by DCG
The city of Seattle – like many west coast, progressive run cities – has many, many problems (homelessness, needles left on the streets, open drug use, feces and urination on the streets, increased crime due to lack of enforcement, etc.).
Having not solved those issues with massive amounts of taxpayer dollars, Mayor Jenny Durkan is moving on to solving climate change seeking another way to steal more taxpayer dollars.
MyNorthwest reports that the Michael Bloomberg’s American Cities Climate Challenge has awarded the city a $2.5 million grant to study ways to address climate change. One item the mayor wants to study is traffic congestion pricing.
The mayor said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do to see exactly how we would implement it, how we would put up the cameras to catch people, how you would charge, how much you charge, and what we do for equity,” Durkan said Friday. “Because there’s a number of people right now who have to travel into Seattle … because they can’t afford to live here anymore. It’s tied to affordability.”
Of course the mayor has no idea when the traffic congestion pricing program would be implemented. Guess she’s got plenty of time to burn through a $2.5 million grant.
The end goal, of course, is twofold: Get more of your money and force you to change your behaviors. From the report: “The pricing would establish tolls to drive on select Seattle streets, perhaps with differing charges depending on the time. The aim is to discourage people from driving cars around town as the population grows.
The mayor also said, “If you look across the globe, those cities that have implemented congestion pricing have had the greatest success on getting people out of vehicles and reducing vehicles in the city,” she said. “It’s had another huge, very important benefit. That’s a health benefit. The number of asthma cases in children have dropped precipitously in those areas where they’ve actually had congestion pricing.”
Read the whole MyNorthwest story here.
Seattle hasn’t had a republican mayor since 1952. And they knew EXACTLY what they were getting when they elected demorat Jenny Durkan in 2017.
Sorry Seattleites…I’m fresh out of empathy for y’all.