Office of Governor Gary Locke
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - July 24, 2001
Contact:  Governor's Communications Office, 360-902-4136

Transportation fix critical to job growth in Washington, Locke notes

SPOKANE – Gov. Gary Locke today noted that long-term business and job growth is threatened in Washington state if a transportation relief package is not passed by the Legislature.

The governor made his remarks at a morning speech to the Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council Annual Convention in Spokane.

“I want our people employed, but we cannot accomplish that without the ability to move people, freight and goods around our state,” Locke said. “Do we want a healthy future or not? Do we want businesses to stay? Do we want jobs? If we do, each of us must pay our share.”

“This transportation package will create more than 5,000 construction jobs in Eastern Washington and more than 16,000 construction jobs statewide,” the governor continued.

“We cannot waste any more time,” Locke stated. “We cannot miss even one more construction season. Let’s relieve the choke points and ease the worst of it quickly.”

Referring to Washington’s fast-paced growth, the governor warned legislators that the state’s transportation needs will not simply vanish if they fail to act.

“If we put this off again, we will suffer for another decade without any improvements,” Locke noted. “But our population will continue to swell. I assure you we cannot afford that combination. The next time a solution is proposed it will be even more expensive, the projects even bigger and more complex.”

Locke said that the transportation plan would fund projects that include:

• Building a new state Route 520 bridge
  
  
• Replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct
  
  
• Building the new North Spokane Freeway, which will connect several communities with Interstate 90 and central Spokane
  
  
• Widening I-90 to six lanes from the Spokane Valley to the Idaho border
  
  
• Funding for priority freight-mobility projects across the state and continued investment in the state’s freight rail assistance program and the “grain train.”

To pay for the package, the governor and a bipartisan group of legislative leaders proposed a 25 percent gross weight surcharge for trucks, a 1.5 percent sales and use tax increase for new and used vehicles phased in over two years, a 3-cent surcharge on diesel and a 9-cent gas tax phased in over three years from 2002-2004 in 3-cent increments.

The state Department of Transportation and the state Office of Financial Management have estimated that the gas tax would cost the average Washingtonian only $45 a year at its maximum beginning in 2004.

The governor’s transportation plan also would give metropolitan-area counties the ability to form transportation regions. The transportation regions would allow voters in that region to approve money for projects specific to their areas.

“Under the package I’m proposing for traffic relief, at least 85 percent of the new state transportation dollars will stay within the region in which they are raised and 100 percent of the new regional dollars will stay within the region in which they are raised,” Locke stated.

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Related Links:
- Washington State Legislature
- Washington State Department of Transportation
- Office of Financial Management
- Washington State Building and Construction Trades Council

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