Daily Score Blog

People who move to the suburbs may think they're fleeing the polluted air of the city.  Of course, there's a tradeoff: by living in low-density suburbs, they spend more time in their cars. And as it turns out, the air inside your car may be just about the dirtiest you'll breathe all day.

Last year, researchers in Sydney, Australia released a study (pdf) that measured the levels of benzene (a carcinogen) and other volatile organic compounds (VOCs), as well as asthma-inducing nitrogen oxides, among people who commute by car, bus, train, bike and foot.

The verdict? Car commuters breathed the worst air, getting the highest doses of benzene and other VOCs. Even bus commuters were exposed to lower levels of VOCs than car commuters (though bus riders breathed higher levels of nitrogen dioxide). Train commuters had the least exposure overall, with cyclists and walkers coming in second-best.

Washington's population growth appears to be picking up a bit of steam:  the state added 88,600 new residents over the past year, according to the state Office of Financial Management (OFM). That was 20,000 more residents than the state added during the previous year.  And compared with 2 years before, the pace of population growth increased even more, rising from .9 percent per year in 2002-2003, to 1.4 percent in 2004-2005.  All in all, it's a fairly signficant uptick.

Seattle's monorail project has smashed into the biggest bump in its bumpy history. This is hardly news anymore: the $2 billion 14-mile line will end up costing $11 billion, with $9 billion in interest payments, and the tax to fund it will extend until 2053. City hall and Olympia are, in short, freaking out. Read about it here, here, and here.

There's good reason to freak out. The monorail financing as it is currently proposed is absurd. HOWEVER, the monorail is not dead yet. And while the financing debacle is more serious than a flesh wound, it should not spell the end of the project. Following, I spell out a few ways to salvage it.

(Full disclosure: I am an unreconstructed believer in the monorail. At its essence it is superior to any other form of transportation in the region. You can read my in principle defense of the monorail at the end of this post.)

1. Truncate the line. It's clearly not cost-effective the build the entire 14-mile green line without additional funding. Lopping off the arm north of downtown would preserve valuable capacity to West Seattle (even more valuable when the $4 billion viaduct tunnel inevitably implodes). It might even be possible to cut out only the downtown section, saving money on the most expensive property acquisitions. Riders could still get from the neighborhoods to Seattle Center or SoDo, close enough to walk to downtown or switch to other forms of transit.
2. Raise taxes, or diversify. Why not raise the value-based tax on cars, perhaps extending to brand new cars--an egregious oversight in the current financing? This would shorten the terms of the debt, dramatically reducing the overall cost. Alternatively, the monorail should consider taxing 1) commercial parking (the city has the authority to do this and it has the advantage of both encouraging transit and discouraging driving); 2) cruise ships (surely, Seattleites would love this one. After all, those clueless cruisers will undoubtedly be using the monorail).
3. Get government funding. The feds, the state, the county, and the city manage to come up with huge sums of money for all sorts of less worthy projects--the asinine viaduct tunnel, I-405 expansion, the asinine 520 expansion, the South Lake Union streetcar, and light rail, not to mention buses. There's no reason, in principle, that the monorail shouldn't be subsidized by government funds.