It's time we curb votes on transit

As we get out the shovels to dig the monorail's grave, our Canadian friends are getting out their shovels, too.

Except theirs are for building new mass-transit lines. In Vancouver, B.C., the government just started on a U.S. $2.3 billion expansion of its 30-mile rapid-transit system, adding 12 miles of rail to the airport and another seven miles to a suburb.

To pay for it, they are levying taxes on gas, property and parking, as well as using tolls, grants and private capital.

How in the world did they get voters to agree to all that?

Easy. They never asked them.

Well, that's not entirely true. They did hold public meetings. For years, civic officials wrangled over routes and financing plans, just like ours do. But in the end, elected Canadian politicians did what talk-radio hosts here like to call "ramming it down the public's throat."

That's what they always do in Canada. In the past decade, British Columbians have voted directly on transit issues exactly zero times.

Meanwhile, we here in Puget Sound have voted on transportation issues 12 times. Twice on light rail, five times on monorail, twice on gas taxes and three times on Tim Eyman transportation initiatives.

Anyone else sick of all this voting?

Sure, our democracy is the envy of the world. It is a beautiful notion that ordinary citizens, armed with nothing but ideas and passion, can compete to write laws alongside the political professionals.

But what did we get from our orgy of populism?

Yes, we reduced car taxes in 1999. That was nice. Sound Transit, approved by voters, is one-third done building a 14-mile light-rail line. So that's something.

Mostly we have a bunch of roads and bridges overdue for repair. And a $110 million debt from our eight-year intoxication with the "Peoples' Train," the monorail.

I once supported it. But we might consider that the monorail failed precisely because it bubbled up from the people. Its populist roots — the premise that we the people can outsmart and outwork those desultory bureaucrats — were the only political asset it had.

When it got in trouble, though, it had nowhere to turn for help. The monorail learned it matters quite a lot to have the government pros on your side.

Anyway, I risk aggravating your postelection hangover with all this because a campaign for yet another transportation vote has begun.

Eyman's back, peddling a new initiative. It would reduce car-license fees to $30. If passed, it would undermine the light-rail line already under construction and delay, if not cancel, a bunch of road projects.

Again, I ask: Is anyone else getting sick of this?

How about we butt out now and see if government can make work what we've got?

Yes watchdog 'em, audit 'em, make 'em do it right.

But enough with the people power. It may make us the envy of the world, but when it comes to transportation, we're only the laughingstock of Canada.

Danny Westneat's column

appears Wednesday and Friday.

Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.