By David Anderson
We’ve discovered we have more time to gather signatures in the effort to put an initiative on the ballot for a vote of the people on the most significant transportation issue the City of Lakewood is likely ever to face – as many as 12 high speed trains per day through a portion of the business district and along the neighborhoods of our city. Petitions and instructions are available here.
Even though the deadline noted on the petition is this past December 11, 2011, the effort to gather 5,500 signatures can continue until March 2, 2012. There have been 500 names collected to-date – which means that if each of those 500 each got 10 we’d be done.
Without going into the lengthy detail in the “Rational for Initiative” which was, and continues to be, the argument by which we undertook this signature drive (available upon request), the key matter to be addressed here is the date on which the Environmental Assessment (EA) – or whichever Environmental process they are utilizing – is completed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). The Environmental review, once completed, would be followed shortly by an anticipated signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), or an agreement or contract of some kind between WSDOT and the City of Lakewood.
Track improvements and high speed trains through Lakewood would then follow.
Once that MOU, etc. is signed, all bets are off for an initiative to ‘attack’ the project since an MOU, or contract, or agreement, per state law (as explained in the “Rational for Initiative”) places the issue into the “administrative category” – untouchable by initiative.
The EA is estimated to be finalized in the summer of 2012.
Given the sometime-in-the-summer signing and/or agreement, and the need to pre-empt that event by an election, we initially chose the last available Special Election date of May 15 (“third Tuesday of May”) – per the Municipal Research Services Center website – only to recently find out that the legislature has discontinued that date, now allowing only the dates in February and April, neither of which are now viable given the combined deadline criteria of the auditor and the city.
Bottom line, the good news is we can continue the petition drive and could use your help. While we now have until March 2, 2012, to gather 5,000 signatures is a sizeable task. Please contact us at communitymattersweb@gmail.com.
For further information on the case we’ve made for opposing this project, please refer to our website www.CommunityMattersWeb.com and a three-part series in the Suburban Times: Part I, Part II, Part III.
Well, your petition drive doesn’t sound promising. Let’s not forget to touch on the positives of the Point Defiance Bypass which is only a microcosm of the entire Portland to Vancouver B.C. project.
Go to: http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/passengerrail to read about the objectives and outcomes that Mr Anderson doesn’t mention. The biggest being reducing rail service on the main line which would enhance Port freight traffic in Tacoma and Seattle providing greater economic vitality for our region.
Yes, please indeed go to the site Ray mentioned as there are bulleted “reasons” WSDOT provides in an attempt to rationalize rail – rationalizations that do not in real time provide the economic vitality of which Ray writes. Readers – and thinkers – don’t need bullets any more than they need bullet trains. The Suburban Times ran a three part series on this subject substantiating both the fact that HSR is little more than a stimulus-money driven project fueling Amtrak’s engine while letting the truer indicator of our economic life-line languish just literally yards away from the proposed train reroute.
The Suburban Times ran a three part series? No, David Anderson ran a three part series using the Suburban Times to carry out his agenda. Let’s not forget the P.D. bypass fuels The Sounder’s engine too. Also, When more freight rail traffic can travel on the main line and public transit on the bypass line, it reduces congestion on I-5. The only legitimate concern at hand here is safe crossings along the route.
For Ray, convinced against his will, he is of the same opinion still. For everyone else, In an article entitled “End of the line for taxpayers subsidies,” siholars and analysts conducting independent, nonpartisan research at The Cato Institute, a national public policy research organization, revealed that “Amtrak has virtually no impact on reducing traffic congestion, pollution, or energy use. Even a doubling of train ridership would reduce energy consumption and traffic congestion by less than 0.1 %. It is estimated that Amtrak removes barely 2 percent of lane capacity – considerably below the threshold required for construction of a new lane.”
There is absolutely NO benefit to the city of Lakewood or Tillicum area in having Amtrack run 12 trains down our back yards.
IMO there will be no stopping it no matter what is done because the state and federal govt wants to inject stimulus funds.
The biggest issue, for me personally, is the unwanted extra trains, along with Sounder and Tacoma Rail and BNSF (JBLM transport), in my back yard. There is absolutely NO benefit to anyone impacted. Sounder has cleared all vegetation so there is no longer even a visual barrier between my yard and the tracks and PacHwy. What is beneficial about any of that?
We are moving high speed rail from a relatively remote, but visually exquisit, pathway to a populated route with numerous busy crossings. There is no benefit for anyone affected here either.
Until the BNSF improves their tracks and solves the slide problems in the north, and time they make up will still be moot. Moving the Amtrak route will have no impact on reducing through traffic on I5, and it will create a nightmare for commuters during peak hours
I see no difference in the approach that the Amtrak is taking to that one that the National Guard took in moving their gate.