Initiative Measure No. 985

Of course I didn’t even get to spend any time with the ballot at all yesterday because I was doing other things, and I actually had the nerve to sleep. So now, here it is, election day, and I still haven’t started on the 35 items on my ballot. Well, here we go. Here is the first one.

The full text of Initiative is here (pdf). Basically, it is about neutering HOV lanes. Generally, that is something I approve of. I think HOV lanes are annoying social engineering to try to get me to not drive my car alone. I think that is annoying and I don’t like it. Anything that would move in the direction of eliminating that sort of thing is great.

It also has some seemingly common sense things like requiring traffic light synchronization and some other stuff like that.

However… I have a number of problems with this anyway.

First, it seems like this is the sort of thing that really should be determined either by the legislature, or by non-political bureaucracies. I generally don’t like Initiatives. This is what we elect legislators for. So if they are used, it seems like they should be used for issues where there is a real reason why the legislature is not adequate. I’m not sure this is such a case.

Second, it hard codes into the law what “peak hours” are for purposes of allowing open use of HOV lanes in non-peak hours. That is silly, and does not properly allow for changes in usage patterns over time. If you were going to have a policy to allow something in non-peak hours, you should make an objective definition of that based on something that can properly be adjusted over time without a change in the law. I won’t try to be a traffic engineer and make that definition, but it definately should not be a fixed set of hours. It should be something based on current level of traffic flows, where if the flow was some fraction of peak traffic, it would be considered “off-peak”. Of course, in truly non-peak conditions, using the HOV lanes or not is a non-issue, as all lanes are flowing freely, perhaps making this irrelevant. This whole idea only makes sense if you are opening the HOV lanes during hours where traffic is still congested…

Third, according to the financial impact statement, the cost of the transition would be significant.

Fourth, the initiative includes a lengthy new section being added to the RCW (Revised Code of Washington) which explains the “intent” of the various changes. In general, I don’t like laws explicitly stating their intent. I don’t care what their intent is, other than what the words of the law itself says. I know this is a common practice of course, but I still don’t like it. But this statement in specific is not just describing the intent, but also includes a long litany describing the history of these efforts, how the efforts were rebuffed in the past, etc. It just sounds like a bitter diatribe about this whole thing. That sort of thing is fine for the summary statement (maybe) but should not be part of the initiative itself.

So, with all that, despite the fact that I generally agree with many of the goals of this initiative, I find the implementation fatally flawed.

My vote is therefore:

NO