The growing divergence of Sound Transit and performance-based planning

According to this Seattle Times article by Mike Lindblom, the Sound Transit board appears to have enough votes to place another ST2 measure on the ballot this November.

By adding express buses to sweeten the plan in Snohomish County, transit officials Thursday won the support of two swing voters — Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon and Edmonds City Councilwoman Deanna Dawson.

So here is yet another example of how transportation spending is based on a political system rather than effectiveness.

During our annual transportation event, Dr. Ronald Utt, a transportation and economics expert from the Heritage Foundation suggested that moving toward performance-based transportation decision making (and away from the current political system) means resources are distributed on getting the biggest bang for your buck. Instead, Sound Transit's resource allocation appears to have very little to do with performance and everything to do with buying votes.

This is the precise problem cited in the SAO congestion audit of WSDOT and John Stanton's crusade for governance reform. While the legislative process should have the final say, basing decisions on anything other than performance inevitably leads to a fragmented collage of spending that has no relationship with the presumable goal of relieving traffic congestion.

Comments

[Mariner]

If Mike Ennis knew what he was doing, he would calculate passenger miles instead of boardings to compare buses (which he hates) with trains (which he hates more).

Only cluesless conservatives would embrace highly subsidized bus transit over rail.

But since OCD Kemper Freeman signs Mike Ennis' checks, Mike's fate (ignorance) is sealed.

[Mariner]

"So here is yet another example of how transportation spending is based on a political system rather than effectiveness."

Uh, the WPC is all about politics and ideology over science.

That's your credo, right? "Reagan Forever?"

[Mariner]

"This is the precise problem cited in the SAO congestion audit of WSDOT and John Stanton's crusade for governance reform"

This is the funniest part: small government conservatives for more government and hapless conservatives for extremely oppressive and controlling
congestion pricing.

Question: can Mike Ennis read? I'm not kidding (well, maybe a little bit)