Last year was a banner year for transportation in Washington State, this year, TCC will be focusing on the implementation of the Connecting Washington Transportation package and supporting efforts from our partners. Download the 2016 Legislative Agenda here.

Investing in Choices and Smart Design

With the passage of the 16-year, $15 billion Connecting Washington Transportation package, our legislative efforts will be focused on:

  • Maintaining commitments to the record level of multi-modal investments to fund important transit, bicycle, pedestrian projects and the Safe Routes to Schools program.
  • Implementation of practical design concepts to realize project savings for important maintenance needs. The 2015 package set up new requirements around practical design that will create new flexible funding that should be prioritized for important maintenance projects over new capacity. These funds could also be used to address significant unmet transit capital needs around aging bus fleet replacement statewide.

 

Efficient Movement of People and Goods

405 Tolling: Oppose SB 6152 and HB 2312: TCC strongly supports the implementation of the new Express Toll Lanes on Interstate 405 to manage congestion and improve traffic flow. We oppose efforts to reduce the number of express toll lanes or to limit the duration of tolling. Pricing is an effective way to manage travel demand in this highly congested corridor and efforts to limit or undermine the intent of these toll lanes will impact the efficient movement of people and goods. Click here to take action.

Other Transportation Priorities:

Strengthen Washington State’s Distracted Driving Laws 
Support Washington Bikes and the Washington Traffic Safety Commission (WTSC) agency request legislation to strengthen current law by broadening definitions, closing loopholes and increasing penalties for distracted driving.

Streamline SEPA review and transit mitigation funding
The transportation revenue package passed in 2015 includes many projects that may negatively impact transit during and after construction. TCC support efforts by the Washington State Transit Association to include transit mitigation in the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) process for major WSDOT transportation projects that may impact transit service.

Taking care of our roads and bridges
TCC supports King County’s efforts to invest in its aging roads and bridges. We must commit to maintaining our infrastructure to keep people connected to jobs, schools or wherever they need to go.

TCC has spent the last few months working with coalition partners to identify what the perfect ST3 package and Sound Transit System Plan would look like.  Together, we represent environmental, land use, active transportation, social justice, affordable housing, and transit stakeholders, with thousands of members in the central Puget Sound region.  Yesterday, we submitted the following letter to the Sound Transit Board and staff to communicate our priorities and outcomes we would like the ST3 ballot measure to include.

We look forward to working in the coming months with Sound Transit to create a strong ST3 ballot measure that voters will support!

You can read the full letter here.

 

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