Issue Position: Land Use and Transportation

Issue Position

My professional career of the last decade has been devoted to making our neighborhoods and cities livable and people-oriented. At WashPIRG and at Transportation Choices Coalition, I spearheaded a number of successful policy efforts to improve local and state planning to put in place policy frameworks to guide budgetary decisions. Most notably, we reformed state transportation planning guidelines to change the measure of success for a transportation project from how focusing on the movement of single-occupancy vehicles, which necessarily results in wide, multi-lane roads and highways, to focusing on the movement of people and goods, which results in the use of a variety of transportation tools like transit, sidewalks, and bike paths to get people around. We also put in place targets to reduce vehicle miles traveled, to create a policy framework to reduce carbon emissions from the transportation sector.

From passing the 2005 Transportation Partnership Package to the passage of Sound Transit's 2008 ballot measure, with perseverance, the ability to build consensus, and optimism, I helped our state make big, positive changes in transportation policy and civic dialogue. As a legislator, I would continue to take a systemic approach to land use and transportation to ensure we have the right priorities in place.

Expanding Transportation Funding: I support transportation investments that improve our environment, our economy and our quality of life. That means investing in:

*Transit. In the face of three years of transit service cuts across the state, we need to get back in the game of state funding for transit (currently the state funds about 1% of transit budgets). We also need to continue to provide local jurisdictions with more funding tools, especially in the very near term to prevent further cuts to transit.
*Safety and maintenance. We need to take care of the infrastructure we already have, from repaving I-5 and local city streets to repairing and replacing our aging bridges.
*Biking infrastructure. I support investments in bike paths like the Burke-Gilman Trail, clearly marked bike lanes on neighborhood streets, and planning efforts that help communities identify and prioritize bike infrastructure.
*Pedestrian infrastructure. In districts across the state and in the 46th, there are still too many neighborhoods that lack sidewalks, clear pedestrian and bicycle markings and signage, street connectivity, and safe street crossing treatments.

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