Single-occupant vehicle paradigm

Reps. Barkis and McCaslin callously misrepresent voters support for initiative I-976 (“We can have $30 tabs and sustainable funding,” Jan. 28).

I’m certain most people voted for I-976 out of damned-if-we-do frustration. They wrote the governor should “show leadership (by) working with his Washington State Department of Transportation to find and implement 10% targeted reductions in transportation spending.” When was the last time spending cuts delivered better services?

I’ve been to many cities in the developing world. Nowhere have I seen urban streets so deteriorated as here. Has Rep. McCaslin ever rode on a bus, or drove down the pot-hole riddled streets of Spokane?

The financial justification for funding public transportation is simple: our money stays here. Oil, automobile and insurance industries drain money away from our communities. Not one dime of their profits is put back into our city.

Yet that is not enough. These industries do everything they can to ensure public transit remains inefficient and inconvenient. Why are there no bus pass vending machines anywhere in Spokane Transit’s network? Public transit systems in America are inconvenient by vicious design. And here in Spokane, failure to fund a forward-thinking transit system is a deliberate effort to maintain cycles of poverty and social stratification.

When lawmakers keep city planning locked into a single occupant vehicle paradigm, they doom the financial viability of our city. How is this car-centric approach working for the epicenter of auto industries, Detroit? How’s it working for Division, Sprague or Northtown?

Ken Yates

Spokane