ST3 is a bad deal for Mercer Island: Vote no

The proposed Regional Proposition 1 (Sound Transit 3) is a $54 billion tax and spend proposal that would have a long-lasting and huge negative impact on the city of Mercer Island’s finances and our region.

The proposed Regional Proposition 1 (Sound Transit 3) is a $54 billion tax and spend proposal that would have a long-lasting and huge negative impact on the city of Mercer Island’s finances and our region.

ST3 is way out of the realm of reasonableness. It buys trains for Seattle at 10 times the cost of the newly-expanded Panama Canal.

For perspective, in the accompanying chart, I have compared the city of Mercer Island’s current annual budget for transportation to the pro-rated share of east King County subarea’s $9.8 billion that would be paid annually by Mercer Island residents.

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The city of Mercer Island has a robust system for identifying transportation needs in the city. The current budget has about $3 million of transportation programs and projects per year. Most of that is for street improvements and maintenance for the roadways, sidewalks, bike lanes and transit ways.

Sound Transit’s proposal is a train project to satisfy politicians. Eighty-five percent of its capital budget is allocated to construction of light rail. It will do nothing to relieve traffic on Mercer Island or anywhere in East King County.

The Sound Transit taxing district is divided into five sub-areas, with Mercer Island in the east King subarea, which Sound Transit projects will generate $9.8 billion in 25 years. There are 16 cities within the east King subarea with a total population of 585,000.

Based on population, Mercer Island will generate about $16 million per year from the Island’s residents and businesses toward ST3’s gigantic new and extended taxes. These taxes would compete directly with other serious needs and desires of Mercer Island and other King County residents, including the state school funding dilemma.

Traffic congestion is an item often mentioned as a problem in discussions of Island issues. Please note that Sound Transit’s East Link Project, the one now under construction that will close the I-90 center roadway to Mercer Island residents in 2017 forever, is an ST2 fully funded project, not an ST3 project. Mercer Island residents are stuck in traffic, and you know it.

Thus, traffic congestion is a top issue in Mercer Island and Sound Transit asks you to tax yourselves a huge amount to help Seattle pay for their second train tunnel to serve Ballard and West Seattle, plus light rail extensions to Everett, Tacoma, Redmond and Issaquah. The light rail extensions to those cities are the epitome of foolishness for extending high capacity transit to the lowest density portions of our urban area.

The Puget Sound Regional Council calculates a projected 0.4 percent of the regions’ daily person trips will take light rail in 2040 (PSRC, Transportation 2040, 2014 Update).

ST3 is a bad idea and a bad deal for Mercer Island and all of east King County.

Go to www.nost3.org for more information and the tax calculator to estimate your household Sound Transit taxes.

Victor H. Bishop is chair-elect of the Eastside Transportation Association, vice chair of the Bellevue Transportation Commission and a retired transportation engineer.