Rep. Deb Eddy: Skeptical

There's a tidy wrap up of our 520 forum in today's Morning Fizz,  (and Seattle Times transportation reporter Mike Lindblom covers the event here), but one great exchange didn't get mentioned.

Audience member Damiana Merryweather—the local political junky who managed Ross Hunter's King County Executive campaign and was a lobbyist for the UFCW—criticized Seattle City Council Member Mike O'Brien for his "let's just build it and then figure out how it all works" approach (which O'Brien—all dreamy about light rail—copped to.)

Merryweather's point: Our local transportation system is dysfunctional because it's based on pet projects rather than a cohesive plan. She pointed out that years of coordinated study had gone into the current 520 plan and O'Brien's preferred light rail had already been rejected.

Although O'Brien acknowledged that Merryweather had a point, he went on to reframe the debate.

He explained that his guiding principal wasn't her dream, coherent transportation blueprint, but rather the mandates in state law to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reduce vehicle miles travelled (VMTs).

"The systemic problem that is more important to me," he said, "the much bigger challenge is  how to address our transportation needs in the times of climate change. This is not bus vs. light rail. It's—how does this piece fit into bigger picture  of VMT reduction?"

Rep. Deb Eddy (D-48)—who's all for moving forward with the current plan—got the last word with her jaded take on state laws about reducing greenhouse gas emissions and VTM: "I have to tell you," she joked (?), "we don't put a lot of thought into that. Those goals are aspirational."