So, now delay is a good thing? How's about a flashback:

Seattle Times Local News: Friday, May 03, 2002

$12.6 billion regional plan unveiled for roads, transit

King County Executive Ron Sims and his counterparts from Snohomish and Pierce counties yesterday unveiled a mammoth, $12.6 billion regional transportation-improvement package aimed at the November ballot.

If it makes the ballot, the executives' 10-year package might be the most expensive proposal ever put before the region's voters. It dwarfs the $3.9 billion Sound Transit plan they approved in 1996 and the $6.7 billion package they rejected a year earlier.

But Sims said such a large investment is needed to address "a growing sense of rage that nothing is being done."

• Nearly $1 billion to extend Sound Transit's proposed light-rail line north from the University District to Northgate and south from Tukwila to South 200th Street in SeaTac.

• $1.17 billion in Snohomish County road improvements.

• More than $1 billion for new buses and bus service, including "bus rapid transit" projects — buses that operate more like trains.

• $160 million to extend Sound Transit's "Sounder" commuter-rail line north from Seattle to Everett, and south from Tacoma to DuPont, Pierce County.

All this would be paid for by raising the sales tax — 0.5 percent in King County, 0.4 percent in the other two — imposing a 0.4 percent motor-vehicle excise tax and a $75 annual vehicle-license fee, and charging tolls on the Alaskan Way Viaduct, I-405 and Highway 520.

Others suggested that, with the statewide package and other tax measures already on the ballot, voters might feel overwhelmed by new taxes and be more inclined to vote against the regional plan.

But Sims said yesterday there was no time to waste.

"You cannot tell people sitting in congestion that we'll have another year of planning," he said.

Voters know the issues, Sims said, and more delay would only serve to confirm suspicions about government's inability to listen and act.

...But Sims said surveys show that, without light-rail extensions, the regional package probably wouldn't fare as well at the polls.

He also said the agency can find money from other sources to extend light rail north from downtown to the University District.

Good for Ron to call a lemon by its true name. The RTID was championed in the King Co Council by Rob McKenna and his lackey David Irons, and is composed of nothing but uncoordinated local pet projects, most of which are outdated and follow the asphalt paradigm. It doesn't even include finishing Hwy 18 over Tiger Mountain, since no town pushed for it. Sims is spot on: things have changed, and we need new, quicker solutions. Let road congestion limit itself; buses only help fill the roads they travel; traditional light rail is slow and expensive to build and cannot respond to changing demographics (& why cover the same ground the Sounder travels?). Build instead other more inventive ways to move about the county.

Thank you Ron Sims for your courageous stand against Roads & Transit.

I've been terribly disappointed that our local elected officials have ignored -- if not denied -- the global warming impact of the highways in Prop 1.

It's a great day when at least one progressive leader is brave enough to tell us the truth.

Ron can't make up his mind; he doesnt's sound like a leader worth following to me. This package may have flaws, but what's the alternative? His son might be 50 when it's paid off but it's better than his son being 50 and being asked to vote yes on similar proposals every 5 years while traffic congestion continues to cripple the region more every year. It's an investment folks, if we had made the one back in the late 60's we wouldn't be in this situation and would have a fully functioning regional transit network that we could be expanding rather than starting. Let's make the change and vote yes NOW. Yes people complain about price, but it's still a pittance compared to most regions where residents pay state income tax to fund their networks. I.E., in California, a single person making more than $39,000 per year pays almost 10%!!!

Congratulations to Ron who I seldom have ever agreed with. When even he recognizes the financial realities of ST2 and its fifty year, $100 billion plus indebtedness, it's time for all to rethink the whole plan. Solving the transportation problem here in the Olympia-Seattle-Bellevue-Everett-Bellingham region will become more troublesome as time goes on and requires totally new approaches other than more taxes imposed the way they are being proposed and directed (i.e., building more roads or growing the transit systems, neither by itself being the solution). Rather, let's have the powers-that-be consider other paths:

1)For companies, encourage them via a county or multi-county plan and apropriate benefits, to cluster and centralize their operations in population centers despite the desires of every level of widespread political entity's desires to the contrary. Making haste in every direction simultaneously has never worked and neither has growing and expanding with complete disregard for the consequences.
2)For the general public, acknowledge and deal with their love affair with the automobile. In lieu of building and expanding transit systems which historically provide only marginal addtional usage in terms of the total switch in ridership required, consider "high impact" changes. Continual expousing of some as yet unproven sudden migration by drivers, is like being picked to death by a chicken; you may get a terrific headache but in the end it's terminal. At the same time, building more roads while ignoring the reality of "if you build it, they will come" will not solve the problem either. For while a tempoary dimple of improvement may result, we are simultaneously developing more widespread housing, many of which now come complete with three car garages. Duh! Ergo, while it may be political suicide, perhaps elected leaders need to lead by making registration financially painful for that second and third auto at a given address.

To sum up, we need leadership of a type not yet displayed, anti-NIMBY unity by all as we're in it together, and completely new ideas instead of the repetitive same old, same old.

Mr. Sims,

I would like to thank you for putting your position as county executive and commitment to public service first and foremost ahead of politics. Certainly a marker of true leadership in my humble opinion given. Thank you.

I feel pretty bad for people in Seattle that already pay 9%+ on their sales tax, to raise it to 10% is starting to get outrageous.

everytime i pick up the paper there is an article with Govermore Gregoire saying mo money, mo money, mo money.you'd think they are building the streets out of gold in Seattle.government motto let's give ourself annual payraises and spend the money faster than we can get it. enough already ! !