Populism kills WA state projects

Washington state’s two pro-tolling officials, Jerry A. Ellis and Rhonda Brooks (respectively Director of Economic Development, and Manager of Public/Private Initiatives in the state Department of Transportation) pull no punches in a recent article on the collapse of their toll program, (INFRASTRUCTURE FINANCE, August/September 1995.) They describe as “Kafkaesque” the notion now enshrined in state legislation that local unelected groups be given veto powers over transportation projects.

A number of states (for example Florida and Minnesota) require local jurisdictions through their elected officials to at least acquiesce in projects, but none we have heard of have ever given undefined groups of people supposedly “affected by” the project the right to stop it. Eventually the courts will have to decide who qualifies as people “affected by” a project. Everyone on earth is affected in some degree. Maybe a new highway would impact the productivity of Boeing operations. And the cost of air travel. Though I have never been closer to Washington state than Montana or the Bay area I can argue that since I often fly a Boeing airliner I am affected by one of these projects. I should have a vote?

Ellis and Brooks write: “Public opposition to huge infrastructure projects is nothing new...What is new is the legislative response requiring substantial evidence of public support, in the form of a vote, before any project can even be entered into the planning and exploratory phase.”

They say the state’s elected representatives have ceded to unrepresentative and unelected activists the right to make decisions for which legislatures and governments are formed. This populism which deprives government of authority and meaning was heavily pushed by state Republicans even though it represents the antithesis of the kind of ordered representative government to which they are supposedly attached.

The cession of decisionmaking to activists in Washington state has put on hold, or killed, $6 billion worth of proposals which the government sought from the private sector, including two major toll bridge upgrades, a pair of toll highways, and the Puget Sound Congestion Pricing Project. The last was the most ambitious and innovative involving construction of High Occupancy free/single occupant Toll (HOT) lanes and then progressive conversion of the present ‘free’ lanes to tolling throughout some 100 centerline miles of expressways in the Seattle metro area.

A park & ride franchise seems to be proceeding and the Tacoma Narrows bridge project may still go forward, but it looks as though the area will have to suffer more congestion and another cycle of political promises of something-for-nothing followed by inaction and disillusionment before practical market-based proposals have a decent shot.