A New Governor for Washington, a New Day for Transit in Seattle?

We’ve just spent eight years with a governor who’s been unwilling to lead on transit. She’s put forward road and highway expansion projects, but she has done no more than the bare minimum to support transit.

Jay Inslee ran as an environmental candidate. He’s talked a lot about green jobs and renewable energy, and worked in Congress to help promote both. But at home, the greenest jobs we can possibly create are those that build transit. And the most damaging jobs we can create are those expanding our highways, literally paving the way for climate change.

Jay Inslee’s values tell me he should be a leader on both transit and land use. How he was elected, and the people elected around him this week – like Jessyn Farrell and Jake Fey – tell me the voters want him to lead on transit too.

He’s not going to do it alone – we need to tell him what we want. Personally, I want a transportation package that fixes existing roads and bridges, builds bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure wherever it makes those repairs, and funds transit – a lot of it. What we found in 2007 with the failure of Roads and Transit is that people in Puget Sound don’t want more or bigger highways – and polling since then (and that whole 2008 Sound Transit 2 blowout) shows that there are two things we all agree on: we want to fix our aging infrastructure, and we want to build more transit.