Please, Ignore Our Input!

Last Friday in the Barely Governor Gregiore loyal Seattle Times, columnist Danny Westneat comes out of the closet as ignorant of democracy.

Westneat says that if we Washingtonians would just look at how the socialist government of Canada makes their transit choices and decisions, we’d all be a lot better off in his column “It’s Time We Curb Votes On Transit�.

Yes, you read that correctly, he wants voters left out of the loop on transit and tax issues completely and have the whole issue decided by a committee. We The People are just too stupid to know what is good for us.

This idea was seconded by local Dem blogger, Goldy, at RonSimsAss.Org. Goldy thinks that it would be an excellent example of representative government.

I guess that Westneat and Goldy are so blinded by their partisian political beliefs that they refuse to see that most of the government entities in the Puget Sound region are the opposites of King Midas in that everything they touch turns to shit.

I wonder how trusting these two simpletons would be of a local government with the same track record as the current entities have if they were run by Republicans? It is not as if the local Democrats have proven themselves to be trustworthy, so why should I believe that they would decide on the most effective transit option and then not waste my tax money on something ignorant while building it?

As an example of something ignorant King County bought during construction/rebuilding: During the rebuilding of the northernmost county transfer station, the King County government allotted $100,000 for art.

What the fuck? Why would I want some artist who can’t sell his junk on the open market to be paid with part of my tax dollars for sculpture at the dump? The “Tits on a Boar� statement comes to my mind immediately.

Of course, Westneat and Goldy probably supported that little boondoggle. Gotta help those artists out, they could be the next Da Vinci, ya know.

I seriously doubt, however, that there will be any Da Vinci’s appointed to the body that would decide our transit issues. And make no mistake, if Ron Sims has any say in the matter, he will make sure that it is a board of appointees. Cronyism knows no bounds in the Sims Administration and everyone who is nice to old Ronny gets a job as soon as he can create a position for them.

Now that I-912 has failed and the money will be coming in hand over fist, the decision will need to be made on what to have happen when the Alaskan Way Viaduct gets knocked down: Will it be another double-decker viaduct? Will it be a street level road? Or will it be a tunnel?

Myself, I would love to have a tunnel. The Viaduct is a scar on the face of the Seattle Waterfront. It makes the entire area more than just a bit gloomy and makes whole blocks useless for commercial use.

The Waterfront is scheduled to get the seawall that holds all the dirt up rebuilt anyway, so digging a tunnel, either eight lanes wide or four lanes on top of four lanes would fall right in line with that project.

But have you ever heard of Boston’s Big Dig? Monstrously over budget, overdue by multitudes and it is already leaking.

I have no confidence in local government doing a job even that incompetently. I see the job starting sometime when I’m reaching retirement (remember, I’m 34) and it getting halfway done when it is declared unsafe and it is turned into a storage space for the city. Meanwhile, we would still have only two general purpose lanes going through downtown Seattle in each direction, making passage through the area, even at noon on a Saturday morning when there are no special events happening in town, nearly impossible in any reasonable amount of time.

If these two want a representative government for their transit decision, they’re going to be sorely disappointed. We’ll get professional committee members instead of city planners, social engineers instead of structural engineers and we’ll still be on the list of top five cities with the worst traffic in the country.

Knock the Viaduct down and leave the Waterfront alone while the number of lanes on I-5 are doubled.

It’ll be easier, cheaper, the pinch point will be gone and we can move onto the next job that will rid us of traffic problems.

Of course, this is much too logical for local government.