Motley Blog

Summer 1984 I was hired to coordinate the transportation for an International Conference hosted by Eugene, Oregon. I was perhaps a bit underqualified for this position, planning went fine, but the budget was tight and I ended up driving too many of the early and late airport shuttles - definitely burned out. I do remember the closing performance, Stravinsky's 'Firebird'' in the just completed Hult Center. Definitely moving.

I'm not totally sure of the Lane Transit District Planner I worked with on this, I believe it was Bergeron? FWIW my area was the only profitable one for the conference organizer.

I was one of two finalists for a similar position with the Goodwill Games in Seattle, but didn't win it. The guy who did would later go on to notoriety at the Atlanta Olympics. My qualifying experience for this event was organizing a Whitewater Slalom race on the nearby McKenzie River, in 1979.

These map graphics are a product of the LTD route booklet design team.

I moved to Seattle in January 1986, my first civic involvement was volunteering to help start the Broadway (Seattle) BIA, second was a group called KC 2000. (The end result would be the Metro/King County Merger per the Judge Zilly decision.) These folks would be perceived as the typical regional heavy hitter crowd. FWIW though the earlier, more modest endeavor, sits sweeter in my memory.

This was the end of the Reagan, fall of 1987 when George I was making his run. At that time the economy was tanking, and I used that as a theme for a promotional editorial I wrote in the UW Student Newspaper - The Daily.

Best thing about this event was the UW Students and Faculty I met - faculty included the Geographer/Demographer Richard Morrill and Transportation Engineer Scott Rutherford.

Two student footnotes: The Op-Ed was published by Sally Clark, currently a Seattle Councilmember, and perhaps the best home grown public career resume of my generation, locally.

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Second was Tom Nolan. At the time he was doing his Master's Thesis on a proposed Computerized Mapping system for King County. Tom currently runs the City of Seattle Department, funded by City Light. This is his Master's thesis abstract/outline relevant to the local history of this profession, a topic I should continue to write on.

The handwriting should be his.

It looks like a Union Bay expansion routing for 520 will make the final cut, perhaps this year.

The big benefit of this is that no additional lanes are needed to be built through the Montlake or Roanoke neighborhoods - not to mention reducing backups at the Montlake Cut and improved access to the UW and all of NE Seattle.

This letter concerns my first time suggesting this - correspondence from former Seattle Councilmember Jim Street from our first meeting. (Hard to believe I was once a member of the fighting 43rd - I may even have a friend or two left - in '88 I was a Dukakis Delegate.)

The letter also concerns a discussion of routing for Sound Transit, not my first mention of the UW routing/generational service planning idea. It does mark the start of a very productive discussion on the subject, not to mention a great working relationship.

(personal note, Jim's son also attended Hampshire, but only for one year - coincidentally the last for both of us.)

Here's a pretty good looking example of my civic involvement in Sound Transit. This particular example wasn't implemented, but others were. I still think the idea was a good one- reducing tunneling costs by exiting Capitol Hill at Lakeview.

This isn't a letter I'd write today, however I do support congestion pricing with some sort of expenditure control. In my opinion the revenue need not be limited to just autos or the specific segment of road where it is generated, but it definitely should be spent in the same corridor and general area.

How one legally defines that is tougher, especially when you've got a whole lot of people making a living off of loopholes.

At the time this was writ I was still a Sound Transit Supporter - a big booster immediately after the 1995 ballot failure. However the seeds of my conversion were well in place by this point.

As a resident of Tacoma I'd make a similar argument for Pierce County. Perhaps the most important thing to think about is how Pierce and S. King coordinate their somewhat overlapping interests.

Recently State Attorney General Rob McKenna announced that the proposed sale of the NW's largest private utility Puget Sound Energy to an Australian led international investment group would be challenged. PSE is the NW's largest privately owned utility - number two, curiously, was the former Enron holding, Portland General.

This AG action has State ramifications relevant to our largest public capital decisions, even the current gubernatorial contest.

Sound Transit makes the environmental claim that their system is environmentally friendly - because it encourages urban living.

But let's not forget that one of the reasons people have left Urban environments is because of the standard practices of urban legal 'control' (I'd use the words 'Urban Harrassment').

As such, a prediction for your consideration-

Urban living could be made more desirable than the benefits of Sound Transit at zero cost by removing Sound Transit legal counsel COMPLETELY from power.

Another Sound Transit 'antithesis', #2b.

The current Sound Transit plan is now being finalized - likely though through the same sorts of irrelevant public process that led to the failure of Prop. 1 earlier this year.

Two elements of this evolved plan merit your consideration.

The first is the environmentalists call for a vote seperate from roads. Though I am a balanced roads/transit guy, I do support this as a fair process. I would of course hope that any environmentalist of political integrity would also support the submital of a roads only package, to be fair.

This is all well and good - until you consider item number two. The current alternatives being seriously discussed are centralized Seattle-centric plans - as opposed to a distributed priortization which serves all sub-areas with 'equity'. As such the 'environmentalists' are apparently forming a coalition with the power, and cash, sucking 'people' of Downtown Seattle.

This is a lose-lose decision. On the one hand this geographic divisiveness may well kill any environmental benefits that the Sound Transit light rail plan might provide.by alienating suburban voters. On the other hand the plan might pass and we would be stuck with an environmental bully as damaging as Gregoire's gender bullys.