Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Legislative and Bake Sale Updates!

For those of you that have been tracking our legislative activity, here is a quick update as the final days of the regular session approach.

-Yesterday and today TCC and the Sierra Club held bake sales for transit in Shoreline and Tacoma. The Seattle Transit Blog has a video of the event yesterday at the Aurora Transit Center. We made nearly 50 dollars at each event for transit. Thank you to all of the advocates, staff, and every day transit riders who stopped by and made these events a success!

-The STB video features Ken Harvey who is the marketing director at Community Transit. CT has launched a blog and Ken has an informative post today highlighting how widespread the transit funding crisis is regionally and nationally.

-Session doesn't end until March 11th so the Legislature still has time to do something to stave off massive service bus cuts across the state. Go to http://www.transportationchoices.org/SaveMyBus.asp for more info.

-Transportation Choices Coalition and our friend's at Futurewise worked hard to restore 14 million dollars to the regional mobility transit grant program that the House and Senate Transportation Budgets proposed cutting. Under the leadership of Reps. Clibborn, Liias, and Dickerson the House restored the funding while the Senate did not. The issue will be negotiated in conference between the two chambers. Erica at Publicola has the scoop also Rep. Liias discusses the issue on his legislative video update . Thank you Clibborn, Dickerson and Liias!

-The Seattle Times picked up on an important bill that gives WSDOT the authority to create a hot lane system on 405. TCC supports this legislation but we oppose an amendment added in the Senate, which will make the system free for carpools that have 2 more people. We believe that in order to achieve maximum efficiency in the system and transit mobility the lanes should remain free only for carpools that are three people or bigger.

If you have any questions on these issues feel free to e-mail me at Andrew@transportationchoices.org.

And don't forget to SAVE YOUR BUS!

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