Buses for the region, not light rail

Sound Transit is within inches of a go-ahead to get the remaining $409 million of a half-billion dollars in federal money. This financial gunpowder would fire the starting gun for light rail. And yet, $500 million buys less than three miles of the first segment. Local citizens are on the hook for the rest.

Recall that the first offering of light rail was 68 miles. Voters accepted a smaller system, from the University District to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. It was to be 21 miles.

Now it is 14 miles, and not the most useful 14 miles, either, but the easiest to build. It is to go at ground level along Martin Luther King Way and through a downtown tunnel already built. The daunting task of burrowing under Capitol Hill and the Ship Canal is pushed into the future. So is connecting with the airport.

This is a foot-in-the-door system. Standing alone, it is not worth building. Yet, we have not faced up to the daunting cost of building a really useful system.

For years, much of the argument has been over the accuracy of Sound Transit's numbers. The agency's director, Joni Earl, has straightened that out, and the federal Office of Inspector General now accepts the $2.44 billion estimate for the 14-mile segment as reliable. Earl's tenure has been one of the positive aspects of the light rail debate. Yet the debate remains.

It is worthwhile? That is the question. This page's answer is that bus rapid transit is much the better investment, for some simple reasons:

• Buses are flexible. Buses can be purchased for a few hundred thousand dollars each. They can be moved around. Light rail is fixed, and it comes in multibillion-dollar segments.

• Buses run on roads. Rail runs on an exclusive right of way, which may be an asset. But a bus lane may be a road and an exclusive right of way.

Imagine 14 miles of light rail replaced by 14 miles of exclusive bus lanes. Properly used, this could move more people than light rail. The beauty of it is that buses can exit the bus lane and keep moving on an ordinary street. A railcar can't. It has to stop and let people out so they can transfer to a bus. Light-rail believers call this an "intermodal" stop and gush over it, but actually it's a drawback.

• The bus system exists now. It is a good one, too; it carries a higher percentage of riders in Seattle than buses and light rail carry in Portland. The smart expenditure of money would be to add to it, make it faster, more convenient and more comfortable.

In light rail, the region starts at zero and argues over a little piece by conjuring visions of a grand system. Meanwhile, the voters of Seattle have adopted a competing vision. The maps put out by the Monorail Authority show it going everywhere and light rail stopping at 14 miles. No doubt, Sound Transit would draw the future differently. Which shall it be?

The people should decide. But voters in the Sound Transit taxing district have no direct representation on its board. They have no right of initiative or recall. They should, but they don't.

Statewide, voters passed Initiative 776. That measure, now at the Washington Supreme Court, ordered the removal of Sound Transit's car-tab tax. This page did not support I-776 because it threatened the security for Sound Transit bonds. But if existing bondholders can be protected, which they can, the measure might reasonably be interpreted to prevent the sale of $1.152 billion in new bonds.

The prospect of that, and the last-minute intervention of Rep. Jennifer Dunn, are about all that stand in the way of the starting gun. But this project should not hang on the ruling of nine judges or upon one well-placed congresswoman, important as those may be. It should be a decision of the people.

Light rail has changed so much since 1996 that it should be put to voters again before the federal government sinks any more of the people's money in it.