Letters to the Editor

To the Editor:

In reference to David Gould's article on parking problems in Fremont (The Seattle Press, May 17-30, 2000): I eagerly await the day when the good neighborhood activists of Seattle are disabused of the hoary misconception that ample parking is somehow a measure of quality of life. It is this very notion--that we should be able to drive our cars everywhere and anywhere, and be greeted by a vast reservoir of publicly-subsidized parking--that has resulted in the transportation debacle this city is today. As Jane Holtz Kay notes in her recent book Asphalt Nation, every automobile demands more than three parking spaces on its daily rounds; it is government's slavish provision of this space that has left us with downtowns like that of Dallas, with acres of parking but nothing to drive to. In contrast, South Street Seaport in New York, a vastly popular marketplace that attracts thousands of tourists and locals every day, provides space for not one car.

Land developers in Seattle have recently attempted to lower the required number of parking spaces per development here. This is a rare case where the developers (probably by dint of greed) have lighted on a central truth about urban systems: that the correspondence between parking and livability is inverse, not direct. Severely limited parking--coupled to be sure with a real public transportation network, something we're supposed to be "serious" about in this region--discourages use of the private automobile. Such discouragement, at every level, is the sine qua non of emerging from the transportation morass where we now find ourselves.

Despite all we, citizens of Seattle, profess to know about how bad cars are--for the urban as well as global environment--nearly three quarters of us continue to drive, alone, to work. The figures are even higher for shopping and recreation. Why? The answer is not complicated: because it is just too easy, and lavish free parking is a major reason why. When Gould writes that Fremont's future is "No Parking," then, my eyes widen: perhaps there is hope for this place yet.

Brian Thomas Oles via e-mail

Car-free Pike Place Market

To the Editor:

Dick Falkenbury keeps producing good ideas that don't translate into operating reality. I'm referring to his car-free Pike Place Market, not the Monorail. This idea caught on with Mark Hammond, a junior high school student, and has been proposed over the last two decades by city officials and Market people alike. It has great surface appeal. But, it just won't work.

Traffic, congestion, trucks, cars, people and commerce have been crowding Pike Place for over 90 years. That hustle and bustle, that congestion and tension are an elemental ingredient to the charm and attraction of the Market. If you want clear streets and strolling dullness go to Ballard or suburban Fremont. The intense compactness of the Market is enhanced by traffic on Pike Place, not hurt.

Secondly, the downtown city street grid rejects dead-ending six streets around the Market, and the SeaTran planners do too. It would be a dart to the heart of a very delicate traffic balance on all sides of the Market.

Third, by the time the exceptions to the traffic ban were made for farmers, delivery trucks, medical and fire vehicles, residents, and shopkeepers, the street would look pretty much as it does now. Add some arcane hourly enforcement provisions for short-term parking/delivery and emergencies and the inclination of Market people to not follow rules and the police enforcement resolve will wilt.

Fourth, Market merchants depend on customers driving as close to their doors as possible for pick up of bulky or heavy purchases. There are dozens of businesses which would be hurt by such a ban.

If Dick Falkenbury, Mark Hammond, and others want to see a car-free Market, an experiment is being conducted on Sundays this summer to showcase farmers' truck sales with part of Pike Place closed off. Come on down and test the street. Car free or not you always have a good time at the Market.

Paul Dunn, President Friends of the Market

Willapa Bay/MCS Connection

To the Editor,

Thanks to Nancy Morris for her informative article on "The Cause and Effect of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Syndrome" (The Seattle Press, May 17-30). We farm oysters and collaborate with a diverse group of people in the Ad Hoc Coalition for Willapa Bay. Our principal goal is to keep harmful chemicals out of the bay. There are several members of our group who suffer from MCS. Membership has increased steadily during the past 10 years as MCS victims move to the Long Beach Peninsula seeking a cleaner environment. They are disappointed to find heavy use of pesticides in the cranberry and oyster industries. MCS is a powerful motivation to become involved politically with efforts to stop aquatic pesticide use. Our group has successfully halted aerial spraying of glyphosate (Round-Up, Rodeo) for Spartina control. We are still working diligently to stop aerial spraying of carbaryl (Sevin) for burrowing shrimp control. Since it is impossible to prevent pesticide drift offsite when chemicals are sprayed in an aquatic environment, we hope to eventually see a complete ban on the practice.

Larry Warnberg Sandy Bradley

Editor's note: see Larry Warnberg's article, Spartina Alterniflora in Willapa Bay for more details about pesticide use in Willapa Bay.

Save Our Valley Does Not Speak for All Residents

To the Editor:

The majority of Rainier Valley residents want the kind of quality mass transit that will be provided by light rail. We commend Sound Transit and city leaders for sticking with us.

The so-called "Save Our Valley" group does not represent us, though their masterful propaganda machine would make it appear otherwise. (I do not use the word propaganda lightly, but this attitude has been maintained from their very first public meeting, where opposing views from myself and others were prohibited, out of context numbers were wielded as weapons, rumors spread, and scare tactics carried the day. Contrast this attitude with the openness of Sound Transit meetings and the respect and honesty shown by their staff). Fortunately, the SOV efforts have failed, otherwise the light rail would be bypassing Rainier Valley and going down the Duwamish. That would be the real discrimination.

Of course the SOV folks don't want people to think to carefully about the implications of their "tunnel or nothing" mantra. "Nothing" would have meant the Duwamish route. "Tunnel" has never been a realistic possibility, again for reasons that the SOVers don't want you to know. The main reason, of course, is that light rail is not heavy rail, that is, it does not come with heavy rail funding.

This means that light rail only rarely goes underground--only where there is very strong justification, such as a hill to go through or very high density development, where at-grade or aerial would be far too disruptive and where ridership can support the cost (3 to 4 times as much). Capitol Hill and the University District are a couple of the few areas in Seattle which can support this kind of cost. In fact, the lower projected ridership in Rainier Valley means that the cost per rider in the southeast segment is just about the same as the cost in the north segment.

Moreover, many of the "impacted" businesses and residents along Martin Luther King Way stand to benefit from at-grade rail, benefits that would be partially or mostly absent if there were a tunnel. These benefits come from the improved streetscape and new buildings and the visibility of this streetscape from the light rail. Heavy rail has rapid transit advantages from an overall system point of view, if you can afford the enormous cost, but the money for this is no where in sight, neither locally, at the state level, nor the federal level.

Meanwhile Rainier Valley will benefit far more from at-grade rail than from no rail. Planning for one of the biggest benefits--transit-oriented development around stations--is already well underway. Not surprisingly, some SOV folks have come out against this too.

And guess who will benefit most this station area development? Why, of course, it's lower income and carless people who will live in much of the mixed-income, mixed-use development that is planned. Seattle Housing Authority's Holly Park Phase III development is the best plan to date. These lower income people are the ones who would be most discriminated against if Rainier Valley lost the light rail, and it would be SOV doing the discriminating.

By now SOV has lost the vast majority of its early support, as people have come to realize just how biased their view has been. In fact, many more are now taking our good citizenship attitude: collaborating with Sound Transit and the City to make light rail work for us.

Dick Burkhart via e-mail

Seattle Press Anti-Light Rail Bias is Showing

To the Editor:

The article about the anti-Sound Transit group "Save Our Valley (SOV)" (Seattle Press May 3 - 16, 2000) does not demonstrate the journalistic integrity that I would expect of you. Rather than offering a balanced view, the article reads like a propaganda piece from the SOV office.

Fifteen out of twenty column-inches were dedicated to criticizing the planned light rail line. Three SOV representatives were quoted, and four smiling SOV members (the entire SOV membership?) were shown in two separate photos. Only one Sound Transit representative was quoted. The article made several questionable claims, such as "Sound Transit lied to the community," without giving Sound Transit an opportunity to respond.

By all appearances, SOV is an anti-transit organization, and it is doubtful that SOV represents a significant portion of the Rainier Valley populace. The current plan is the product of many hours of hard work by volunteer citizens from affected neighborhoods. Rainier Valley residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of the RTA ballot measure, which included the surface light rail that SOV is complaining about.

Anyone who has attempted to walk along the affected portion of MLK knows that the environment there is noisy, muddy, and exhaust-filled with a seemingly endless stream of speeding cars and few paved sidewalks. When the light rail line and the associated street improvements are complete, the result will be a place people will want to be. It is a shame that much of the rest of the line must be buried in dark, expensive subway tunnels.

In the past, you have editorialized against Sound Transit (Sept. 22 - Oct. 5, 1999 issue and probably others as well). In the future, please try to keep your opinions on the editorial page.

Bill Bryant

Monorail is the Choice of the People

To the Editor:

I wonder about the bull-headed quality of the numbskulls who are elected and supposed to represent those who reluctantly elected or appointed them...simply because there wasn't much better being offered to carry the vote.

I speak of the so-called Light Rail transit. The People have NOT voted for the 19th century exciting mode of transit. We HAVE voted for a 21st century means of travel. And the "powers that be" seem to ignore the people's choice sorta like a pesky fly.

Light Rail...How many street crossings, say, between Northgate and Southgate? Every one of these potential unsightly street hazards will require unsightly street crossing warning signs, flashing lights, maybe some barricades which the younger drivers may like to ignore. So we have a cumbersome ugly looking mess adding nothing to the esthetics of this touted great city which is already overburdened with overhead power lines and washboard chuck-holed streets throughout our neighborhoods. Why TRASH us some more? And of course tunneling under the U of Dub won't be cheap. Is there no pride in our local government...or who is paying off whom?

What is wrong with the people's choice? Why is it being ignored? Why not extend the monorail on down to SeaTac? Why not eventually extend it on to Vancouver? To Portland? The more remote extensions can be added later. But certainly we can be a little more sensibly progressive in today's planning of the future. This is now supposed to be the 21st Century, I think. The rails first arrived back in the 19th century (civil war times) and were used extensively in the 20th. Time marches forward. Why can't we? The people have voted for it.

We read of other countries having high speed monorails capable of going well over 100 miles per hour. Use your heads! I would like to envision a huge centralized airport, say in Moses Lake. High speed monorails spoking out from there to Spokane, Yakima, the Tri-Cities and to Seattle. With the available right-of-ways, and today's technology, there's no reason why this 21st century mode of traffic should not be seriously considered, or come up with a good understandable reasonable explanation as to why not.

I think some one or group should be concerned enough to do an investigation followed by an explanation and clarification to the voters. But from my vantage point, none of the proposals favoring investing good tax-derived money into outmoded rail makes much sense, or any sense.

Talking about quality of planning, I see miles of freshly laid street paving being dug up to install what? Under the center of the street...and then patch work for the new streets. What's so important that there's no other place to lay whatever it is? Talk about "good use" of our tax money. What other programs are being chopped, because of these SNAFUs? But there's today's blatant example of our salaried planning responsibility groups.

Don Smith

Liveaboards Pay Dearly for their Homes

To the Editor:

Patricia Stambor's letter (Seattle Press May 3 - 16) felt mean-spirited, and I don't think liveaboards deserve that. I, for one, can tell you that 400, 500, 600 and hardly ever over 1,000 square feet of living space does not constitute a penthouse. The FREEDOM to choose how to live is a right our states' citizens deserve. I believe you can achieve what you truly desire most with discipline, sacrifice and determination. It may not always be as fancy, or big, or new as you want but you can come to a compromise that allows your heart's desire.

Regarding taxes, you are clearly misinformed. Our contribution to the tax base is even broader than people who live on land! We pay a permit fee for our house barge to the city. We pay UW Coast Guard fees, personal property tax, state tax (DNR) rent fees to the marina that in turn pays taxes from our money. Moorage rental has gone up over 50 percent in one year. Over $700 for 45 feet of dock (NO showers, NO washers/dryers, NO storage, NO electrical, NO heat, NO mail boxes, NO private parking) is more than a "pittance" for what we get.

Show me the letter of the law that says you cannot live on your boat. It is not there. In fact the letter of the law encourages moorage. If everyone living on the water could afford a second home YOU then would be even more crowded, rents raised, etc. because the housing shortage, not to mention energy used, cars driven and so on just now got greater.

Finally, your belief that Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles' attempts are futile indicate to me that you do not understand the many, many individuals in government that agree with her, and will try to protect the liveaboard citizens' rights.

Sharon Doub

Liveaboards Pay More than Shore-Dwellers

To the Editor:

Comments about liveaboards avoiding property taxes are wrong. I will use the example of a $100,000, forty-foot boat owned and lived on at Shilshole for 10 years. You pay 8.6 percent sales tax up front, not what you would pay on the purchase of a house or land. You would pay a leasehold tax of 12.84 percent on top of your monthly rent to the state in lieu of property tax on your slip (there is no tax because it is public property). You then get to pay .5 percent excise tax every year to the state because the I-695 rollback did not apply to vessels. For the mathematically disinclined, that is $18,456 for a ten year period versus roughly $15,000 for a $100,000 residence owned in King county. This totally ignores the appreciation realized by most homeowners and the depreciation realized by most boatowners. I for one would love to pay an eqivalent property tax and have it go to my local schools, fire dept., etc. but this is the system and I don't have the time to change it. Please realize that I love living aboard and am willing to pay for my choice. I just don't want the state to take away that choice for no good reason.

Al Hughes via e-mail

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