In Brief:
Residents of Seattle will get a chance to vote on the biggest transportation levy in the city’s history this fall — a $1.55 billion plan to pave streets, fix bridges, build new sidewalks, add bike lanes, and improve bus reliability.
The eight-year levy would replace the $930 million Move Seattle levy, which voters approved in 2015. It would be funded with a property tax increase that would cost about $20 more per month than the existing levy for the owner of a median-priced Seattle home, according to official and reported estimates. The median Seattle home is worth around $800,000. The final plan approved by the City Council, which includes a list of projects, is significantly larger than the $1.35 billion package proposed by Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell in April, which was later expanded to $1.45 billion.
But despite the big price tag, local officials have framed the proposal less as an ambitious overhaul of the transportation network and more as a necessary investment in improving basic city services.
“For the past 18 years, Seattle voters have consistently shown their commitment to maintaining and improving our city’s transportation infrastructure,” Harrell said in a press release. “These investments will help Seattleites get where they need to go and enhance safety across our transportation system, no matter how they get around — bolstering bridges, strengthening connections to light rail and transit, and improving routes to walk, bike, and roll.”
Executing the Basics
The Seattle City Council appointed a Select Committee on the 2024 Transportation Levy to negotiate changes to Harrell’s proposal. It was clear that the levy should be larger than Move Seattle in order to keep up with cost inflation on construction projects as well as to accelerate the building of new sidewalks, says Rob Saka, a city councilmember who chaired the committee. At the current pace of sidewalk building, it would take the city about 500 years to complete the network, Saka says. But the council also didn’t want to expand the package too much and set expectations too high, he says.
“It’s not intended to please every last person,” Saka says of the levy proposal. “It’s something that we can all be excited about that helps us deliver on the everyday basics of city government.”
It was the first time the council has negotiated a levy package since a redistricting process that resulted in two-thirds of the council seats turning over in the last election. That led to focused conversations about specific improvement projects.
“We saw people really engaging with this conflicting idea of what’s good for my district versus what’s good for the transportation system as a whole, and I think we came out with a package that really is wonderful for the whole city,” says Kelsey Mesher, deputy director of the Transportation Choices Coalition, a Seattle-based advocacy group.
Rising Traffic Deaths
The discussion around the levy was focused partly on street safety. Much of the country has experienced an increase in traffic fatalities and pedestrian killings since the start of the pandemic. Seattle has seen record highs in both categories in recent years.
“We’ve seen an increase in traffic fatalities relative to the rest of the country,” says Tammy Morales, a city councilmember.
Morales’ district is largely low-income communities of color, and sees a disproportionate number of traffic deaths. In the weeks before the council voted on the levy package, Morales floated some amendments to the bill that would have added about $150 million to the overall cost. She said at the time that the levy was “not bold enough” to achieve the city’s Vision Zero goals. There have been several polls of voters weighing their willingness to accept higher levies for transportation infrastructure improvement, and Morales says she believed the voters would support a $1.7 billion levy.
Ultimately the council did not adopt those amendments, partly because of concerns about costs. It voted unanimously to advance the $1.55 billion plan.
“We didn’t increase the levy,” Morales says. “But I do think the package we will be putting to voters really acknowledges the need for more investments in sidewalk repair, new sidewalks [and other safety improvements].”
While council members feel confident in the public's support, not everyone is onboard with the levy. Polls have shown solid, but not unlimited, support for the measure. Some leaders have expressed concern about the cumulative impact of taxes and fees on city residents.
Alex Pedersen, a former city councilmember and chair of the transportation committee, called the levy proposal "unaffordable, unfair, and ineffective."
"It’s insensitive for politicians to act like cheerleaders for such a massive transportation tax increase while renters, homeowners, and small businesses struggle to stay in Seattle," Pedersen said in an email.
Voters to Decide
Part of the context for the new proposal is a feeling among some council members and voters that the Move Seattle package promised more than it could deliver. The existing levy has funded lots of improvements, but some feel it hasn’t lived up to its billing as a “transformational” package of projects.
“There were a lot of projects listed [in Move Seattle] and due to many reasons, including inflation, a concrete strike, and the pandemic, many of those specific projects we did not deliver on,” Morales says. “There’s that frustration, which is understandable. But the pace of production did pick up in the last couple of years.”
The sense of unmet expectations under the last measure is part of the reason why local leaders are saying the new package is focused on “the basics.” And even with some high-profile incomplete projects under Move Seattle, “overall our city is in a much different and better place than it was when we passed that package,” says Mesher, of the Transportation Choices Coalition. The improvements will also dovetail with transit expansion projects that have also been supported by voters, including a series of new light rail stations opening this year.
“I think Seattle voters recognize that investment in transportation supports a whole variety of other outcomes, and that having a great transportation system is key to a thriving city and region,” Mesher says. “We’ve seen that with their support at the ballot.”
Note: This article was updated on July 19, 2024, to include additional perspective on the levy proposal. It was updated on August 19, 2024, to reflect the scope of the original proposal.
