Broback's Blog

An extremely entertaining news bit appeared on KING 5 last week. Both Rossi and Gregoire mess up royally as they debate what to do about the crumbling 520 bridge.

First, pay close attention to what slips out from Rossi at the 1:33 mark:

“It’s just going to get worse and worse and worse…we have businesses who are not moving to Washington state because of our congestion…”

Those who are intimate with the strategies of the building/realtor cabal know that there has been a tacit understanding to NEVER stress how we need to build roads to encourage businesses to move here. The problem is that a significant number of voters are not at all interested in funding road expansion just so developers can profit from filling them up. To them, 4 lanes of congestion is much preferred to 6 packed lanes AND a hefty tax/toll bill. Long time voters remember funding a wider I-90 just so developers could profit from turning the Sammamish Plateau into an ant farm.

Instead, the developer contingent have adopted the “they’re coming anyway and congestion is only going to get worse” mantra. For some reason, Rossi truthfully exposes the economic notion of equilibrium — that when a system is overwhelmed, people choose to not participate.

Wanna bet he doesn’t raise this issue again?

Then comes the really funny bit. Gregoire critiques Rossi’s assertion that he can build an 8 lane 520 for less than her 6 lane version. At the root of her criticism? Not that I-5 is a parking lot already (the WSDOT response.) No, it’s that “It’s silly to use 2007 numbers when we know inflation and the cost of materials and oil is going up…”

You’re kidding right? Gregoire and the DOT are using 2006 numbers in all of their current estimates! The only change they’ve made to the cost estimates put forth in September of 2006 was to (amazingly) lower them.

Somehow the press has never asked the question, “hey are these 520 estimates really based in reality? A lot has happened in the last 2 years.”

Leave it to the citizen journalists I guess…