Be terrified of Jenny Durkan’s SDOT replacement

Last week, Scott Kubly resigned as the director of the Seattle Department of Transportation. We would be better served preparing ourselves for the worst possible replacement.

Though I didn’t support Mayor Jenny Durkan during her campaign, much of me thought she was shifting dramatically to the Left to placate some of the absurdly loud activist voices you must address if you want any type of political power in Seattle. I thought she was lying about her progressive attitudes because it was the only way to power; that she would moderate herself when in office. Right now, I don’t see that happening and it may become even more apparent with whom she picks to head SDOT.

Related: My awkward video with SDOT’s director

Durkan’s tone hasn’t changed. She’s still talking with social justice buzzwords; the equivalent of throwing red meat to conservatives. Only it’s to satisfy the progressive bloodlust of the Left. But more worrisome for anyone hoping for reasonable transportation decisions, Durkan’s appointed transportation radical Shefali Ranganathan as deputy mayor.

Ranganathan was with Transportation Choices, which promotes choices for transportation at the expense of drivers; they care about choices, just so long as you’re not in a car. It’s a key reason why they so strongly backed ST3, which purposefully hid from voters the insane calculation for car-tab fees. She is a believer that cars hold very little value in a city — she probably holds that value since she can afford to live in the city when others may need a car to drive to and from their second job as they struggle to make ends meet.

According to The Seattle Times editorial board:

The message [of this appointment] is less encouraging to those in Seattle and across the Puget Sound region suffering from miserable traffic and hoping for a new mayor to end the reign of ideological transportation planning, skewed by vested interests.

This raises a question about the diversity of viewpoints bearing on transportation policy. Why are so many called from the same bench?

They’re called from the same bench because politicians like Durkan, and before her Ed Murray, are terrified by a small group of loud, militant urbanist-at-all-costs activists in a city where protests, big or small, are a bad look for progressives facing their ire.

Durkan, preemptively saying she’s not to blame for the bad traffic about to hit us, has shown no willingness to lead on the transportation issues that face us, and is in a permanent mode of placating ideologues. She will pick someone more radical than Kubly and that means dire consequences for common sense, fair transportation fixes in a city in desperate need of some.

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