[caption id="attachment_11305" align="alignnone" width="500" caption="Mary Margaret Haugen"] [/caption]

Some interesting stuff from this afternoon's Transportation Choices Coalition-sponsored town hall forum at City Hall.

Most interesting: State Senate Transportation Committee chair Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10) said she would be open to giving cities more flexibility in how they use transportation benefits districts to pay for transit. (Currently, cities or counties can create special taxing districts with or without voter approval, but how much they can raise and how they can spend it is limited unless they get approval from voters, a complicated process involving the approval of multiple jurisdiction—one reason TBDs have not caught in Washington State. Full explanation here ).

"We have tried giving local governments lots of flexibility [in how they use TBDs]," Haugen said. " ... The original language [in the legislation] was very restrictive on what you can use [TBDs] for, and that has to change. .... Unfortunately, our local governments have not been bold enough to step up [and ask for changes].  We're very disappointed that it has not worked."

Bill LaBorde, the lobbyist for the Transporrtation Choices Coalition (which started a conversation about changing the transportation funding paradigm in Olympia last session), was skeptical that minor changes  to the legislation allowing TBDs would have much effect. "If we can make it a little bit easier, maybe that becomes more of a viable source for transit systems," LaBorde says. However, "The place where transit systems are running into trouble is that cities and counties don't want transit agencies to utilize that toolbecause they want that revenue" themselves. "It's just everyone fighting over the crumbs. I'm not convinced that a few tweaks here and there" is going to change that, LaBorde says.

Otherwise, Clibborn and Haugen spent much of this afternoon's forum affirming their anti-transit status.

For example, Clibborn said that people who come to Olympia seeking gas-tax funding for new transit projects "are probably going to get a cold shoulder," because the state has already set its priorities, and those priorities are centered on roads.

"When you come to Olympia and say, "I'd like you to change your priorities, I'd like more transit," you are up against a list of promises made to a list of legislators who are still sitting in those seats. "Every year, when Sen. Haugen and I are putting our list of projects together, we have to ask what projects are we going to cut and what promises we are going to break."

Haugen, meanwhile, referred repeatedly to "alternative transportation" and how it shouldn't be "pitted against [things like] nursing homes and health care." Haugen also referred, somewhat oddly, to cyclists and pedestrians "we" have killed on the roads, adding that she believes "drivers do pay their fair share" of the cost of building transportation infrastructure because of the high cost of buying cars and gas. "Most everybody has more than one automobile, so I do think they pay their fair share. ... If you have to drive 30 miles to the grocery store just to get a gallon of milk, then you're paying more than your fair share," Haugen said.

According to calculations by many reputable mainstream environmental groups, the cost of buying a car and paying for gas and insurance reflects only a fraction of the true cost of driving, which includes the cost to society of accidents, road construction, parking, pollution, land use impacts, time lost in congestion, and much more .