorail, California’s stem-cell research and other local and regional initiatives.
Washington has benefited greatly from the federal government. It’s why we have cheap power, why we have a farm economy and why we have a technological and aerospace industry. The federal government makes wealth transfers to our senior citizens, almost eliminating senior poverty in the State. It also pays thousands of service members to live and work at the state’s army, navy and air force bases. But I don’t think we’d spend our $41-billion in much the same way as does the federal government. We might keep building dams and funding irrigation, and we’d certainly keep paying social security to our seniors. But I think we’d care more about trains and monorails than cars, and we’d put less of our money into tanks and guns and more into schools and hospitals.
Seattle is getting stuck with a suburb-to-city “street car” light rail system. And we’ve given up on building our own system. With hundreds of millions of federal dollars going towards a system that doesn’t meet our needs, and with none going to the one that we passed four times in the ballot box, it’s clear that we’re not getting heard in Washington. Given that the only way to get heard now is by sending anti-transit, pro-war conservative radicals to Washington, I’d say we’ve got to take the long road by changing the majority outright.
Hopefully once liberal Americans have regained a majority, we’ll remember this and maybe actually do what the Republicans said they’d do once in power: Let states have more power at the expense of the federal government.
Cross posted: Political Porn
