Seattle Transit Victory Sweet Triumph For Club

"You probably haven't heard of Mike O'Brien," wrote Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat shortly after Election Day. "But if there's anyone from the governor to the mayor to the special-interest purveyors who gets credit for being exactly right about Puget Sound's worst political mess—transportation—it is this guy."

O'Brien chairs the Sierra Club's Cascade Chapter. On November 4, even in the face of the economic slump, Seattle-area voters passed a $17.9 billion transit measure, Proposition 1, to expand light rail, commuter train, and bus service in the urbanized areas of King, Pierce and Snohomish Counties. And no group was more instrumental in its passage than the Sierra Club.

The resounding victory (58 percent of voters approved the measure) was sweet vindication for O'Brien. In 2007 he and the Sierra Club took heat when the Club stood practically alone among its traditional allies in opposing a transportation bill (also, somewhat confusingly, called Proposition 1) that would have funded light rail and highways in the region. The Club reasoned that roads already had ample funding; what the region needed was a better, greener transit plan.

"Last year, groups who are normally allied with us said that you cannot pass a transit-only measure—you need roads in the bill," O'Brien says. "We believed otherwise." The bill went down to defeat, prompting Times columnist Westneat to fire off an e-mail to O'Brien congratulating him for "joining the ranks of backward Seattleites who have denied the city rapid transit for generations."

 

O'Brien, pictured above at a 2007 rally in downtown Seattle to defeat last year's roads & transit bill, saved Westneat's e-mail to use as motivation.

"We did an exit poll last year showing that voters would have passed a transit-only measure but not a roads-only measure," O'Brien says.

The Club wasted no time getting down to work with Sound Transit, the regional transit authority, to place a better measure on this year's ballot, impressing on them the importance of crafting a smart transit package that addressed climate change in designing greater Seattle's public transportation system.

The agency balked, saying they didn't know how to address climate change, so at the Club's urging they hired the Victoria Transit Policy Institute as a consultant. "It's the first time we know of that a U.S. transit agency considered greenhouse gases while designing a transit system," O'Brien says.

In many regional transit systems, especially away from the urban core, stations are built with huge parking lots right next to them. The Club challenged these "park & ride" lots, arguing that money should be allocated instead for bike lanes and bus routes connecting to the stations. As it turned out, many mayors and city councils didn't want parking lots in the middle of their downtowns.

"There's a segment of the public that will vote No on any big transit measure, and a segment that will vote Yes," O'Brien says. "But there's a decent chunk in the middle, and we found that these people are very responsive to the Sierra Club's global warming message. They voted against last year's transit measure that included 180 miles of new highway lanes, but supported this year's bill."

The resounding passage of this year's measure cemented the Sierra Club's status as the key environmental player on transit issues in the Puget Sound region. "We're on everyone's radar," O'Brien says. "If people want to pass transit legislation, they talk to us. That middle segment of the public looks to the Sierra Club to approve a transit project before voting on it."

More important, he believes, "we've framed this so people who care about global warming can do something about it. People are stuck in an auto-centric world and they're looking for alternatives. They'll jump at this kind of opportunity."