As most of you that visit my website regularly know, I’m a motorsports fan. I’m firmly of the opinion that racing is almost the only true sport and that the rest are just games. I’ve been a racer for several years and I’ve got a fabulous 11 second 1979 Corvette for sale.

That doesn’t mean that I think we need yet another racetrack in western Washington. And it surely doesn’t mean that we need to shell out another $184 million to yet another professional sports organization to have NASCAR come to visit once or twice a year.

NASCAR is one of the biggest racing organizations in the world. The amount of money flowing through NASCAR makes the NHRA look like toy cars. Why they need a public handout to build a stadium baffles me. Except of course everyone want’s a piece of the public purse.

Talk about going around in circles:

OLYMPIA — Talk about going around in circles.

Supporters of a proposed NASCAR racetrack near Bremerton told lawmakers on Tuesday the 83,500-seat speedway would create thousands of jobs and — unlike other professional sports stadiums — wouldn’t cost taxpayers a dime in the long run.

But opponents painted the proposal as an “obscene piece of pork-filled corporate welfare” that would sully the local environment and create massive traffic problems.

Lt. Gov. Brad Owen called the proposal the best economic-development opportunity he has seen during his 30 years in state politics. But state Treasurer Mike Murphy spoke against it, saying state-funded debt should never be used to pay for private projects.

While Bremerton’s mayor called the speedway a “great fit” for his city, other local officials from Kitsap County bashed the proposal.

…

Lawmakers from other parts of the state said they were baffled by the lack of local support.

“This is about jobs,” said Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond, a town that has struggled with the loss of timber jobs. “It’s really hard to wrap your brain around folks that don’t want economic development.”

This isn’t about jobs or economic development. Building a track for NASCAR at public expense in Kitsap county is a horribly bad idea. NASCAR would only be likely to hold one major race per year at the new track. The rest of the time the track would either sit idle, or be used for minor, local races.

While that might help the Bremerton economy a little, it would hurt the other racetracks in the region. Pacific Raceways for example holds road races throughout the year. How many of those racers would abandon the road course in Kent to go run the high-speed oval in Bremerton? How many of the racers that run at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe would abandon that smaller track to run in Bremerton?

Setting aside the possible effect on other tracks, there’s still the traffic issue. There aren’t a lot of ways to get to Bremerton from the east side of Puget Sound. The roads are narrow and I can see major traffic jams for miles getting into and out of Kitsap county whenever a major race is held.

When the NHRA comes to Pacific Raceways for the Northwest Nationals highway 18 is choked with traffic when the track closes. There’s been a lot of work done to mitigate the problem, but if you live west of the track you don’t want to be heading that way on highway 18 once racing is done for the day when they’re here.

I know this from experience. Once, several years ago, I left the track just before the final round of racing and still didn’t get to my home in Auburn for over three hours. The crowd leaving was considerably smaller than 83,000 people too. I’ve since moved to Covington and can get home considerably faster, but I think you get my point.

Try to imagine if you will 83,000 people jammed into cars trying to leave Kitsap county via Highway 16 and crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge. All at once. Especially once the bridge becomes a toll bridge.

The cost to build a track for NASCAR will go way beyond the $184 million they’re asking the rest of the state to pay to put up half of the facility. It will require large-scale infrastructure improvements to handle the occasional load it will put on our roads. It’s already hard enough to get transportation funding applied to highway construction here when most of the emphasis is on busses and light rail that will serve less than 10% of commuters. Putting a NASCAR track in Bremerton will just make that worse.

The State of Washington should get and keep its priorities in order. We don’t need to subsidize yet another professional sports organization just to watch a bunch of grown men (and a woman) drive around in circles looking for the finish line.

Cross posted to Perri Nelson’s Website

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