Battle of the Buses: KC Exec on fee for transit

King County Executive Dow Constantine got on the KUOW this morning to defend his proposal for a $20, two-year car tab to help fund King County Metro.

Unsurprisingly, Constantine's argument centered around reducing congestion, but what caught my attention was that (according to him) 95 percent of commuters in King County own cars. That doesn't mean that 95 percent of people use their cars to get to work, though (a recent study found that half of commuters use transit of some kind to get to and from downtown Seattle). However, it does mean that thousands of car owners who take the bus to work (like me) will likely hop back in the cars if bus service gets cut, making the roads even more clogged. Another point, which didn't come up in the interview, that seems to rebut the argument drivers make when they pout and scream and say bus riders don't pay their way: If a good portion of bus riders also own cars, it means they will also be paying the car-tab fee (in addition to bus fare).

Constantine isn't known for sugar-coating his opinions, and his answers to questions about transit and taxes from callers and ever-smug Steve Scher were firm, dismissing claims that maybe "efficiency measures" could close budget shortfalls (Metro has already cut thousands of hours through "efficiency measures," resulting in a more unreliable bus schedule) and complaints about being taxed too much (ugh, I don't even want to touch this one).

He also said that to make up the needed revenue without the car tabs fee, Metro would have to raise bus fares by about $1.50 per trip–meaning a one-way trip during non-peak hours would cost $3.75. (For comparison, San Francisco is increasing standard bus fare to $2 in July, and it costs $2.25 in Chicago, the same as Metro's current rate.)

My favorite point of the interview came when Scher asked Constantine about Mckenna's plan to bolster education through efficiency measures in the state. Constantine called it a plan of "attrition" in state workers.

"That is an absolute fantasy that you could make up the enormous gap in education by laying off state employees."

Love him or hate him, the guy's got a way with words.