Regional transportation: get on with a plan

Time is running out for creating a new regional transportation plan for voters in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties. State lawmakers should get a bill out and let voters decide whether they want additional transportation improvements.

The best bill is one allowing a vote this year, next year or any year. Let locals determine timing. This year may already be moot because it is getting late to create and sell a roads-and-transit package. The House and Senate have proposed details for a commission to study transportation governance. A simple commission studying the idea will suffice.

The regional package and phase two of Sound Transit reaching Northgate, and perhaps across the lake, should appear on the ballot simultaneously because that allows voters to consider the full range of transportation plans. It is not necessary to give voters only one ballot to mark, although locals may decide it is preferable. Voter choice and local flexibility should be the goals.

A provision in the House bill that would transfer the Seattle monorail tax to the city of Seattle for non-monorail transit, following a public vote, is ill-advised. Seattle voters are unhappy paying a heavy motor vehicle excise tax for a monorail that will never be built. That tax could become part of a broader regional package, but voters need to see it vanish to mentally separate the monorail from newer projects.

The regional bill provides a vehicle for funding a new Alaskan Way Viaduct but does not specifically address the tunnel-versus-rebuild issue.

Shaping a regional transportation plan is complicated. Just the name of the plan, regional transportation improvement district, or " RTID," is unwieldy. But it is all doable. Compromise and get on with it.