Rossi discusses transportation

Addresses Eastern Washington funding

COLUMBIA BASIN - Republican governor candidate Dino Rossi answered questions about transportation during his visit Saturday to the Columbia Basin.

When asked about his priorities for creating a transportation plan, Rossi said, "Safety should be a given. We shouldn't be building roads that aren't safe, and I know my opponent (Gov. Chris Gregoire) wants to talk about safety, safety, safety, well, she should be doing that already. Why would we have a road that we don't consider safe?"

He noted U.S. Highway 2 is one example of a dangerous road in the state, with 49 deaths since 1999.

"If (SR 17) is also that dangerous as well, we're going to have to address it," Rossi said.

Rossi said congestion costs the state more than $600 million per year, according to the Department of Transportation's 2006 data.

"When the farmers take as long to get from their farm to Issaquah, and from Issaquah to the port, it's everybody's problem," Rossi said. "It's the cost of business. (When) you have your goods, your services trying to move around the region and you're paying people to sit there in traffic, and trying to get to the port and get out, quite frankly it's everybody's problem."

He said Gregoire raised the gas tax by 9.5 cents, and for his transportation solutions, he would neither raise gas taxes nor raise other taxes.

He proposes taking a "narrow sliver" of the general fund to fund transportation projects. Thirty-two states in the nation and the District of Columbia have already done the same thing, he said.

Businesses are leaving Washington because of transportation issues, Rossi said.

Rossi called the surface street option for the state Route 99 Alaskan Way Viaduct "transportation suicide."

"And I don't know how you get those containers out of the port on the back of a bicycle," he said. "That's just not going to happen."

He said a lot of the plans the governor, Seattle mayor and others are talking about would shut businesses down along the waterfront for four to five years.

Rossi's idea for the viaduct is to build a new one underground with deep-bore tunnels and tear down the current one. He proposes leasing the land the viaduct was previously on to help pay for the project.

"So the way I look at it is that once I've got that tunnel done, I take down the viaduct, I've got the most expensive strip of land in the state of Washington," Rossi said.

He envisions Seattle's waterfront could be the most magnificent in the United States or even the world.

"What I've said is let's not sell the land, but we'll lease the land. Long term leases," he said.

The project may be completed in a more cost-effective way than projections of costing $4 billion to $5 billion.

He said Sound Transit recently dug two deep-bore tunnels along Beacon Hill, about the same length needed for the Viaduct. The cost of the tunnels was $300 million.

Every time Rossi comes to Eastern Washington, he runs into someone expressing support for Gregoire because she provided funding for something, he said.

"She spent a billion dollars propping up a viaduct in Seattle so she could tear it down in two years. A billion dollars so she could tear it down in two years," he reiterated. "Put that into comparison with something she does over here, gives you a million dollars for a park or something like that."

When asked how he would turn the budget around to curb what he sees as excessive spending, Rossi said he has done it before. On the state Senate, he balanced the budget during the state's biggest deficit, in 2003, he said.

"You just have to sit down and go line by line through the budget, making thousands of decisions. And you make rational decisions, just like I would do in my own business," Rossi said.

Part of the solution is just to reduce increases, he said.

He said solving the current deficit problem is not going to be easy.

"But honestly, I could look you in the eye and say if I hadn't done this before, I'd be terrified," Rossi said. "But I've done it before and I can do it again."