Here’s why you should vote ‘no’ on Move Seattle

You should, without hesitation, vote “no” on the ideologically-driven, $930 million Move Seattle transportation plan.

It’s a money grab meant to install bike lanes, transit-only lanes, and more streetcars.

This plan will increase the city’s cost of living, make traffic worse and not a single project they outlined is guaranteed to even get funding.

Under the leadership of Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and Seattle Department of Transportation Director Scott Kubly, the Move Seattle plan actively ignores some of the key problems facing residents and visitors who travel travel around Seattle. It takes away lanes and parking spaces from drivers to accommodate modes of transportation few people use.

Despite its negative impact on traffic congestion, Move Seattle will add 50 miles of newly protected bike lanes. I’m sure bicycle activists love this. But for the 96 percent who are non-bike commuters, this will hurt mobility and lead to more standstill traffic and more dangerous road conditions as drivers try to navigate the bizarre infrastructure changes the city ends up installing.

Related: Move Seattle campaign caught in a flat out lie

Bike commuting is on a downward trend and the bike share program is such a failure that Kubly wants to make bikes electric-powered &#8212 apparently he just realized we have a lot of hills in the city. And yet the city is willing to push another $65 million into bike lanes that only 3.4 percent of the city uses for commuting.

Move Seattle would also extend the city’s streetcar system, but SDOT has shown they’re incapable of handling the current streetcar projects. The First Hill streetcar (if it’s ever completed) will be over budget and more than a year behind schedule. Yet, they want us to give them up to $35.4 million more for a streetcar extension of just a half mile in Capitol Hill?

It’s worth noting that the original cost estimation SDOT gave us was off by more than $4 million (what’s $4 million when it’s other people’s money?) and that, according the legislation, any funds used on streetcars must evaluate the “effect relative to race and social justice implications.”

The city would spend just $14 million on traffic-light signalization (the only meaningful expense for drivers; an expense that should have happened years ago), but $20 million for urban forestry (including planting trees), a to-be-determined tens of millions of dollars related the over-budgeted Elliott Bay Seawall Project (another example of SDOT’s inability to handle major projects) and unidentified dollars on “safety education.”

And though proponents of Move Seattle like to push all these project ideas to the public, they never quite seem to mention the language in the legislation that would be passed with a ‘Yes’ vote: That “the Spending Breakdown is illustrative only and shall not be mandatory.” Meaning, even if voters like some of the projects in their plan, there’s no guarantee they will ever be funded.

What will likely happen is Murray and Kubly will use the money to fund their “urbanist-at-all-costs agenda” despite what it will mean to everyday Seattleites.

This is not to say that all the project proposals are bad. There’s no doubt the Move Seattle plan offers up some worthwhile projects. But many of them are either already underway and funded or can be funded outside of this outrageous transportation package that relies, yet again, on property tax hikes.

As you read here, Kubly sent out a website link to reporters with hand picked “detail[s] on specific projects, funding levels and timelines in the Move Seattle levy proposal.”

There is one project the site pushes that’s undoubtedly worth our funding and support: The Sidewalk Development Program, which adds sidewalk and sidewalk improvements to various neighborhoods, with Broadview featured on the website. But it’s a project already funded, an announcement that was made on Oct. 21.

Furthermore, they’re looking to spend $25 million on a bike bridge in Northgate. What’s not told in their Move Seattle pitch is they already have $10 million in funding from SDOT and Sound Transit, and $10 million from the 2015 Washington Transportation Package.

All Move Seattle does is give SDOT and Mayor Murray a $930 million dollar check to do as they see fit. The campaign already lied about their support in an attempt to gain your backing. Do you trust them with that kind of money and no guarantees or even a master plan that demonstrates how traffic congestion will improve with their transportation plan? I do not. I’m voting ‘no’ and you should, too.