Most initiatives never make the ballot in this state, but those that do usually take about five months, with professional signature gatherers collecting between 50 and 100 percent of the necessary signatures.

The campaign to repeal the new 9.5-cent gas tax (Initiative 912) wasn't so lucky. It had 32 days to gather 225,000 names with no money for a paid drive.

Not a single politician, lobbyist, journalist or government official predicted it would succeed. Detractors dismissed it as a "ratings stunt" by KVI radio, where I and morning host Kirby Wilbur strongly supported it. Even full-time initiative maven Tim Eyman publicly declared that it couldn't be done. But on July 8, 420,570 signatures were turned in to qualify I-912 for the November ballot.

Opponents of the initiative admit they're stunned (and to be completely candid, so are initiative supporters). But what does it all mean? Three things, for starters:

• People aren't ignorant about transportation. In fact, they understand it probably better than any other issue. Why? Because they travel every day. So does everyone they know. They see what their taxes are buying. They talk about it with family, friends, neighbors and co-workers on a regular basis.

• People aren't trying to have it "both ways." The oft-repeated claim that the public is demanding improvements it doesn't want to pay for is simply not true.

Most people are quite reasonable when it comes to taxes. They usually vote to raise them for better fire and police protection. Many support school levies, hospital bonds and public libraries. Lots of parks and open spaces exist because voters chose to hike their property taxes to buy them. Why? Because they're getting something they're not getting from their transportation taxes: value.

• People are angry because they're not getting what they paid for. What people want is one thing: congestion relief. They were already paying the fifth-highest gas tax in America before the Legislature and governor raised it another 33 percent three months ago. Would all this extra money finally deliver quicker commutes? No.

"This transportation package is not about congestion relief but about maintaining and improving what we have... " says the Web site for I-912's opponents. "Congestion relief would cost even more."

Pay a third more to spend the same time in traffic? And our business, labor and political leaders are shocked that people are rebelling?

True, there are plenty of projects in the works. But they will do little and sometimes nothing to unclog the daily commute. Whether it's a bus tunnel, a billion-dollar (now a multibillion-dollar) light-rail system, a commuter-rail program with comically inflated ridership estimates, a monorail with a Third World financing plan, or the state's irrational insistence on 24-hour HOV lanes during the work week — or even the expensive new Tacoma Narrows Bridge that hits commuters with a new $3 toll to deliver one new HOV lane in each direction — people see their gas taxes and license fees feeding an expensive system that does everything except get them home sooner.

And that's why so many people in the Puget Sound region signed I-912.

Is I-912 really as "Draconian" as its opponents claim? You be the judge. The total increase in gas taxes, weight fees and other charges was $8.5 billion. The initiative repeals only the gas-tax portion of the package, which comes to less than $5.5 billion. That means even if I-912 passes, Olympia still gets more than $3 billion from other new taxes to continue not reducing congestion.

So are we now hopelessly stuck in political gridlock? I don't think so, which might surprise some people. Most of those same people who vote themselves higher taxes for better schools and safer streets would be willing to pay more for a shorter commute home. I'm one of them. But to make that happen, congestion relief must become the defining priority of our transportation system. It hasn't been that since the early '70s. And the public's patience is now exhausted.

New priorities can change everything. In the '90s, we changed our priorities in fighting crime, and violent felonies plummeted. Welfare reform replaced old shibboleths of the '60s and '70s with a new set of priorities... and welfare caseloads fell by 50 percent.

We can get shorter commutes, but before new money, we need new priorities on reducing congestion. In the words of the old Sound Transit commercial, "It's time."