Voters in the Spokane, Washington area appear to have rejected a proposed 50-percent increase in the sales tax used to support transit by a small margin this week. At the latest count, the vote was 50.5 percent against the tax and 49.5 percent in favor of it.
Click image to download the “public education” flyer distributed by Spokane’s transit agency.
A few hundred votes remain to be counted, but almost all of them would have to favor the tax to turn the election around. The measure lost despite the fact that the transit agency used taxpayer dollars to promote the measure with a one-sided “information mailer” distributed to voters. Tax proponents vowed to bring the tax back to the voters, saying that those who supported the tax did so with “a strong majority.”
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The Antiplanner reviewed the transit plan a month ago and found that the city transit agency wanted to buy 60-foot, all-electric buses with 60 seats and room for up to 110 people standing (at crush capacity). Since the above-linked review, I discovered that the transit plan projected that the buses would go 316,000 miles per year and attract 1.1 million passenger miles–meaning that an average of just 3.5 passengers would be on the humongous buses at any given time.
Just what was the agency thinking when it developed this proposal? It could have done better using minivans than the $1.2 million buses it planned to buy. The reality is that a tax increase that the voters approved in 2004 should provide plenty of money to support a decent transit service for the region.
Spokane is a shithole with very high unemployment and few jobs. The labor force participation rate has plummeted there. No way they need these buses to get to jobs that don’t exist.
Only the progressive thinkers can classify 49.5% as a majority, let alone a “strong majority”. By next week the newspaper headlines will call that an “overwhelming majority”.
These are the same people who are running our schools and teaching our children politically-correct math.
The surprise with this vote is that it nearly passed at a special election, when most people who traditionally turn out tend to be more Republican and conservative, and anti-tax. My guess is they’ll try again at the November 2016 election, when more Democrats traditionally turn out and who tend to be more receptive to things like transit.
Read the article John1000. He said city voters supported it with a strong majority. It was a county wide vote. 11660-9331 in the city.
msetty wrote (emphasis added):
My guess is they’ll try again at the November 2016 election, when more Democrats traditionally turn out and who tend to be more receptive to things like transit.
Does that mean that those Democrats will actually use transit?
My home county in Maryland, overwhelmingly Democratic, has more people riding transit than most U.S. suburbs, but still only a modest 15.4% use it for commuting purposes according to American Community Survey (2013), and the percent of non-commuting trips on public transportation is almost certainly less.
According to that same source, transit use for commuting in Spokane is about 4%. How much higher do you really think it would be with the added tax dollars, especially in light of Frank‘s comment above about high unemployment and low labor force participation?
It may be that they need the high capacity at rush hour. I asked an AC (east San Francisco Bay bus system) transit director why they have large buses driving around during the day with a handful of people on them. He explained that they need the large bus capacity for rush hour. Then they have the bus for the remainder of the drivers shift and capital cost to pay on the bus and bus depot. He said the cost of the bus per hour sitting idle was something like $17 per hour, and only something like $22 per hour to drive. So they may as well provide a service to the handful of people who need mid day transport as the addition cost per hour or mile is low.
This means that they are producing a large amount of greenhouse gases per passenger mile during the middle of the day.
I personally would advocate experimenting with ride share on services like Uber and Lyft so drivers commuting to and from work can pick up fares. That way capacity should increase at low cost during rush hour with low capital cost.
“According to that same source, transit use for commuting in Spokane is about 4%. How much higher do you really think it would be with the added tax dollars, especially in light of Frank‘s comment above about high unemployment and low labor force participation?”
One wonders why Spokane is struggling so much when just 30 miles away in Coeur d’Alene, the unemployment rate is about half of Spokane’s. Perhaps it’s because a quarter of the population works in the unproductive sector of “educational services, health care, and social assistance.” Using SNAP as a metric for poverty, only 8% of the people in Kootenai County, ID receive food stamps, while the rate for Spokane County is 17%.
Perhaps a bus is needed not in Spokane but from Spokane to Coeur d’Alene.
“It may be that they need the high capacity at rush hour.”
I doubt it. In 2000, Spokane’s regional traffic congestion index was one-quarter of the national average and less than 14% of Puget Sound’s index.
@Frank
Does it make sense to use food stamp usage as a poverty measure across state lines?
http://frac.org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/map_raising_gross_income_test.pdf
Looks like you can get them while making a good deal more money in Spokane than in Coeur D’Alene.
A 30+ mile one way commute sounds pricey and time consuming, especially when Spokane residents are dispersed, and even worse assuming Coeur D’Alene jobs are dispersed. $15 round trip fare sounds like a lot if you only pull down $75 a day.
“Does it make sense to use food stamp usage as a poverty measure across state lines?”
Perhaps not. I’d prefer to use AFDC, but SNAP was easier to find. Good point about being able to be 2x above FPL in Spokane and still get SNAP.
According to census.gov, the Spokane (city) poverty rate from ’09-’13 was 19.2% and about six percent higher than the state average and about three percent higher than Spokane.
The bus to Coeur d’Alene comment was flippant. (But apparently the ballot included a pilot program for bus service from Spokane to Coeur d’Alene.) I still wonder why the unemployment rate is much lower there.
” It could have done better using minivans than the $1.2 million buses it planned to buy.”
Seems like a lavish waste of money. An open-air oxcart (with a floor lined with hay for extra comfort) would be considerably cheaper – not to mention more Green, which progressives *supposedly* support. A few oxcarts could be affordably rented by the city to roam Spokane throughout the day. They need not be especially fast – it’s not like the passengers need to be at a job or anything. Besides, few workers use public transit (not that there are many employed people in Spokane in the first place, as Frank pointed out). Passing motorists could pelt the oxcart with rotten vegetables, which would act as an incentive to the passengers to supply their own transportation rather than depending on government handouts.
Even oxcarts are too classy for Spokane.
Spokane rejects tax, msetty shits a brick. Then of course, if he lived in the Spokane area, it would be in Deer Park, while saying everyone should live in downtown.
“One wonders why Spokane is struggling so much when just 30 miles away in Coeur d’Alene, the unemployment rate is about half of Spokane’s…”
I’ve done a lot of transit work in the area. Coeur d’Alene has a tourism sector that Spokane is missing. It has a beautiful lake and resort directly adjacent to downtown and several casinos around the city. It’s a hop, skip and jump away from some nice skiing too. Spokane has Gonzaga and a few ski resorts a couple of hours away. Not sure what the economic impact is, but Coeur d’Alene is also a huge haven for white supremacist.
I personally like Spokane, but I’m a sucker for blue collar shitholes in the NW. I like the weather, the access to wilderness, and the funky/trashy charm. Tacoma, for example, is one of my favorite cities. There’s a folksyness and charm to the shitholes of the NW that don’t exist in the shitholes everywhere else.
Bennet-
I assume that when you call Coeur d’Alene a “a huge haven for white supremacist” you’re referring to the Aryan Nations, a few hundred nut cases from around the nation that got busted up around 2001. I don’t see how this makes, or for that matter ever made, “Coeur d’Alene “a huge haven for white supremacist.”
I also find it ironic that you portray Spokane’s economy as being dependent on one university and a few far off ski resorts. Spokane isn’t a boom town but there is a lot more going on there than that. One university and a couple far off ski resorts won’t support a couple hundred thousand people. If you want more details you could look it up on Wikipedia, if your concerned about the facts.
Builder,
I have spent a lot of time on the ground in Coeur d’Alene and the surrounding area. It is the only place I have been privy to direct, overt and brazen displays of white supremacy (I live in and have spent a lot of time in the deep south too. That should tell you something). I’ve seen “white power” flags flying on flag poles in front yards. Just a few years ago while doing a transit study I drove past a house with an amazingly racist snowman display that made national news (http://gawker.com/5704960/idaho-man-rings-in-holidays-with-ku-klux-klan-snowman). I know that the AB got busted up after killing 2 black people in the area a while back, but northern Idaho is still a major node for white supremacist. I’ve had to deal with them on occasion.
I should have been more clear re: the Spokane economy. I was comparing tourism between CDA and Spokane. My point was that CDA has a much large tourist draw than Spokane, not that Spokane’s economy is entirely based on a University and regional ski locations. Sorry for the confusion.
Bennett-
No, they didn’t kill two black people. They shot at a car and caused it to crash. They then beat the occupants and held them at gunpoint. I’m sure it was extremely frightening for the victims but they lived to sue the hell out of the Aryan Nations. Let’s keep this this fact based.
My bad.
Metrof–ks, you’re losing your touch as a troll. I didn’t “shit a brick” over the Spokane transit tax because I know it is much more likely to pass at the November 2016 election. I just like to rub it in the face of people like you who hate transit. So f–k off.
I’ve done a lot of transit work in the area. Coeur d’Alene has a tourism sector that Spokane is missing. It has a beautiful lake and resort directly adjacent to downtown and several casinos around the city. It’s a hop, skip and jump away from some nice skiing too.
Coeur d’Alene is also becoming a haven for retirees. Since they are (mostly) out of the workforce, they allow the local population and economy to grow without increasing the size of the workforce much, meaning there are more jobs locally relative to the number of job-seekers. That helps keep unemployment down.
I think Ruby Ridge was also in northern Idaho, but I don’t remember it necessarily being close to Coeur d’Alene.