Both sides wrong on $20 million Sound Transit spending

Just weeks after reporting Sound Transit spent nearly $1 million dollars on tote bags, consultants and ads for a party no one wanted or needed, our news partners at KIRO TV discovered that they’ve spent over $20 million on advertising and marketing over the last ten years, calling into question how our tax dollars are being used at a time they’re asking for billions more.

Related: Sound Transit spent over $850K tax dollars on party no one asked for

“It’s a waste of taxpayer dollars and it’s taking from transit service,” former King County Council member Maggie Fimia of Smarter Transit told KIRO TV. They’re opposed to the $54 billion dollar ST3 plan.

Not everyone is sounding alarms, of course. Transit-at-all-cost activist bloggers have called for more ad spending. Charles Mudede called concerns over ad spending “…nowhere near or anything like legitimate.”

Both sides are wrong in their take because neither side is honest in their arguments for or against the spending.

I’m decidedly in favor of light rail and mass transit; at least, the routes and projects that make sense and won’t take my lifetime to be built. But changing timelines and making revisions for the sole purpose of getting votes, as Sound Transit is doing, indicates they’re acting politically, rather than taking seriously transit planning for the region.

Nevertheless, we should be advocating people take transit when it makes sense for them, and that takes significant ad dollars (which, by the way, stimulate the local economy; they advertise on KIRO Radio — yay). This makes traffic better and gives people actual options. So to claim the ad spending is a waste and should be going solely to projects is a myopic argument.

But claiming we should just spend more because we like transit is just as extreme and should be rejected the same.

Related: ‘Fishy’ Sound Transit timeline reason to say no to ST3

We should spend money efficiently; in a way that gets butts in transit seats. And as hard as you want to strain to make the silly argument, spending $28,000 on tote bags and $13,000 for fare-card holders and lanyards doesn’t promote transit (and no, claiming a party brought more riders than expected to transit doesn’t move me; this happened around the time of the viaduct closure).

Ad spending of $20 million isn’t too much, in theory. But any tax dollars spent on frivolous tchotchkes is a waste and deserves scrutiny. The side that says no to most spending and the side that says “give them a blank check” should both be pushed aside as ideological nonsense. Let’s be fair-minded here: spending money efficiently benefits everyone. So, let’s demand it.

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