Should a cigarette smoker drive a Prius?

We are entering a few months of intense debate and discussion about the future of our bridges and highways — a good thing that has to lead to more action instead of talk.

The result may be more taxes, more construction delays, more attempts at innovation, but it's the only way out of the woods. Here're some of the things on the plate: • A proposal from King County Executive Ron Sims to raise the sales tax in the county a tenth of 1 percent to pay for more buses, lots of them. That would raise an astounding amount of money, about $50 million a year for Metro, and would create new, fast bus lines where the monorail would have risen above it all, and deeper into East King County. That goes to the polls next November for a decision from voters.

• Higher interest in tolls, especially electronic ones that take a look at your windshield instead of asking you to flip a coin into a basket. Tolls on the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge are seen as the first of many opportunities to toll drivers. Tolls are not part of the larger plans to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with either a tunnel or a new structure. The tolling numbers come in low for that proposed project because drivers have a way to avoid tolls and clog up local streets.

• Finally, the expectation of a decision on hopes for a tunnel to replace the viaduct in the form of an advisory ballot in November. Seattle — and only Seattle voters — will be asked to pick one of two options, but no option to do nothing. The requirement for an advisory vote came not out of Seattle, but from the rest of the state, which was frustrated with the inability of the city's politicians to form a single line to the cashier.

In a series of three editorials today and tomorrow, we examine the impacts of new bus routes, tolls on bridges and roads, the experiments of rail and taillights that are shaping the trip to work and the trip home.

Modern tolls and express lanes are one answer and have to be part of the everyday solutions to traffic nightmares. Politicians are afraid of tolls because they are unpopular on currently toll-free routes. But the realities of mega-projects overshadow the gripes about tolling and special transit lanes. A $3 toll on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is about the going rate for tolls elsewhere in the country. Do we expect a free ride forever?

The region is like the Prius driver who is also a heavy smoker. We want to do our best but we just can't seem to kick the habit. Tolls, a modern, expanded Highway 520 floating bridge and perhaps a new viaduct route are coming into clearer focus, the first time in years.

Letters of the week

Beginning this week, letters to the editor of The Seattle Times will have a wider distribution with our decision to add dozens more letters to our online site at www.seattletimes.com/opinion. We get far more letters than we can print, so the answer is to put online many of those letters directly to the site. We had a backlog of about 1,000 letters within the past few weeks, and in general there is no reason not to share them with online readers of The Times.

We will still review letters for language, libel and tone but the rules of the worldwide Web are different and online letters will have some of the redundancy and diatribe that currently do not see print. We'll try to make online letters as current, active and reactive as the torrent of messages allows.

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com