COUNTY executives from King, Pierce and Snohomish counties recently sent a letter to the state Legislature asking for a "transportation summit" to address a broad range of issues related to transportation in the Puget Sound region. The proposed two-day summit, tentatively scheduled for June, represents an excellent opportunity to educate legislators and the Regional Transit Authority (RTA) about least-cost analysis

On March 14, voters in portions of these three counties rejected the Regional Transit Authority's proposed Regional Transit System. Without a doubt, they had many motivations for voting "no." What is clear is that voters have moved much farther up the learning curve than the RTA's backers.

Transportation bureaucracies across the U.S. show a consistent bias toward capital-intensive, inflexible systems that require continuing, expensive bureaucratic oversight. Voters, who after all are the ones who have to pay for this idea, have expressed their belief that we can reduce travel times, pollution and stress more cheaply and effectively by other means.

One approach is to apply least-cost planning to transit. This is not easy, but few important things are. It took the WPPSS fiasco to thrust least-cost planning upon the electric-utility industry. And as King Cushman (Director of the Transportation Planning Department at the Puget Sound Regional Council) correctly cautions, transit is an inherently more complex area than electric power.

Least-cost planning has been used for years in the electric industry and it may take years to make it similarly useful for transit. Nevertheless, least-cost planning has proven useful in addressing the complex and changing Northwest power market; it could also help us evaluate our transit options.

The mission of least-cost planners is to satisfy various demands at the lowest total cost. This is important because there are many worthy tasks competing for our limited public resources. Adopting relatively cheap, highly effective solutions first allows us to adjust and meet demands more quickly.

The first principle of least-cost planning is to find options consistent with our goals. In its own master plan, the RTA found Western Washington's proposed $6.7 billion transit system would not significantly reduce traffic congestion or automobile-related air pollution.

Who would seriously consider a plan that fails to accomplish its primary goals? Is the RTA seriously trying to diminish congestion, or does it have another agenda? If so, what is it?

The second principle is to study all options fairly. WPPSS failed in part because planners looked at nuclear power through rose-colored glasses. Many people, myself included, have a romantic view of trains. This may cloud our perception of light rail as it appears in the regional transit plan. But only a bureaucracy spending other peoples' money could indulge a romantic association with trains to the tune of $6.7 billion.

Whenever anyone proposes additional taxes to raise money for public projects, we should look critically at our options. This seems especially difficult when it comes to trains. In "A Desire Named Streetcar," U.S. Department of Transportation analyst Don Pickrell reviewed transit plans in eight cities. He found that officials refused to reconsider their support for rail, even when presented with figures showing that rail projects would not cover even the operating costs, ignoring capital costs.

In our region, planners presented reasonable estimates of ridership and costs. Both estimates showed that the proposal was hugely expensive and would not reduce congestion or automobile-related pollution. Nevertheless, many officials, including Seattle Mayor Norm Rice and King County Executive Gary Locke, publicly supported the RTA proposal. The desire for streetcars left them and others as blind to the transit situation as Blanche DuBois was blind to her emotions in the Tennessee Williams play.

There are many alternatives to the RTA's proposal. Present policies allowing parking on city streets and enabling firms to provide "free" parking for their employees make driving less burdensome. These policies could be changed. Drivers could also be charged congestion tolls, collected electronically without time-consuming toll booths, to induce them to acknowledge the social costs of driving.

Air-quality programs could do more to reduce automobile pollution by using remote sensing to detect and require cleanup of the dirtiest cars. The dirtiest 10 percent of cars, those responsible for 60 percent of pollution, could be purchased with gas-tax money and removed from the roads.

Walking and biking are clean and cheap transit options. Such options can be encouraged by constructing more pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares like the Burke Gilman Trail. Carpools, vanpools, smaller buses and more HOV lanes all make better use of existing roads.

The RTA's plan is not a precise analog to WPPSS' poorly considered nuclear dream-cum-nightmare. However, the two projects do share a focus upon massive, capital-intensive, inflexible systems. Both evidence a gross inattention to effectiveness and cost. Both imply Olympic-class hubris.

Least-cost planning could have saved Northwest electricity consumers millions of dollars and much embarrassment. Let us not have another fiasco with our roads.