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June 5, 2008

How Obama Did It

The Washington Post has an article about how Obama and his team pulled off their incredible upset:

Almost from the beginning, Hillary Rodham Clinton's superior name recognition and her sway with state party organizations convinced Barack Obama's brain trust that a junior senator from Illinois was not going to be able to challenge the Clinton political machine head-on.

The insurgent strategy the group devised instead was to virtually cede the most important battlegrounds of the Democratic nomination fight to Clinton, using precision targeting to minimize her delegate hauls, while going all out to crush her in states where Democratic candidates rarely ventured.

I've been discussing with friends how different the electoral map is going to look in 2008 (Huffington Post has a good preview), but the WaPo piece is a must-read, if only because it shows how incredibly smart the Obama operation has been.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 5, 2008 10:36 AM.
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May 16, 2008

The Atlantic On Obama's Money Machine

The Atlantic has a fantastic article about Barack Obama's fundraising operation:

The story of Obama’s success is very much a story about money. It provided his initial credibility. It paid for his impressive campaign operation. It allowed him first to compete with, and then to overwhelm, the most powerful Democratic family in a generation—one that understood the power of money in politics and commanded a network of wealthy donors that has financed the Democratic Party for years.

What’s intriguing to Democrats and worrisome to Republicans is how someone lacking these deep connections to traditional sources of wealth could raise so much money so quickly. How did he do it? The answer is that he built a fund-raising machine quite unlike anything seen before in national politics. Obama’s machine attracts large and small donors alike, those who want to give money and those who want to raise it, veteran activists and first-time contributors, and—especially—anyone who is wired to anything: computer, cell phone, PDA.

For anyone interested in the intersection of the Internet, social networks, and how traditional political fundraising is being has been completely upended by this new model, it's a must-read.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 16, 2008 9:15 AM.
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February 10, 2008

Caucusing For Obama

Yesterday, I took part in the Washington State primaries, casting my vote in our local caucus for Barack Obama.

My extreme admiration for Obama isn't the focus of this post, and, frankly, I'm not sure it's needed - his qualities are covered exhaustively by blogs and the media. Suffice to say that, to me, he's The Real Deal, and I can't wait to vote for him in November.

I'd never participated in a caucus before, and to say I was excited would be a massive understatement. A few notes from the process:

• To caucus in Washington, you have to know your legislative district (I'm in the 43rd), as well as your precinct. This information is available in a few different places, but in my case the 43rd district Dems have a Web site where you can look it up.
• The Obama campaign also offered a "guide to Washington Caucuses" with a Caucus Finder tool. Very slick, very easy. (Nice organization, folks!)
• Caucuses start at 1 PM, and our caucus location was the local community center. I went with a few friends from the neighborhood, and we tried to arrive early (12:30 or so) to avoid the anticipated mad crush of people.
• The mad crush pretty much appeared about 30 seconds after we did, and kept coming, and coming, and coming. The organizers were clearly overwhelmed with the sheer volume of bodies that wanted to caucus, and they had to keep breaking out precincts into new rooms. Initially, five or so precincts were in one room, ours among them. But the room filled, and filled - we took out tables and chairs, so we could fit more people in, and it went standing-room-only. Then, the organizers would swing by, announce that they'd located more space, and take a precinct or two away from our room. Eventually, it was just our precinct - and it was still pretty full.
• The energy was terrific. Friendly, excited - people of all ages and backgrounds, every one of them happy to be participating and eager to cast a vote. It's easy to be cynical about democracy, but when you see it up close and personal like this, it's actually very inspiring.
• Once we'd figured out who was supposed to be where, we all signed in - name, address, phone, and preference for President. These votes were tallied by volunteer organizers in front of the room.
• The initial vote was a landslide: of the 104 people in our precinct, 94 were for Obama, 8 for Clinton, and 2 undecided. (I was madly text-messaging with my Dad in Spokane and my friend Chris, who was at another caucus location here in Seattle. Both reported big Obama numbers.)
• One person then volunteered to represent for each candidate, and speak for a minute on their behalf. A guy got up for Obama, and a woman for Clinton. The crowd then began asking questions (and answering them), trying to change the minds of the undecideds and the folks on the other side.
• The conversation was fluid, smart - people clearly knew their candidates, knew their issues, and had good things to say. The room could clap after anyone made a speech - it was incredibly civil and polite.
• (For some reason, it didn't surprise Elaine at all when she found out that I'd spoken a couple times.)
• Eventually, the debate ceased and we re-counted. When all was said and done, both undecideds broke for Obama - 96 Obama, 8 Clinton. All 6 of our delegates went for Obama. I was also elected to be one of the delegates to go to the District convention on April 5 (!).
• Start to finish, the whole thing took about three hours.

It was amazing to be part of this process. While it was chaotic, crazy, and a little confusing, people stepped up to help and we all got through it. It felt so very ... civic. And wonderful.

(And, as it happens, Washington State broke two-for-one for Barack.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 10, 2008 9:35 AM.
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April 17, 2007

End Game

And, just like that, it was over.

The Washington State Legislature has tabled the proposal to build the Sonics and Storm a shiny new half-billion-dollar arena down in Renton. As I've said previously, I agree with this decision - much as I love the Storm, there is precious little public interest to be served by subsidizing the payroll deficits and bad business decisions of a bunch of private team owners.

Following the announcement of the Legislature's non-action, Clay Bennett, new owner of the Soncis/Storm, said:

"This is a staggering and quite likely a debilitating blow to our efforts to develop a world-class arena facility. Clearly at this time the Sonics and Storm have little hope of remaining in the Puget Sound region."

Translation: "We're taking our ball and going home to Oklahoma."

Yes, I'm sad. Sad that the economics of the NBA are so broken that they require massive public subsidy. Sad that Seattle is losing a long-time icon (the SuperSonics, whatever you may think of their record this year, have been part of the Seattle cultural landscape for four decades). And sad that the new team owners are so freakin' vindictive that they're taking the Storm with them. WNBA is a distinct market from the NBA - the league tends to do better in "Creative Class" cities like Chicago, New York, or Washington, DC, and fail in places like Orlando or Cleveland. Seattle has one of the best WNBA markets in the country, and I'm willing to bet that the team struggles to find an audience in Oklahoma City. The new owners could easily split the teams, leave the Storm here, and take their NBA prize with 'em to OK.

But they won't.

That's business, and that's life. Nothing lasts forever.

The Storm home opener is Saturday, May 19 - just over a month from now. Catch the action while you can, y'all. I'll be there.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated April 17, 2007 1:34 PM.
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March 4, 2007

Sound Transit Tour

Back in September, I attended a family barbecue and wound up chatting with Martin, an old friend of the family. After we got past the usual, gosh-haven't-seen-you-in-three-decades kinds of conversation (holds hand 3 feet from the floor: "wow, you were just this high!"), we got to talking about what we were up to these days. Turns out that Martin is a fellow UW MBA alum (Class of '81, yo) ... and a Program Manager at Sound Transit.

(Yes, that Sound Transit. The conversation immediately took a veering, hard right turn into transit nerdery.)

Martin runs the rail systems (e.g., the Sounder Commuter Train) at ST, and, at one point, offered to "show me and Elaine around a bit sometime."

(Oh ... silly man. So totally gonna call you with an offer like that.)

Thus, on Thursday, Elaine and I found ourselves taking a super-cool tour of Sound Transit. We met Martin at Union Station (in all its gorgeous, restored splendor - history available here), caught the Sounder down to Tacoma, and then rode the Tacoma Light Rail system for the length of the line.

This was both an incredibly cool way to spend an evening, as well as a glimpse into what kinds of transit investments are going on in the community. Specifically:

• Sounder Rail. The Sounder is a classic, heavy-rail train system that runs between Seattle and Tacoma. It's relatively limited at the moment, with just four runs going Tacoma -> Seattle in the mornings, and four going Seattle -> Tacoma at night. Despite the low frequency, the trains are busy -- we had trouble finding a seat, and it was clear that the bulk of our fellow commuters were used to using their time productively. The ride from Seattle to Tacoma takes you through Kent and Puyallup, dropping you safely at the Tacoma Dome station about an hour after you started. The trains are clean and comfortable, with tables to work on and overhead spaces for bags and whatnot. If I lived in the South End and worked downtown at, say, Amazon (whose offices are right next to the northern terminus at King Street Station), the Sounder would be my preferred method of getting to work.
• Light Rail. Seattle's airport-to-downtown Light Rail project is under construction (opening 2009), but Tacoma has a baby system up and running now. Tacoma's rail is best thought of as an in-city "starter" or "demonstration" system; it runs from the Tacoma Dome Station to the Convention Center, past a couple of museums, the UW Tacoma campus, and a growing nightlife district. Like the 16th Street rail system in Denver, Tacoma's system is designed to get people up and down a specific corridor, thus stimulating economic development and providing a convenience to the public. Its relatively short length (about 1.3 miles) and good frequency (about every 10 minutes) makes it more like a street-level Seattle Monorail. For all that, it was a great experience - the ride is free, the trains are clean and quiet, and the stations look great. We hopped off and enjoyed some burgers and brew at a pub along the tracks. (And if you're interested, Tacoma uses overhead-electrified rail instead of an electrified third rail. I assume this has to do with safety - since the rails are at street level, and pedestrians can/do walk on them, overhead electrification prevents, uh, accidents.)

What's terrifically exciting about all this is the forthcoming Sound Transit 2 vote in November.

Today, Sound Transit is underway with construction of the core regional light rail line (airport to Downtown). This line is in the process of being augmented (with a $750M federal grant) to go north and get to Capitol Hill and the University of Washington campus.

ST2 will (among many other things) expand the regional light rail system dramatically, boosting the total number of miles to 60. It will connect Seattle's downtown to Lynnwood, Redmond (specifically the Overlake Transit Center, aka "The Microsoft Stop"), and Tacoma -- all through light rail. You can see a map of this on the ST site.

As a rail guy, I obviously find the prospect of ST2 incredibly exciting - doubly so after Thursday's tour. I'm telling you, with a comprehensive system like this, people will have a much easier time getting around our region, regardless of how packed the freeways are. Want to get from Bellevue to downtown Seattle? 20 minutes. Seattle to the airport? 25 minutes. And along the way, we'll get economic development and services to accommodate all the new investment.

It's one thing to go to London and see the Tube - it's quite another to see it coming together in Seattle.

I strongly recommend doing the Tacoma Light Rail thing if you have the opportunity. It's simple, slick, and gives a good taste of what we have to look forward to when Link opens in 2009.

Can't wait.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 4, 2007 6:44 PM.
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February 25, 2007

Just Say No. Twice.

I voted today, checking the boxes and mailing off my ballot to show "the government" (read: Mayor Nickels, WSDOT, and Gov. Christine Gregoire) that I'd like them to please, pretty please, pretty pretty please quit screwing around and simply tear down the damn Viaduct .

Part of me thinks I should have saved the $0.39 stamp.

See, today's vote is part of a special election here in Seattle regarding the future of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. We're being asked two questions regarding how best to replace the hulking concrete monstrosity that menaces our shoreline. Specifically:

• Do you want a tunnel?
• Do you want an elevated rebuild (read: another Viaduct)?

Now, this vote is nonbinding (your vote doesn't actually require that anyone with any power actually do anything) as well as contradictory (you could, conceivably, vote for both the tunnel and the rebuild, which makes about as much sense as covering a minivan in chocolate sauce). So the city fathers and mothers will be getting a stream of ballots that will need to be held into the light, squinted at, and, ultimately, "interpreted."

Not that the interpretation is actually going to mean anything - the State can ignore it, as can the city.

Lovely.

I've been on record for nearly a year ("Tear It Down, Leave It Down") that replacing the Viaduct is a terrible idea. It's not only expensive -- it's unnecessary:

But interestingly, it turns out that, in order to build the tunnel, you have to close the Viaduct for four years. Read that again: four years. Those poor folks in West Seattle? That economically-necessary through traffic? Well, they're going to lose their transit methods for more than a thousand days.

You know what? Over a thousand days, a "new normal" appears. People find accommodations with their environment. They get to work differently. They move to new houses. Businesses relocate. Things sort out.

In other words, if you're going to close it for four years anyway, why reopen it at all? Hell, it'll be a new freeway at that point, right? People will have to re-learn to take the shiny new tunnel, because they'll be so used to working around its absence.

In the subsequent 11 months since I wrote that piece, we've come to find out that mayor's tunnel is dead (no funding) and that the State is proposing we replace the current big, hulking Viaduct with a big, hulking Viaduct that's even bigger and hulk-ier.

Yikes.

Naturally, the cats over at The Stranger are all over this, urging everyone to vote "No and Hell No" on the ballot. The "surface" option finally seems to be getting traction -- King County Executive Ron Sims is now behind it, and I imagine Greg Nickels will be a believer as soon as it looks like the state is serious about building a new-and-expanded concrete freeway in the sky through his downtown.

So I voted ("No and Hell No"), and it's all political theater, and I'm a little disgusted by it. However, I'm still optimistic that we'll tear it down and leave it down ... if only because the idea of putting a new Viaduct in place is so ridiculously stupid.

I do love this town, but sometimes, I tell ya...

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 25, 2007 8:33 PM.
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November 19, 2006

Viaduct: Not As Valuable As We Thought

The Stranger's Erica C. Barnett has an article in this week's Stranger ("Fuzzy Math") that has more bad news for proponents of the expensive, boondoggle-y tunnel replacement.

See, a core piece of the argument for replacing the current Viaduct with a multibillion-dollar, brand-spankin' new tunnel (or even simply rebuilding it) is predicated on the Viaduct being an essential, north-south transit corridor that carries hundreds of thousands of cars a day. Without a good, high-speed route through the city (such as would be facilitated by said tunnel), the thinking goes, those cars will wind up on the streets of Seattle, clogging arteries and causing citywide gridlock.

The number that has been bandied around as the average daily "flow" on the Viaduct is 110,000 cars. It turns out that number may be, um, high:

The 110,000 figure is based on traffic models and hasn’t changed since at least 2002, when newspapers first began reporting the figure. A look at WSDOT’s actual traffic counts, as measured by a computerized sensor on the roadway itself, however, shows “annual average daily traffic” of only 74,700 vehicles—just 68 percent of WSDOT’s inflated number. In general, actual traffic counts are far more reliable than computerized models in estimating traffic flow.

In other words, the Viaduct may not be nearly as vital to Seattle as previously thought.

Tear it down, leave it down.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 19, 2006 7:54 AM.
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November 11, 2006

The Sonics Are Gone

It's been a jubilant week for me, politically - aside from the overwhelming "blue wave" that put Democrats back in control of both the US House and Senate, most of the local Seattle issues I cared about passed or failed, as appropriate. Our local repeals of the estate tax (I-920) and land-use laws (I-933) went down in flames; conversely, initiatives for better streets, rapid transit, and clean energy passed.

Waking up on Wednesday morning felt an awful lot like Christmas.

One local Seattle initiative, I-91, prevents tax subsidies for local sports stadiums. Voting yes on 91 effectively prohibits the city from from building a new stadium for the Sonics.

I-91 passed by a 3-to-1 margin, 76%. And now, as expected, the Sonics are going to leave:

Seattle has been all but mathematically eliminated as a long-term home for the Sonics and Storm, meaning the future of professional basketball in the area is down to two options — the suburbs or so long.

By overwhelmingly approving Initiative 91 on Tuesday, Seattle voters effectively ended any notion that the NBA and WNBA teams would remain in their namesake city.

In all fairness, (and despite being a Storm season ticket holder) I voted for I-91. I've been on record ("Nothing Lasts Forever") as saying that I don't support taxpayer bailouts for sports franchises that can't get their spending under control:

If the price of Sonics basketball in Seattle is a massive, $200M subsidy to the team, then I'm not sure it's worth it to keep them. The Sonics organization has serious cost problems - it's expenses are too high, relative to its income. The team's unwillingness to cut its costs - especially their payroll - to make their operation profitable is the problem.

My fellow Seattleites agree with me, it seems.

Nickels said the I-91 result, which passed 3-to-1, reflects fan disenchantment with aspects of the NBA, such as high salaries and player turnover. The Sonics lease at KeyArena expires in 2010.

"If they stay in Seattle, great," Nickels said. "If they don't, we'll have to make do with the Mariners, the Seahawks, Intiman Theatre, Seattle Opera, the Rep [Seattle Repertory Theatre] ... I think we'll make do."

So now the new owners will, undoubtedly, shop around in Bellevue or Renton to see about a new facility there.

I don't know that they'll be successful. If an arena can be built with private dollars, then they're likely to pull it off. But if the private money were so easily available (I mean, this conversation has undoubtedly been going on in well-appointed Eastside living rooms for years), why dance with the taxpayers for so long? Private ownership means never having politicians in your business, and never dealing with revenue splits.

My sense is that the team is going to Oklahoma. There's clear appetite for NBA in Oklahoma, and I've no doubt they will be able to get a new stadium and all other manner of benefits from a pliant legislature. (And, I stand by my belief that WNBA is a bad fit for that market, but maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part.)

So. Public financial sanity won, and that's a good thing. The teams are leaving, and that'll smart. The new owners claim they'll honor their lease at the Key until 2010. By my count, that's another four seasons of the Storm. I'll be there.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 11, 2006 9:33 AM.
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September 20, 2006

Earth To Nickels: It's Over

It's official: The Seattle Times reports that replacing the Viaduct is going to be really, really expensive:

The price tag for a new, elevated structure to replace the aging Alaskan Way viaduct has grown from $2.4 billion to $2.8 billion...

But you know what's worse? The Mayor's prized replacement option - a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront - is even more expensive:

... and the cost of building a tunnel has gone from a high of $3.6 billion to an estimated $4.6 billion, according to a report released today by the state.

The difference between replacing the Viaduct and the tunnel is now $800M to $2,200M, depending on which set of cost estimate ranges you believe. For the sake of simplicity, I'm splitting the difference and calling it $1,500M.

One point five billion dollars.

With numbers like these, it's time for City Hall to slow down, take a deep breath, and take a very, very long moment.

I've been on record since March ("Tear It Down, Leave It Down") that we should simply detonate the Viaduct and call it a day. It's aging, it's breaking, it's going to kill people. If it comes down outside of our control, it'll cause the loss of life, limb, property and do serious economic damage to our region. The tunnel is the gosh-it-would-be-nice solution to this problem.

But the Mayor, rather than see the handwriting on the wall regarding the tunnel, has devised a cunning plan: raise the cost of the Viaduct rebuild so the tunnel is more cost-competitve! Seriously:

Seattle believes it has control over street-use and other permits needed for construction. By obstructing an elevated project, the city thinks it can drive up the cost another $1.6 billion, to nearly $5 billion, according to a chart issued this morning by Seattle Department of Transportation director Grace Crunican. That would put the elevated structure close to the cost of a tunnel.

This is insanity. Only in the strange, BizarroWorld of a dysfunctional public servant with an Ozymandias complex does this make any kind of sense.

Here's the deal, Mayor Nickels: we have real transit problems in this state, and they're going to take real money to fix. Our roads have a major maintenance backlog. 520 needs to be replaced. I-5 could use a lot of rework. We want a Light Rail extension to pass on the 2007 ballot. And every day we waste dicking around with this tunnel fantasy is one less day that we can talk about things that will actually solve transit problems.

Tear it down, leave it down, and let go of the tunnel fantasy. It's not going to happen, and the goodwill and credibility you're squandering - yes, even with with tax-friendly liberals like Yours Truly - with your pointless, juvenile brinksmanship is going to be sorely needed when Sound Transit 2 goes to the polls next year.

Throw in the towel, Greg. Gracefully. This one's not going to happen.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 20, 2006 4:27 PM.
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July 26, 2006

Evans: The Storm Should Stay

Seattle Times reporter (and blogger) Jayda Evans asked Lauren Jackson about her feelings regarding the sale of the Sonics/Storm to Oklahoma. Rather than answer first, Jackson threw the question back at Evans. Evans' response?

I told her the same thing I've been spouting all week - I can't believe NBA commissioner David Stern would move the Storm franchise.

As I've posted previously, Evans' book, "Game On!" repeatedly makes the point that WNBA markets are distinct from NBA markets. The two audiences are vastly different, and the cities that go for one may not go for the other. Seattle, to put it bluntly, is special:

I travel with the team and nowhere in the WNBA do you find what Seattle has cultivated. So, if it's moved just because the NBA side of the deal isn't what the new owners want, then I'll have to give in to the belief that the women were nothing but a second thought to make money off of during the summer months when the real show (the NBA) is done competing. If the Storm relocates to Oklahoma City (or anywhere else in America) then Stern and WNBA president Donna Orender are full of malarkey.

I am (cautiously) optimistic that, even if things fall through with the new arena for the Sonics, we might well be able to keep the Storm here. In the meantime, every Storm fan I've talked to is planning to pack Key Arena for the remaining games of the season.

(Oh, and LJ said she doesn't want to play in any market other than Seattle.)

If you've ever thought about catching a women's pro game here in Seattle, well, now's the time. Tickets are cheap, the games are good, and we're even on a hot streak right now. See you there!

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 26, 2006 8:37 AM.
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July 24, 2006

Westneat On The Storm

Seattle Times columnist (and Pike Place Politics reader) Danny Westneat had a piece in yesterday's paper ("To Sonics: How to win us over") that does a great job of walking through Seattle's ambivalent feelings toward keeping the Sonics. It closes with this little gem:

As a Republican, [New Sonics Owner Clay] Bennett no doubt believes that less is more when it comes to government. Well, as far as tapping the treasury to pay for private sports arenas, that's what liberal Seattle thinks, too!

So I'm seeing a trailblazing odd couple. The red-state Okies and blue-state Mossbacks, arm in arm, building a sports arena with little to no tax dollars. Trying to earn a profit the old-fashioned way. You know, by actually earning it.

Or probably not. If this doesn't work out, maybe Bennett could do us just one little favor on his way out of town.

In droves people e-mailed to tell me there's a team here that does play hard. That you can still see for cheap. That isn't obsessed with corporate suites.

It kind of reminds some folks of those '70s Sonics.

Mr. Bennett, you may well ride off with our Sonics. But could you leave us the Storm?

Amen.

UPDATE, December 31, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 24, 2006 3:52 PM.
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July 19, 2006

Nothing Lasts Forever

In case you missed the news, the Seattle Sonics and Storm were sold yesterday to an investment group in Oklahoma City for $350M.

At first, this felt like a sucker-punch to the gut.

I got the news while standing in line at the Houston airport, talking to Richard on the phone ("Where have you been? Have you heard the news?").

In a particularly cruel twist, I'd spent the bulk of my flight in to Houston reading (and thoroughly enjoying) Times reporter Jayda Evans' book, "Game On! How Women's Basketball Took Seattle By Storm", and it got me really pumped up about the league, the Storm, and the future of WNBA. The book is all about the history of women's pro ball, as told through the lens of the 2004 WNBA Championship run. I came off the plane with an incredible amount of optimism ...

...and then promptly saw it wash away.

So. I've been flooded with e-mail from friends who either a) want to know what the hell is going on, or b) are concerned about my mental state. I'll start with the latter, and say: I'm fine.

Here, in no particular order, what I think is going on.

• First, I think the sale of the team changes the entire debate on building the Sonics a new arena. There had been a contingent of people in Seattle who thought that Howard Schultz was bluffing, or was just toying around with us by threatening to take the team ball and go home. This was compounded by the fact that the Sonics never opened their books to any kind of public inspection, so it was impossible to tell if they had really lost $60M, or were just inventing the number to screw the city for a bit more profit. As of now, there's no more debate: if we don't make it possible for the new owners to make a profit in Seattle, they're leaving. Period, full stop, end of story. There's no bluff here.
• Second, having the current owners out of the picture changes the dynamics of the negotiations. A lot of my people (myself included) thought that the Sonics handled their request for the arena in a really inept way - they essentially dropped their demand for the new facility on the state legislature with less than two months left in the cycle ... and then took a hard line on negotiating. This amateur-hour behavior pissed off a lot of people, because it made it look like the Sonics were operating in bad faith (and frankly, given that they refused to even look at the city's counter-proposals, they probably were). Now that the new owners are in place, a deal can be reached between the city (or state - see below) without anyone losing face. The removal of Howard Schultz is actually a benefit, here.
• Third, now that we know it's Oklahoma, the ball is kicked up to the State level. This isn't about Seattle vs. Howard Schultz And His Rich Posse, this is about Oklahoma vs. Washington, and that means state pride. It also means that there will be a lot more pressure to make something happen, and potentially state dollars to fund whatever the group from Oklahoma wants.

The new owners seem to be playing to this by stressing that they want to stay in Seattle:

Howard Schultz, former Sonics owner, sat side-by-side with Clayton Bennett, Sonics owner as of this morning, at a news conference to announce the sale of the Sonics and Storm this afternoon.

They were flanked by the Sonics' and Storm's respective championship trophies and joined by their repeated desires to keep both teams in Seattle. They mentioned this over and over again until it became the theme. They want to keep the Sonics and Storm in Seattle. Key word: Want.

The fine print: Only the next 12 months are guaranteed in the $350 million deal. In the interim, the new ownership group needs to do what the former ownership group could not — negotiate a better venue and lease agreement at KeyArena or another local venue.

For the record, I stand by my earlier post on the subject ("Sonics: Let 'Em Go"). If the price of Sonics basketball in Seattle is a massive, $200M subsidy to the team, then I'm not sure it's worth it to keep them. The Sonics organization has serious cost problems - it's expenses are too high, relative to its income. The team's unwillingness to cut its costs - especially their payroll - to make their operation profitable is the problem.

That said, I still suspect that we will wind up building a new arena for them (and if we do, can we please build it down next to our other arenas, with the freeway access and light-rail infrastructure?).

But what about the Storm?

Well, I'm not as bitter/pessimistic as Patrick at Chasing the Title, and I've noticed that some Storm fans have already organized a Web site ("OK Is Not OK.com"). But I do recognize that the team I love is at serious risk of going to Oklahoma.

Or are they?

Evans' book makes a pretty convincing case that NBA fans are not WNBA fans, and vice versa. The two leagues serve very different markets, and appeal to very different people. Further, the towns that do well with WNBA franchises tend to be "Creative Class" cities like New York and Los Angeles and Seattle - and less so in markets like Orlando (the Miracle are now the Connecticut Sun) or Cleveland (the Rockers are now defunct).

I don't think the WNBA would have a very good time of it in Oklahoma City - it seems to be the wrong market, demographically and psychographically, for success. And given that the Storm operation - unlike the Sonics - is profitable (and has been since October 2005), it's entirely conceivable that the Sonics would move, and the Storm would stay. The Storm have a lot of their own infrastructure already, including their own lease with Key Arena.

And, barring the owners' decision to keep the team in town ... well, they might be persuaded to sell the WNBA team (again, as Orlando did to Connecticut) to a group of local investors. And given how passionate Storm fans are (and how many of them have money, or friends with money), well, I could see a pool of cash being raised pretty quickly.

Look, the future is uncertain, and nothing lasts forever. Evans' book reads like a chronicle of failed teams and broken dreams, from the Seattle Reign to the Portland Fire and a handful of other teams that never made it. It's heartbreaking when they go, but, at some point, it happens.

In the meantime, I'm going to every game I can. Go Storm!

UPDATE, December 31, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 19, 2006 8:49 AM.
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June 5, 2006

"An Inconvenient Truth"

One of the other things I did this weekend was catch the Saturday night showing of "An Inconvenient Truth" at Pacific Place.

In case you don't know, "Inconvenient Truth" is a 90-minute science lecture by Al Gore (yes, that one) about global warming. It's the film version of a presentation Gore's done over the years for cities, colleges, and others. (In the movie, Al claims he's given the talk more than 1,000 times.)

I've been eagerly anticipating this movie since I first heard about it. Since Saturday night, I've been asked by several friends "what I thought." Surprisingly, this is a tough question to answer - I just watched a film that discusses, with great frankness, the very real possibility that Earth will no longer support our species by the coming century.

("I laughed, I cried, it's better than Cats" just doesn't seem appropriate, here.)

So. I do have some thoughts on the subject.

First, and most importantly, see this movie. You owe it to yourself, the country, your fellow human beings, your offspring, and the planet. Take the $9.50 you were thinking about spending on "The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift" and see this instead. I promise it'll be more interesting and scarier (by far) than any movie you've seen since, well, "Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room." The great thing about "Truth" is that it really calls out the skeptics of warming, and forces them to respond to the facts - temperatures are going up, snow packs and the polar caps are melting, and carbon emissions are highly correlated with these activities. Skeptics will need to do more than just mutter, "well, not everyone agrees that it's real" at a cocktail party to justify their position. That's good - it moves the debate forward.

Second of all, help others see it. Coming out of the theater, I remarked to Mollie that if the usual lefty do-gooder types (no offense to Ed Begley, Jr., but he's the poster child) are the only ones who show up, the film will have failed. But it's OK if the theatrical release is wall-to-wall with Prius drivers, as long as the DVD gets seen. DVD releases are where thinking films start to reach the majority of people who can do something with the information (we saw this with "Super Size Me"). A good DVD sparks debate in the living room in the way a film never does at the multiplex. So: get the DVD out there. Host movie nights for people who are interested, but reluctant to part with $3.50 to rent an "Al Gore movie." And then talk about it with them.

Third of all, take stock of your life. If you're making a lot of elective trips with your car, maybe cut back on 'em. Walk a little more. Use less electricity, either by turning things off or using more power-efficient appliances and bulbs. Yes, you can (and should) buy a hybrid. And yes, you can (and should) consume less, or at least consume stuff that you know isn't raw, unadulterated evil for the planet. But be honest with yourself about what you can do, conservation-wise, as a household. Books like "Garbage Land" are great at illustrating the great, sprawling, smoking machinery we've built to keep our society humming, and fixing a planetary problem means fixing that machinery wholesale, rather than 5% of the population living like it's 1855. My motto? Use only the energy which you truly need (but if it's cold in your house, then turn on the heater).

Fourth, we need to start the debate nationally. I'm not talking about the "is global warming happening?" debate - that's not actually debatable (unless, of course, you're on the Exxon payroll). Rather, I'm talking about the debate over the best, and most effective, way of addressing the problem. I'm a big believer in market-driven innovation, and so my inclination is toward reshaping the boundaries of our market forces - mandating that our industries adjust their economic models to address the costs of producing carbon dioxide (i.e., "cap and trade"). Pricing carbon effectively will both reduce its wanton use (people use less when something's not free) and also create market opportunities for carbon-reduction (or replacement) technologies.

For those who claim this is a "hardship" on industry, I have two responses. First, our society has a long tradition of adjusting our expectations of what ethical capitalism is - we've outlawed child labor, mandated 40-hour work weeks, and required safe workplaces. Productivity has continued its upward march. This is no different - we're simply requiring that industry take account of its deleterious effects on society. And second, we're talking about the future of the species, here. Some petty little extra 2% return doesn't outweigh the rights of hundreds of millions of people not to get flooded out of their houses as the sea rises. (Send my regards to Wall street.)

Fifth, get involved. In terms of political action, write your congressperson. Let them know you've seen the movie, and you're concerned. That's it. Just let 'em know you're paying attention. If you've got policy ideas, send 'em in, too. In some ways, I'm a little frustrated by the fact that living in-oh-so-blue Seattle, my legislators basically agree with me on this issue (Senator Cantwell, for instance, has an exemplary environmental record). So there's no one for me to protest to, no one to get the attention of. But I'm still writing the letters.

And I guess that's my final takeaway, here - fixing warming is a process. It's a war, not a battle, and it's going to take constant pressure and vigilance. But we can beat this thing. And it's key, too, to remember that we're not talking about stopping "the American way of life" - rather, we're talking about preserving our way of living. You'll still have your car, your house, your weekly trips to Costco. The difference is that your car will get 50 MPG, your house will get its electricity from renewable resources, and Costco won't offer products that have been produced by shoving a lot of crap into the environment.

Global warming is real. Global warming is happening. It's time to do something.

So first, see this movie.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 5, 2006 10:11 PM.
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April 23, 2006

"The World Is Flat"

I finished Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat" last week, and wanted to take a few moments to recommend it. The book is much-praised, and with good reason: it's a fast-paced tour of "Globalization, Inc." - the commercial forces that are knitting countries together (or, if you like, tearing them apart), and bringing a whole host of problems and opportunities to our shores.

I'm a big, big fan of trade - mutual, reciprocal, fair exchange unites people and communities. I am most certainly not a fan of the trade perversion known as "carte-blanche globalization," where some rich white guy defends his right to have Nikes made by 19-year-old Indoensian women in inhumane conditions for $0.18 a day. As such, I will tell you straight-up that the first 225 pages of Friedman's book annoyed the holy hell out of me. I read bits of Friedman's pro-globalization rah-rah text "The Lexus And The Olive Tree" in business school, and I found the first 225 of "Flat" to be more-or-less a reload of "Lexus" ... so much so that I almost abandoned the book.

I'm glad I didn't.

Following its initial, breathless, "gosh, isn't this amazing and great" boosterism, "Flat" matures and deepens into a serious, thought-provoking essay about what we, as citizens (and workers) must do to ensure that we are fair to people (preserving their economic viability, and their personal dignity) as these changes arrive with ever-greater frequency. The list is simple - commonsense, even:

• We must invest in education and job retraining;
• We must move to a national health care system, so we can relieve employers of dealing with the thicket on their own (and to prevent workers from getting screwed when their jobs are lost);
• We must invest in salary insurance - a form of wage protection that goes beyond simple unemployment insurance;
• We must protect the rights of workers across the globe - and not just on a state or national level.

Of course, Friedman's view - that we must protect people from the amorality of the market - is far more enlightened than that of many get-rich-quick CEOs, each of whom assumes it's "somebody else's problem" when an autoworker in Detroit loses their job to one in China or Mexico.

I recommend "Flat" because it gives one a useful shorthand for thinking about and discussing some very important issues. If you believe that the world is flattening (and I certainly do), then the next meaningful question is, "what should we do about it?"

Give it a read. I'd love to talk about it.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated April 23, 2006 9:27 PM.
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March 24, 2006

Tear It Down, Leave It Down

Allie and I have been going back and forth in e-mail these last few weeks (and, briefly, at last nights' Confab) about the best way to deal with Seattle's aging (and increasingly unsafe) Alaskan Way Viaduct along SR99. (The Viaduct, in case you don't know, is a double-decker concrete freeway that runs along the Seattle waterfront, much like San Francisco's old Embarcadero freeway.)

Option #1 is to simply replace the thing, building a new, modern Viaduct in its stead. Allie hates this option, and so do I.

Option #2 is to tear down the Viaduct and replace it with a tunnel, conveying cars and trucks underground and reconnecting Seattle with its waterfront. Mayor Nickels loves this proposal, and Allie thinks it's the right one as well.

Option #3 - the one I favor - is to tear the Viaduct down and replace it with ... nothing.

Yep, that's right. Let's get rid of the Viaduct. We don't need it.

First, let's be frank about something: the Viaduct is coming down. It was damaged in the Nisqually earthquake of 2001, and the thing is currently listing. WSDOT predicts that the failure rate of the Viaduct increases by 5% for each year it stays up. The road carries about 120,000 cars per day, which means that the failure of the Viaduct - either through its own, natural decline or hastened by another earthquake - will kill a lot of people and disrupt Seattle's economy.

It's also an eyesore (as well as an earsore). If you've ever walked along Seattle's waterfront, you've been treated to the sight of this sprawling, 50-foot-high concrete monstrosity running from one end of the city to the other. The noise is considerable - I mean, you have a frickin' freeway running over your head, and the concrete construction gives the already-considerable noise this wonderful amplification/reverb effect. You can think of the Viaduct as the ultimate conversation killer - if only because you can't hear anything else.

The Washington State legislature recognizes the increasing risk to life, limb and property, and has allocated $2.2 billion to replace the Viaduct with ... another Viaduct. While we certainly need to deal with the current Viaduct's considerable structural issues, replacing one loud eyesore with another - especially one that's going to be 50% wider than the current design - is insane. Mayor Nickels (quite correctly) recognizes that the need to tear down the Viaduct is an opportunity to reshape Seattle's skyline for the better. Hence: his tunnel solution.

Problem is, tunnels are expensive. Like, nearly a billion dollars more than the straight-up Viaduct rebuild. So Nickels is engaging in political brinksmanship to get the project built, and state legislators are pushing back.

Meanwhile, the Viaduct continues to decay. Tick, tick, tick, tick...

Interestingly, the collapse of San Francisco's Embarcadero freeway may provide us with an insight about the Viaduct that could save us a few billion bucks - namely, if the Viaduct vanishes ... so does a lot of traffic. In other words, if we simply remove the Viaduct, well, it may not have a negative impact on traffic at all. The Stranger went to SF in December, and came back with the following:

In 1989, San Francisco faced a similar dilemma: The two-level elevated Embarcadero Freeway, which citizens voted to preserve in 1986, was badly damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake, leading city leaders to close it down and forcing car traffic to find another way through the city. In the earthquake's immediate aftermath, officials predicted gridlock for miles in each direction; but that gridlock never materialized, and eventually, Mayor Art Agnos (seconded by a closely divided San Francisco Board of Supervisors) decided to tear it down, reducing car capacity on the waterfront and distributing Embarcadero traffic onto city streets.

Despite the nightmare scenarios painted by those who opposed its demolition, the Embarcadero today is a relatively uncrowded, six-lane surface thoroughfare: it carries 16,000 vehicles a day (compared to a previous level of up to 110,000), with the remaining trips either eliminated or distributed onto city streets.

Interestingly, a local group, the People's Waterfront Coalition, has spring up to sell this exact solution to Seattle. They point out that, economically, for the same money as a tunnel we could "purchase 10,000 helicopters, one for every dozen Viaduct commuters and fly them downtown instead" ... or simply write every Viaduct commuter a check for $50,000.

Now, as I've been in heated arguments about this with pro-tunnel friends, they often will tell me that "Seattle isn't like San Francisco" (translation: we should not expect the removal of the Viaduct to work for us as it did for them). The pro-tunnel forces will tell me that the poor people who work in West Seattle need the Viaduct to get to work every day, or that the through traffic carried on the Viaduct absolutely depends on its continued operation in order to make Seattle's economy work.

Fair enough.

But interestingly, it turns out that, in order to build the tunnel, you have to close the Viaduct for four years. Read that again: four years. Those poor folks in West Seattle? That economically-necessary through traffic? Well, they're going to lose their transit methods for more than a thousand days.

You know what? Over a thousand days, a "new normal" appears. People find accommodations with their environment. They get to work differently. They move to new houses. Businesses relocate. Things sort out.

In other words, if you're going to close it for four years anyway, why reopen it at all? Hell, it'll be a new freeway at that point, right? People will have to re-learn to take the shiny new tunnel, because they'll be so used to working around its absence.

Would I like a tunnel? Of course: tunnels are cool. Problem is, we just have other, more pressing issues that demand our dollars. So take the $2.2Bn from the state and pump it into other transit problems, like replacing 520 or untangling Interstate 5.Let's tear it down and leave it down - 'cause after four years, who'll know the difference, anyway?

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 24, 2006 4:05 PM.
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March 23, 2006

"Death and Taxes"

I had an e-mail forward earlier this week to a fascinating graphic that breaks down the US Government's $782Bn discretionary spending (meaning that it excludes mandatory commitments like Social Security payments). Discretionary spending for the government is just like discretionary spending in your personal life: you get income, take out your taxes, and what's left over is what you can spend on whatever you like.

So where do we spend our money? Well, overwhelmingly we like to spend to blow stuff up: more than $0.50 on the dollar goes to the military.

This kind of picture is exactly what's needed to start a conversation about our real priorities in this country. Why, for instance, are we spending $3.686Bn on the C17 Air Transport program for the Air Force ... and only $0.795Bn on the Small Business Administration (the agency that, among other things, helps Americans start and run their own businesses)? Why do we spend nearly as much on prisons ($4.492Bn) as we do on the FBI ($4.640Bn)?

This is amazing, amazing data. (And the graphic is hi-res enough to make a great desktop picture...)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 23, 2006 9:46 AM.
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March 14, 2006

Podcasting Liberally - March 14, 2006

It's Tuesday night, which meant that Richard and I were at the Montlake Alehouse to record the latest installment of "Podcasting Liberally." (And, as usual, it was a gas.)

Hosted by David Goldstein, our panel tonight included myself (Sandeep lost the coin toss), Mollie, Will, Lee, and Geov Parrish of Seattle Weekly.

You can get the MP3 here (56:51, 36.8 MB).

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 14, 2006 11:58 PM.
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March 13, 2006

"City: Rediscovering The Center"

I just finished a wonderful book on urban planning, urban spaces, and the urban dwellers who use (or fail to use) them. It's called "City: Rediscovering The Center" and it's by William Whyte ("The Organization Man").

If you have any interest in cities and how they really function, I can't recommend it more highly. It goes on the list with Jane Jacobs' "The Death And Life Of Great American Cities."

The Whyte book is a study of how people behave in cities - where they congregate, how they interact with one another, how they loiter, shop, walk, and drive. Whyte used cameras (both still and high-speed) to record people as they went about their business at intersections and on sidewalks, charting out areas of the city that succeed and pointing out those that fail. I think everyone has seen Parks That Work (full of people laughing, children playing and so on) as well as Parks That Don't ("unsafe", full of drug dealers or the homeless) - if you've ever wondered why this happens, Whyte's got some great explanations.

One example of a critical planning factor concerns the widths of sidewalks - they need to be wide enough to allow traffic flow around trash cans, hot dog vendors, newsmen and the like, but not so wide that they create vacuum. Turns out that crowding is actually a desirable feature of sidewalks - they give vibrancy, attract more people, and thus make a place magnetic for pedestrians:

The most dramatic contraction in walking width was in Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston. The venerable old building was a given, and because of the placement of the pillars, the main walkway could only be eleven feet wide. Developer James Rouse and architects Jane and Ben Thompson thought the very narrowness could prove a virtue. So it has. The walking of it is an experience and it has attracted one of the heaviest pedestrian flows of any marketplace in the country. You edge past food displays, detour around knots of people sampling the food, and past all sorts of smells and sounds. You are crowded, no mistake, but it a free-choice crowding and very tolerable.

The book is an ode to urban life and what makes it worth living; just reading it makes you fall in love with your city all over again. Check it out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 13, 2006 11:14 PM.
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March 1, 2006

Podcasting Liberally - February 28, 2006

For the past few weeks, Richard and I have been providing technical help to David Goldstein (aka "Goldy") over at HorsesAss.org on his "Drinking Liberally" podcast - a gabfest where progressive bloggers and other folks sit around for an hour or so and chat about local, regional, and national politics. It's a lot of fun.

Well, I sat in and participated in last week's show (my subject: Key Arena. Go figure.), and was back in the seat again last night for a six-way chat involving Goldy, Will, Molly, Lynn ... and King County Executive Ron Sims. I have friends who work for Ron (and who respect him enormously), but I'd never had the pleasure of meeting the man until now. It was a great hour of gab.

If you're interested, you can get the file here (50 mins, 30.7 MB).

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated March 1, 2006 8:43 AM.
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February 21, 2006

Sonics: Let 'em Go

These last few weeks, the Seattle press has been abuzz about Howard Schultz's hard-core arm-twisting of the state legislature to get a $200M rebuild of KeyArena for the Sonics (and the Storm). In the latest development, Schultz has begun channeling his inner Ken Behring, saying, in effect, that if Seattle fails to build him a new arena, well, he might have to take his ball and go home.

Given how much I love the Storm, it pains me to say, but ... if these teams can't stay solvent without a massive government handout, maybe we should think about what that means. Take the team someplace where you can turn a profit, Howard. God bless.

Look, I've benefited enormously from Mr. Schultz's presence in the Seattle community, so I'm not chalking this one up to "tell the rich guy to go pound sand." However, this is a one-sided bailout of a private company with public dollars. If the only corporate-welfare test we're asking for these days is that there be a nebulous "public good" to having Groups X, Y or Z in town, I suspect we'll have one hell of a lineup outside City Hall in the morning - every arts group in town should be able to get on that gravy train. (And I'd like to personally propose a $100,000 subsidy - just 0.05% of the money Mr. Schultz is asking for - for John Kaufmann's "Date Of Birth." A modest proposal.)

My problem with handing the Sonics a new arena is twofold. First, there's the philosophical problem of subsidizing private interests with public dollars. While this happens all the time (the USDA, for example, helps firms like Monsanto, while the State of Washinton is busily building new freeway ramps for my employer), these public/private partnerships often are justified by the economic value of the whole transaction. There's more pie for everyone (gross receipts for the business, taxable revenue for the people), so the partnership is a good investment. The Sonics deal clearly doesn't meet that test - there's no possible way that the Sonics are worth $200M to the city of Seattle. In fact, it turns out that we can let them go and potentially do just great at KeyArena ("KeyArena could be profitable without Sonics, study finds"):

[City counciman Nick] Licata isn't alone in thinking KeyArena could survive the Sonics' departure. The city-owned arena could turn a profit without an NBA team by hosting more concerts, ice shows and college and high-school games, according to a study by a city consultant.

"Non-Sonics options pencil out, and that's the finding of sports-industry experts," Licata says of the recent study funded by Seattle Center.

Sonics Vice President Terry McLaughlin, who has been stressing the Sonics' economic value to the city while pressing for a $200 million subsidy to expand KeyArena, doesn't dispute the study's conclusions. (Emphasis mine)

This is why, if you read Howard Schultz's recent op-ed piece in the Seattle Times (and you should), you'll see that the primary thrust of his argument is that the Sonics are a cultural good for the city, something that brings us together:

Culture isn't just about art galleries, performance halls and museums. Culture is also about the amateur and professional sports that help define who we are.

I agree with this. Totally. But it's one thing to say, "sports help define who we are," and quite another to say, "and therefore we need to define ourselves by giving $200 million to the sports team I own and operate." (As a point of perspective, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported in April 2004 that the value of the Sonics franchise is $196M.)

And this is the second part of my problem. I mean, if we're valuing sports as part of our culture, shouldn't we also ask whether or not that $200M would be better-spent on other cultural pursuits? Or heck - even other sports teams?

The Storm are a great case in point. The Storm operation is reported to run on just $3M a year - barely a blip on the balance sheet of the Sonics. Yet, for that $3M, the Storm field an impressive 20-some home games per year, plus another 20-some on the road. The games aren't very expensive ($10 gets you a seat, and a good one at that), and thus seeing a Storm game is something that can be done by a modest-income family on a semi-regular basis.

Or what about hockey? We have an NHL team, here - the Thunderbirds - but we're not proposing a $200M handout to them. Yes, they'll benefit from a new KeyArena, but so will Coldplay when they come to town. Nobody is kidding themselves about who this new arena is really for.

This is not complicated. The Sonics are losing money. That means their revenues aren't sufficient to cover their costs. As a manager at the Sonics, I'm faced with three choices.

First, I can raise revenues. This can be done by changing prices on current offerings, coming up with new offerings (think "corndog" or "t-shirts"), increasing the volume of stuff I'm selling, or some combination of the these.

Second, I can cut costs. This means I get rid of perks (flying coach instead of first class), make my operations more efficient, or find a way of holding the line on my labor costs (like, you know, maybe not paying my players so much).

Or third, I can do nothing and close up shop.

The Sonics seem to want Option Four, which is "change nothing, and get the public to pay for our business." Again, I understand their motivation (heck, I'd like a $200M handout, too - GavArena, anyone?), but it seems unconscionable that our political leaders are taking this seriously.

And yet they are taking it seriously. The Times had a great piece about "The 5 major hurdles Sonics face in Olympia", and the upshot is this: the sin the Sonics committed is not asking for $200M. No, the sin is that they didn't bow and scrape enough in front of The Right People before getting all up in our faces about things:

They haven't sweated enough. Much like the team's sluggish defense on the court, some legislative insiders say the Sonics front office has not moved its feet quickly enough in the political arena.

"Frankly, I don't think they've worked members very much, and then all of the sudden we get an ultimatum," said Marty Brown, legislative director for Gov. Christine Gregoire. "It just doesn't feel to me like there's been enough groundwork done."

So here's my prediction: the arena upgrade is going forward. There's going to be some political theater, some last-minute negotiations, some hand-wringing in the press, and, when it's all over, the Sonics will get the new-and-improved KeyArena in 2011 or 2012 or whenever. And we'll all like it, the way we like Safeco or Qwest Field. Tickets will be more expensive, and so will concessions. And the Sonics (and the Storm) will stay happy for a while.

But still, I wonder - isn't there something better we can do with $200,000,000?

UPDATE, February 25, 2006: It's been pointed out to me by several folks that, while the Seattle Thunderbirds do use Key Arena, they are not an NHL franchise. I regret the error, and thank everyone who wrote in to correct it.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 21, 2006 11:52 PM.
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February 20, 2006

Gladwell On The Homeless

Elaine pointed me to a terrific interview on NPR with author Malcolm Gladwell, where he talks about ending the homelessness problem in the United States. Gladwell points out that the expenses of homelessness is not captured by a typical bell curve, with the newly-homeless on one end and the hard-core homeless on the other. Rather, the curve is massively skewed, with the permanent, hard-core group consuming hundreds of thousands of dollars per year of services, and everyone else taking light assistance.

Gladwell's solution? Build permanent shelter for the hard-core homeless. Get them off the streets and out of the emergency rooms. It's an approach being tried in many metro markets, including Seattle (article) - but with lots of debate, as you might imagine.

You can listen to the interview here (RealPlayer required).

Anyone else think that real, hard-core sociological data is going to fundamentally transform the way we deliver social services over the next 20 years?

UPDATE, March 12, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 20, 2006 7:15 PM.
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February 10, 2006

The Monorail Will Rise

It's official: the Seattle Center Monorail is going to be put back in service after getting $4M worth of repairs:

An estimated repair cost of $3 million to $4 million will be paid by a combination of insurance funds, future operating income, and possibly grants, all without diverting money from other city services, officials said.

The city will add an automatic train stopping system that will halt the trains if they are about to collide where the tracks converge near Westlake Center.

Timeline? This summer. All I can say is ... thank God. When the monorail blew up on us back in November, I thought we might be monorail-less forever. Now, at least, I'll be able to still pay my buck-seventy-five to ride the 1.2 miles from downtown to a Storm home game. Whoo-hoo!

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 10, 2006 11:55 AM.
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January 2, 2006

"Power Steer"

I went vegetarian in 1997 as part of a get-healthy program. I needed to lose weight (and did), so changing out my diet seemed to be a great way to kickstart the process. Vegetables, generally, are much less calorically dense than meat products - you can eat (and feel full) but only take in 200 calories instead of 400. (Note that this assumes you're not adopting the "Doritos aren't meat, so they're a staple vegetarian food" program.)

Over the past few years, I've begun relaxing my standards (sushi was the "gateway meat") until reverting last year to full-on omnivore status. But recent conversations with friends of mine, coupled with articles about PCB's in fish and books and movies like "Fast Food Nation", "Super Size Me" and "My Year In Meats" have scared the holy hell out of me about the safety of the US food supply.

After last week's Confab, Brian shot me an article from the New York Times, ("Power Steer") about a guy who bought a calf and then followed its life as it was raised, fattened, and slaughtered. It's fascinating:

"American regulators permit hormone implants on the grounds that no risk to human health has been proved, even though measurable hormone residues do turn up in the meat we eat. These contribute to the buildup of estrogenic compounds in the environment, which some scientists believe may explain falling sperm counts and premature maturation in girls. Recent studies have also found elevated levels of synthetic growth hormones in feedlot wastes; these persistent chemicals eventually wind up in the waterways downstream of feedlots, where scientists have found fish exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics."

So, anyway ... I'm back off meat for 2006. Boca burgers, anyone?

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 2, 2006 1:10 PM.
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December 9, 2005

Photographs Of The Damaged Monorail

Good buddy Patrick (aka, "He Who Turned Me - And Therefore, My Entire Office - On To Pandora") makes his living working for Team Nickels down at Seattle's City Hall.

Working for the Mayor has some advantages, of course, one of which is an "access all areas" pass for parts of the city that we mortals can't get to. One great example of this is that Patrick got to take a tour of the damaged monorails as they lay in their barn at the Seattle Center.

Photos from his trip can be found on Flickr. They're amazing.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 9, 2005 8:55 AM.
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December 7, 2005

"Legalize Drugs - All Of Them"

Former Seattle Chief of Police Norm Stamper had a thought-provoking essay in Sunday's Times ("Legalize drugs — all of them"):

I've witnessed the devastating effects of open-air drug markets in residential neighborhoods: children recruited as runners, mules and lookouts; drug dealers and innocent citizens shot dead in firefights between rival traffickers bent on protecting or expanding their markets; dedicated narcotics officers tortured and killed in the line of duty; prisons filled with nonviolent drug offenders; and drug-related foreign policies that foster political instability, wreak health and environmental disasters, and make life even tougher for indigenous subsistence farmers in places such as Latin America and Afghanistan. All because we like our drugs — and can't have them without breaking the law.

Regulated legalization would soon dry up most stockpiles of currently illicit drugs — substances of uneven, often questionable quality (including "bunk," i.e., fakes such as oregano, gypsum, baking powder or even poisons passed off as the genuine article). It would extract from today's drug dealing the obscene profits that attract the needy and the greedy and fuel armed violence. And it would put most of those certifiably frightening crystal meth labs out of business once and for all.

No to put too fine a point on this, but Stamper articulates my personal position on the subject perfectly.

Prohibition didn't work. It only caused an influx of cash to the Mob and other illicit parties. As time went on and the political winds shifted, Prohibition ended.

I'm not a fan of "hard" drugs (I don't use, and haven't - I'm too enamored of caffeine and beer), but I cannot see the logic in subsidizing tobacco (cigarette deaths per year in the US: 438,000) while criminalizing other substances whose negative social impact is far smaller (deaths from illicit drugs: 17,000).

I guess we just want the brand name on our drugs to say "Merck" or "Pfizer."

Legalize it, clean it, tax the holy hell out of it. God knows it works for Prozac and Viagra.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 7, 2005 8:36 PM.
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November 27, 2005

Alweg Monorail: Hosed

One other, marathon-related fact: the historic Alweg Monorail that connects downtown and Seattle Center is totally out of action as of last night. The two cars smashed in to one another yesterday evening, thus fusing the two together and causing the blue one to list. Marathon participants (who were staying at the Westin, about 1 mile from the start line) were originally planning to use the monorail to get to the start.

The photo you're seeing was taken by Yours Truly as I walked down 5th Avenue this morning.

The Times has a bit on it ("Monorail trains collide") with some of the facts:

The crash at about 7:10 p.m. sent glass flying to the street. It took nearly an hour to evacuate the 84 passengers on board the two trains. Firefighters escorted them individually down fire-truck ladders extended to the trains about 25 feet above the sidewalk.

There were no serious injuries, but two people were taken to the hospital to be checked out, said Helen Fitzpatrick, spokeswoman for Seattle Fire Department.

(Boy, when we say "no monorail" in this town, the universe listens, huh?)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 27, 2005 5:36 PM.
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November 9, 2005

RIP, Monorail

The monorail has been killed:

After five citywide votes and countless hours of debates in taverns, public meetings and City Hall, Seattle residents finally called a halt to the embattled monorail project.

This was expected, but it's still a sad day. Our city transportation problems aren't over by a long shot; all we've done is kill one specific way of helping to solve them. (sigh)

At least the gas tax was upheld, which means we're not going to completely gut our infrastructure.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 9, 2005 6:46 AM.
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October 31, 2005

One. Last. Time.

I vote absentee. And tonight, for the fifth time, I voted in favor of the Seattle Monorail Project. Yes, the line is shorter. Yes, it's expensive. But you know what? We still need it. So once more into the breach, dear friends...

Sadly, I suspect this is the voter equivalent of throwing a snowball into hell. We'll know after the 8th.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 31, 2005 8:45 PM.
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September 24, 2005

The Monorail Soap Opera Continues

My head's been down with work this week, so it's a little surreal to see how much the Monorail has been in the news while my attention's been diverted.

It's a freakin' soap opera!

First, as I said last week, Nickels has come out against the Monorail. On Friday (yesterday), the City Council (in its infinite wisdom) then voted unanimously to put the monorail on November's ballot. If the ballot measure fails, the city council will pull the project's permits. Game over. (BTW, HorsesAss.org has a funny proposal for a new Seattle mass-transit system. I'd ride it.)

Despite the Council vote, the Seattle Monorail Project still has some say into what the ballot measure will be. But on Thursday, the SMP board voted against putting language on the ballot, saying they were instead focusing on fixing the financing plan:

In a 6-2 vote, the board decided to proceed as planned to try to come up with a new finance plan and contract improvements in an attempt to save money. The board said they would try to put a measure on the ballot in February. Last week, Nickels said if the board didn't act to put a measure before voters in November, the city would do it for them.

BUT!

Just one day later, the SMP reversed itself and submitted language for the ballot after all ... and just a scant hour before the 4:30 filing deadline. The new language calls for a shorter line:

The Seattle Monorail Project board yesterday agreed, under duress, to ask voters to either trim the Green Line by three miles so it runs from Alaska Junction in West Seattle to West Dravus Street in Interbay, or shut the project down.

Meanwhile, Dan Savage over at The Stranger is pissed off at Nickels, demanding his $300 campaign contribution back and going after Nickels in this week's paper:

You're no Mayor Daley, Greg. Not even close. Daley, as Newsweek said, knew how to run a city. Daley would have told the anti-urban whackos, the opportunistic hacks (yes, I mean you, Jamieson), and the naysayers—not to mention his deputy mayor—to go get fucked. "We're building the monorail," Daley would have said. "The city needs it, it'll create jobs, and we're a city that works, not a city that sits on its ass year after year while a problem like gridlock gets worse." Seattle's Daley would have found a way to make it happen. But you, Greg? The going got tough and you pussed out. Mayor Daley? No way, Greg. You're not even Jane Byrne. You're barely Michael Bilandic.

Bill Virgin over at the PI agrees, it seems:

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels took a hard look at the proposed monorail and made a tough call: Let's have another election!

And not just any election, but an advisory election -- in other words, one that has no legal bearing on anything and doesn't really count.

Meanwhile, gas prices continue to climb, Metro buses are getting increasingly full, and now we've decided to - wait for it - close the bus tunnel for the next two years:

About 100,000 bus riders who catch buses downtown will be affected when the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel closes for up to two years beginning today at 7 p.m.

More than 70 bus routes will change routes or stops, especially the 21 that now go through the tunnel and will be moved to surface streets. They will go mostly onto Second, Third and Fourth avenues.

God, I love this town. You can't make this stuff up.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 24, 2005 10:23 PM.
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September 16, 2005

The Monorail Is Dead

Put a fork in it, it's done.

In a press conference this afternoon, Mayor Nickels announced that he was withdrawing his support for the monorail, and ordering the city to withdraw its right-of-way permits.

He also asked the City Council to hold an emergency meeting next week to put an advisory measure on the November ballot.

What?

Look, the monorail is screwed. Without public right-of-way, it can't build over city streets. That means it's a train to nowhere. So if Nickels has pulled the permits, it's over.

But if that's the case, why bother with the ballot? What the hell will the ballot say? "Do you, Citizen of Seattle, want the monorail built?" What if we say "yes"? Are you going to say, "Oh! Just kidding about the permits!" Riiiiiight.

C'mon, Greg. If you want the public to sound off, put the thing on the ballot and ask. If you have made up your mind to pull the permits, the ballot is unimportant.

Naturally, the Stranger is on this as well:

So, if the city is pulling the plug—Nickels is canceling the project's Transit Way Agreement—what exactly are the people deciding? Well, Nickels—having killed the transit way agreement—is asking the council to send an advisory measure to the people asking them if the city should stop supporting the monorail. It's like taking the wheels off a car and asking people if they still want to buy it.

Exactly.

And, of course, all of this monorail-bashing comes precisely at the time when most Americans are waking up to the fact that, gee, $3 gas is expensive. From the PI, "Gas price jump boosts use of mass transit":

"...ridership on the Metro during the first two weeks of September was up more than 4 percent from August and more than 10 percent from a year ago.

To be sure, the number of new riders is small relative to the population. Only 5 percent of the American work force uses public transportation every day. But that's still 32 million trips a day, so a 4 percent increase in ridership this year and next, as projected by the American Public Transportation Association, adds up."

Personally, I've noticed that the 545 is pretty full these days; if gas prices continue to climb (and they will), behavior's gonna change. And where will these newfound transit riders go? Apparently ... to the stuck-in-traffic bus. Because the monorail's not gonna happen.

Dammit!

UPDATE, May 6, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated September 16, 2005 8:52 PM.
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August 17, 2005

Monorail Updates

It's been a bit since I've blogged about the Monorail, but there's a handful of articles out today that caught my eye.

First up is the Seattle Times ("Report challenges monorail's growth"), wherein local economist Dick Conway believes that the Monorail-funding MVET will not grow as fast as estimates he's issued previously. The old estimate? 4.8%. The new one? Just 4.4%.

It's notable that both of these numbers are well under the 6.1% that the Monorail authority is using to plan their finances.

Second on the list is Seattle Weekly ("'Joel Horn Lied To Us'"):

One of two elected members of the board of the Seattle Monorail Project says that former Executive Director Joel Horn lied about a bid to build the project, the details of which were at the time undisclosed, by telling her that news reports about the bid being $200 million too high were not accurate.

Finally, the last article is an op-ed piece from Seattle Weekly's reliably-cranky pseudo-Seattleite Knute Berger, aka "Mossback" ("Time for a Mercy Killing"):

[Seattle Mayor Greg] Nickels asked the Seattle Monorail Project (SMP) board to decide by Sept. 15 whether to ask voters in November to approve changes to the plan that might salvage the troubled line. Without voter involvement in November, Nickels effectively said, the city would bring the project to a standstill, presumably by refusing to issue permits to build the Green Line from Ballard to West Seattle.

I've written before about what I think should be done with the Monorail, and I stand by that piece. It saddens me profoundly that the project has been so badly managed, and is miles from the mark. At this point, I'll be shocked if we wind up building the damn thing. Seattle needs good mass transit, and the Link light rail is only one part of that puzzle. Monorail could have been an outstanding in-city complement (and alternative to Metro).

No wonder the Economist ragged on us (registration required). We frickin' deserve it.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 17, 2005 12:40 PM.
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August 9, 2005

Cap And Trade

I got caught up on my magazines and whatnot when I was in Idaho, and saw this article in Wired about the "SUV Redemption Sticker" - basically, a way of purchasing the right to pollute at a level equivalent to what your belching Escalade puts out in a given calendar year:

TerraPass lets consumers participate in an emissions trading system the US established in 1990. (Give credit to economist Ronald Coase, who won a Nobel Prize for the idea in 1991.) Under the system, industrial operations that spew less than their share of emissions can sell a credit to companies that fail to keep gunk out of the air. In effect, the dirtier factories can pay greener operations to do the work of cutting emissions.

One of the things that troubles me deeply about many economists is the blissful, breezy way that they talk about "negative externalities" - that is, events or consequences of a given action that don't show up in the economists' model, but nevertheless exist.

Let's say a factory produces Widgets using Process X. As part of Process X, the factory also produces dirty air and water, which it happily dumps in the local lake for free.

There is, however, another way to produce Widgets, and it's called Process Y. Process Y is cleaner than X - it produces just 10% of the same air/water pollution per Widget. But Process X is cheaper than Process Y, so the company sticks with X to keeps its prices low (or its profits high); the "cost" of the pollution is not seen by the firm, or on its balance sheet. The pollution, to an economist, is an externality. It falls out of the model, and is not important.

(Interestingly enough, very few economists wish to live next door to externality-producing factories. I wonder why...)

The cap-and-trade system is an interesting way of pricing pollution; effectively, it sets the total amount of allowable pollution at some level, and then allows firms to trade with one another such that high-polluting firms are able to buy the right to pollute from lower-polluting firms. This creates market incentives to move people from Process X to Process Y (there's money in the model to justify investing in Y), and also gives the regulation bodies the ability to lower the total amount of tradable pollution over time. In effect, cap-and-trade reduces the existence of externalities by giving us a mechanism to price "intangible" things like clean air, clean water, or the level of mercury in our fish.

I find all of this stuff terribly, terribly interesting. I'm curious to see how well the TerraPass stuff does in the market.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 9, 2005 3:18 PM.
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July 18, 2005

"Joel Horn's Blank Check"

I used the plane ride home to get caught up on some of my reading, and, hoo boy, there's a doozy in this week's Seattle Weekly on Joel Horn, the now-former director of the Seattle Monorail Project.

It does, at times, feel like a bit of a smear on Horn (who, unsurprisingly, didn't comment for the piece), but the larger points about the uncertainty surrounding the monorail tie in to my feelings on the subject perfectly. Board members seem oddly in the dark about key points of the proposal:

"I mean, the first time I knew about it [the true cost], I read about it in the paper," says [Board member Sue] Secker [provost of Seattle University]. "Don't you think that's interesting? And I'm the finance chair."

The Weekly does a good job of summing up the core assumptions and promises that are either a) being glossed over or b) simply not true, including:

• Opening day. Originally promised for 2007 (partial) and 2009 (full) - now looking at 2011. Maybe.
• Budget. (We know about that already.)
• Breaking even operationally. I didn't know the SMP had never committed to a projected fare structure - e.g., they were planning to launch a product without knowing what they planned to charge for it. Uh ... Marketing 101, anyone? Hello?

I stand by my earlier post on this - the board needs to go. We need outside experts, with an outside perspective, to give the skinny on this thing. The people who made this mess are not the right ones to clean it up.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 18, 2005 8:28 PM.
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July 8, 2005

PI: "A look at the monorail project options"

The PI has a good article this morning, summarizing the various options available to the monorail board - as well as an FAQ. Some samples:

• What would happen if the Seattle Monorail Project were killed?
• If the project were abandoned, would I get my tax money back?
• Could the monorail be merged with Sound Transit?
• What financing options are available to the project board?
• Could the monorail get money from the state or the federal government?
• What deadlines is the project facing?
• Once again, how did the monorail get into this mess?
• What now?

Good information, presented simply and clearly. Worth a read.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 8, 2005 10:34 AM.
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July 7, 2005

Standing Room Only