Creating Jobs And Cleaning Up Our Environment

We need to take serious steps in addressing the issues facing our environment. To reduce carbon emissions and lower our human output of greenhouse gasses, it is time to change the Single Occupancy Vehicle (SOV) culture of Washington State. Having spent three years on Senate Transportation Committee staff, I know the political forces that continue to create a dependence on fossil fuels, SOVs, and highways. To bring about this change I propose the following:

• Enhance the financial incentives for drivers to carpool, vanpool, take buses or other alternatives to Single occupancy Vehicles (SOVs).

• Provide incentives for employers to adopt distance learning/ meeting technology to lower the number of commute trips for work. The adoption of     eLearning technologies in the community and technical college system for example; has saved millions of commute trips; reduced miles traveled; and have had a significant impact on lowering the carbon footprint of students and the institutions.

• Create infrastructure projects to build more rail, light rail, HOV lanes, bike lanes, and pedestrian overpasses on state and local routes. This will create jobs, enhance safety, and promote a healthier society!

• We need transportation revenue sources that can be used flexibly to reduce congestion and reduce our environmental impact. Current laws force every gas tax dollar collected to be spent on more highways; this only begets more traffic, more air pollution, and more congestion. The greatest transportation systems in the world balance their investments across all modalities.

We clearly need the “cost” of transportation to reflect all of the costs, including environmental impacts. When consumers are forced to pay the total cost of anything, they have more complete information from which to make informed choices.

Initiative 695 largely wiped out the Motor Vehicle Excise Tax (MVET). I respect that the voters were frustrated at the lack of response year after year to their demands to lower the MVET, but the near total elimination of the flexible revenue devastated local transit systems, rail, and passenger ferries. We devastated the very programs we are now desperate to put in place in light of our global environmental imperatives.

The Washington State Board for Community & Technical Colleges in partnership with the legislature and other stakeholder groups have worked to expand the definition of “high-demand” fields of study to include green/clean energy jobs. This has made millions of dollars available for our colleges to begin, expand, and enhance their program offerings. We now have nine colleges with degrees and certificates in energy programs including our Center of Excellence for Energy Technology at Centralia College. Washington State will emerge from this great recession with thousands of new jobs producing the clean energy infrastructure of tomorrow. A two hour drive from Olympia to Vantage Washington reveals hundreds of wind turbines that are producing desperately needed renewable energy. In the process we are creating jobs in transportation, manufacturing, and the skilled trades (sheet metal, plumbers, pipe fitters, electricians, operating engineers, etc.). We can and will transform our economy and our environment together!

Now is also the time to uphold the core values of the Growth Management Act (GMA) to avoid rural sprawl and focus on urban density. We can start by requiring that local planning must include an integration of transit and other alternatives to roads-only approaches. Jurisdictions, using the best available science and modeling tools, should be required to show the environmental impact of their transportation plans over long periods of time. If the public knew that they had alternatives based on environmental impacts, we would likely see a changed sentiment for transit and other non-highway investments.

Let us not fear the very change we seek in our hearts and minds. Instead, let’s boldly embrace a new future. A future that focuses on alternative transportation options, clean energy technologies, and a wave of job growth that puts Washington back to work and reduces our environmental impact at the same time.