Washingtonians unhappy with our state’s inability or unwillingness to pour new concrete should move to Florida, where the state with our nation’s second most regressive tax structure (we’re number one!) seems intent on spending what money it has paving over the Everglades and its surrounding countryside.
For all but one of the past seven years my daughter and I have taken advantage of the Seattle School District’s mid-Winter break to visit her grandparents in Palm Beach Gardens, and each year I am astonished by the amount of new construction. Fueled by the region’s burgeoning population and the MacArthur Foundation’s divestment of its huge land holding’s there, whole cities seem to sprout into existence overnight, where horse farms, forest and citrus groves once flourished. And feeding this development, like the vascular system of some fast growing tumor, is an ever expanding and widening network of roads and highways.
Eight-lane boulevards now flow where two-lane roads once cut a lonely trail only a few years before. In Wellington at what a decade ago was a quiet country intersection, a huge overpass is being constructed to ease thru-traffic past the now chronic backups. And the West Palm Beach International Airport, preparing for yet another expansion, continues to sprout bypasses and overpasses and underpasses in all directions to handle the steadily increasing traffic.
Inside the retirement community where my mother lives the changes are invisible, but on each annual visit, driving out the front gate for the first time is like stepping off an elevator onto a random floor — I never know what I might find on the other side. Possessing neither a sense of direction nor a memory for street names, I would be totally lost attempting to navigate the streets on my own. Landmarks, visual cues, even the footprint of the roadways themselves are as fleeting as our few days of sunny respite from Seattle’s usual Winter dreariness.
This is a region of endless sprawl, aided and abetted by a government that seems to be built on the Democratic principle of “one car, one vote.” New roads spawn new developments, more development generates more traffic, and the government responds by constructing new and wider roads. In my handful of car trips since arriving late Saturday night I must have travelled on at least a half-dozen roads with capacity matching or exceeding the Alaska Way Viaduct — many in the process of being expanded.
And yet, the traffic continues to grow worse.
Of course, the Puget Sound region has traffic problems of its own, but to those who would demand a Department of Transportation as accommodating as that in South Florida, I suggest you visit and closely consider the consequences. If the Southcenter Mall stretched for mile upon mile, dotted with palm trees and the occasional golf course or gated community, that would approximate the main thoroughfares that run through a region recently rich with wildlife and natural splendor. With a few notable exceptions, local developers have literally made a mockery of rational urban planning, building sprawling, new retail complexes with names like “Downtown” and “Midtown” — appellations meant to evoke a mental image of the Northeast cities many of the aging transplants left behind, while totally rejecting the principles of density that enable these cities to function as vibrant urban cores. “Downtown Palm Beach Gardens” is a mall like any other mall, with a Cheesecake Factory, a 16-screen cineplex, $6.00 gourmet ice cream cones and ample parking. It is not however, as its name implies, anything resembling a city.
I spent the first 29 years of my life in Philadelphia and New York City, never owning my own car, and never contemplating buying one. It was a shock moving to Seattle, where even living downtown, regular access to a car is a virtual necessity, especially for families with children. But if you think the Puget Sound region is auto-centric, you ain’t seen nothing compared to this section of South Florida. As the local population explodes, the region is building a sprawling infrastructure that will be impossible to efficiently serve via mass transit should the need or desire ever arise. And it will. As the world hits peak oil production over the next twenty years while struggling to limit carbon emissions, the cost of fueling our cars will surely quadruple or more in real dollars. I wonder how this region, so reliant on automobiles and air conditioning, will continue to prosper in an age of energy scarcity and rising temperatures?
It is no doubt endlessly frustrating — and more than a bit silly — that Seattle should require years of public debate to determine the fate of a single two-mile stretch of roadway, and still not come to a political consensus, but I’m beginning to believe our infamously wishy-washy “Seattle Way” may be as much a blessing as it is a curse. While the governor, a relative newcomer to the debate, has apparently decided that the only possible replacement for an aging, 1950’s-era elevated freeway is a taller, wider elevated freeway through our downtown waterfront, the years of hemming and hawing and political infighting have afforded the local civic leaders and elected officials most familiar with the project ample time to reconsider the basic assumptions that guide our transportation planning.
Critics of light rail and other mass transit initiatives like to dismiss it as social engineering — Soviet-style central planning at its worst. But road-building is also social engineering, subsidizing driving and incentivizing sprawl. In a growing region like ours, new road capacity can never alleviate traffic, it can only just barely meet our seemingly infinite and unfilled, pent-up demand, while at the same time reducing the public support and political will necessary to build the type of mass transit systems that all major cities depend on.
With climate change threatening to reduce our region’s hydro capacity and rising fuel prices making our auto-centric lifestyle less and less affordable, isn’t it time to learn some lessons from our original namesake? Seattle’s first settlers optimistically dubbed their new city “Alki New York” — New York by-and-by. A century and a half later, thanks to its density and unsurpassed transit system, New York is the most energy efficient city in the nation, while environmentally self-conscious Seattle still struggles to match words with deeds.
unwillingness to pour new concrete
UH OH. I SENSE A RETURN TO OUR FAIR COMMENT BOARD BY THE BET WELSHER.
SCUMBAG, PAY YOUR FUCKING GAMBLING DEBT.
I’M A BIG FAN OF THE ELECTRIC CAR AND BELIEVE IT CAN BE FUELED COMPLETELY BY DOMESTICALLY PRODUCED ENERGY. NO MORE SHOVELING DOLLARS INTO OSAMA AND FRIENDS POCKETS – WHICH THE WINGNUTS SECRETLY LOVE WITH THEIR WORSHIP OF GAS GUZZLING 3 TON PLUS VEHICLES AND TERRORIST-SPAWNING MILITARY ADVENTURES ABROAD.
HOWEVER, MORE VEHICLES OF ANY KIND JUST CONTRIBUTE TO SPRAWL. AMERICANS JUST OWN TOO DAMN MANY CARS. SOMETIMES THREE OR MORE TO A HOUSEHOLD. FOLKS SHOULD BE ABLE TO SHOP, WORK AND PLAY BY WALKING, RIDING A BIKE OR HOPPING THE PUBLIC TRANSIT. FOLKS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GET BY WITH ONE CAR TO A HOUSEHOLD. THIS TAKES RETHINKING AND RE-ENGINEERING OUR COMMUNITIES.
THE WORLD WOULD BE A BETTER PLACE AND WE MIGHT BE A LOT LESS FAT!
The build more roads contingent never seems to grok that more pavement doesn’t make traffic congestion lessen.
I’d sure like to get around Seattle by rail. I hope that prospect isn’t just a pipedream.
In 100 years the whole state of Florida will be underwater….
I wonder how this region, so reliant on automobiles and air conditioning
Um, what? Well, OK, for computer labs, maybe (though hydroelectric handles a lot of the electricity around here). But I’ve never lived in a house with AC in my life in the Pacific Northwest.
Part of the problem stems from Seattle being unwilling to accept density except in very limited areas close to the city core (downtown/Belltown, Capitol Hill, First Hill), withe the commensurate problem that the housing you get for purchase is for wealthy dot-commers, with subsidized rentals for the poorest people, and studio, 1 or 2 bedroom rental apartments for singles and college students. The middle class families with kids who want to own their own housing get pushed out to the suburbs, where prices aren’t completely larcenous- and mass transit is fairly useless out there except for commutes to work to urban centers, because the density to make it work doesn’t exist.
Seattle’s urban core needs to look like Vancouver’s- with MANY highrise apartments and a viable transit system (and satellite urban cores in places like Bellevue, similar to Burnaby/New Westminster). We’ve begun to clue into this…but it may be late in the game for that.
Give it up, Goldy! We need Highway 99 through downtown Seattle. Besides, tearing down the viaduct and replacing it with a surface boulevard won’t result in horse farms sprouting in Pioneer Sqare.
Besides, development in Florida isn’t fueled by urban sprawl, it’s fueled by FEMA flood insurance.
“……..And feeding this development, like the vascular system of some fast growing tumor, is…….”
PEOPLE EXACTLY LIKE GOLDY’S MOTHER……..
Speaking of flood insurance, this weekend’s Sunday Times had an article about the Skagit River flood plain, and the town of Hamilton, which floods out almost every year — and rebuilds every time with our tax dollars. What bullshit! I’ll bet if you checked the precinct results you’d find that town votes solid Republican!
Tired of paying $15 a pound for salmon? Salmon used to be so cheap people fed it to their dogs. That’s because there was so much of it people didn’t know what to do with it.
According to the Times article, the Skagit River flood plain covers about 100 square miles. That’s not much compared to the total watershed (over 3,000 square miles), but try to imagine 100 square miles of salmon breeding grounds. In a few years you could walk across the river on the backs of the fish! What a lot of people don’t realize is that most of the Pacific Northwest’s gigantic salmon runs were already gone before the first dams were built. The big culprit was the draining of lowland flood plains to create agricultural land — the same land you see flooded in TV aerial shots every winter. Instead of spending hundreds of millions on levees and dikes to keep a few marginal farmers in business, why not let it go back to nature, and resume producing billions of dollars worth of salmon? Ever notice the TV news video of salmon swimming across highways? They put it on TV like it’s a joke or something, but the fact is, the farms, fields, and highways that go under water every winter are the salmon’s aboriginal breeding grounds. That land literally is a gigantic salmon factory, if you leave the water on it for a few months of every year.
Instead of spending billions barging salmon past dams, we ought to buy out the farmers and little towns like Hamilton, put the essential thoroughfares (e.g., I-5) up on trestles or viaducts, and give those flood plains back to the salmon. We’d have tasty fish coming out of our ears!
It’s all going to be under water by the end of this century anyway, thanks to the greenhouse gasses Redneck is spewing out of his Hummer and his ass.
Guess what’s gonna happen to all those shiny new Florida developments when the sea level rises 21 feet?
@8 What nonsense — what total drivel. Republicans like you throw up 5,000 square feet second homes all over the map, then complain about the “footprint” of an elderly retired couple in an assisted living home. Assholes.
Instead of spending hundreds of millions on levees and dikes to keep a few marginal farmers in business
Hi. It just so happens you’re talking to a descendant of one of those marginal farmers who settled the Skagit River floodplains.
That farmland you’re discussing happens to be some of the best farmland around in this state, thanks to, you guessed it, recurrent flooding that replenishes topsoil and nutrients. Here’s a question for you: in a world where oil scarcity starts making long-distance transportation rather dicey and drives up the cost of food, don’t you think it might be a smart idea to have farmlands close to some urban centers? Or are you suggesting we try the local aboriginal diet? I don’t know if we’re going to be able to feed millions of people on salmon runs.
(Some of the OTHER best farmland in the state is in the Duwamish river basin, BTW… which is going to be horrendously expensive to reclaim if we have to, because it’s been paved over for warehouses and industrial parks.)
BTW, go out on Fir Island sometime, and look at the farmhouses out there…. with 15 foot tall foundations. My relatives (who still farm and raise cattle, almost 150 years later) are used to flooding and have dealt with it for years. It’s the price you pay for having rich farmland- having water come in and dump sediment on it every now and then. Not quite the same as Hamilton (which I agree is in a bad location and needs to be moved).
Oh, and Roger?
http://www.skagitvalleyherald......news01.txt
As urban Skagit County creeps out into the floodplain, chocolate-brown fields that once grew crops are now sprouting strip malls, big-box stores and parking lots. Piling up tons of fill to raise those buildings out of the reach of the Skagit’s seasonal floods only shifts the water to someone else, Hart said.
“Every time you put fill in one place, it just displaces the water onto someone else’s land,” he said.
Land development and urban sprawl is one of the biggest threats facing Skagit agriculture today, Swanson said. And watching the encroachment of development on the delta’s rich agricultural land can be painful, he said.
“I’m almost glad I’m getting too old that I don’t worry about it,” he said. “But I know what my dad would say. ‘To heck with houses.'”
The problem’s not the farming. The problem is sprawl coming south from Seattle and spreading north- people who want houses are willing to commute 50 miles eash way to get them, and then when they live there, they need schools, malls, and so on. Which comes back to the questions of affordability of housing, highway expansion, mass transit and so on.
What’s happening in the Skagit is what happened in the Duwamish and Green River areas 30 years ago- the farms are getting moved out for suburbs.
Re 11:
Gore isn’t quite as green as he’s led the world to believe
Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.
Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.
But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore’s office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/o.....reen_x.htm
12 “Or are you suggesting we try the local aboriginal diet?:”
Pretty much, yeah. Fish good, cows bad. Ask your doctor.
@12 “I don’t know if we’re going to be able to feed millions of people on salmon runs.”
The original runs were over 100 million fish and you can harvest about half of them without hurting reproduction, so that’s 50 million salmon a year. The aboriginal peoples had no problem feeding somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million people for about 5,000 to 10,000 years on the salmon runs.
@12 So how many people are actually fed by the farms in the Skagit River floodplain?
@12 Don’t they mostly grow tulips up there in Skagit County?
@13 Housing developers didn’t eliminate the lowland wetland “salmon factories” 100 years ago, farmers did.
@13 See, what I’m saying is, most people think the salmon spawn in the rivers and all you need to raise a gazillion smolts is a river. Wrong. The reason this region (in its aboriginal condition) had so many salmon was because of the seasonal lowland wetlands in the flood plains that aren’t there anymore because they were drained 100 years ago to get at that rich agricultural soil. People back then didn’t know what they were doing, but probably would have done it anyway. Today, the people responsible for urban sprawl know what they’re doing, but do it anyway.
The thing is, Ma Nature is going to do her thing no matter what any of you humans do. That land will always be under water during the spring runoff. So why not let it go back to the use that Ma Nature designed it for — raising fish? We’re spending billions to save salmon; and we’re spending millions more to keep Ma Nature from saving the salmon for free.
@14 So if Gore lives in a big house, global warming isn’t happening? Nice try at deflection, rob.
Hey rob, I’m gonna share a secret with you — you’re a lightweight on this board, even for a wingnut idiot. If you need that explained for you, ask Goldy or Will or Darryl — they can probably help you understand why you’re a lightweight.
Re: 21. Just pointing out your hypocrisy at 11 and Al Gores hypocrisy all the time.
As for your lightweight comment, it hasn’t been my desire to please Goldy, Will, Darryl and his brother Darryl. My desire has been the exact opposite so it must be working if you are speaking for them.
Coward @5,
Um… I was referring to Florida.
Rob @everywhere,
Oh no… Goldy wrote something that mentions climate change… better attack Al Gore!
Re: 23: Attack Al Gore? You liberals are too much. How is pointing out that Al Gore has 3 homes and doesn’t pay for renewable energy attacking him?
Actually for those of us that can read it was USA today pointing out the hypocrisy of Al Gore. Not me. I report you decide.
@22 Hypocrisy? You’re the hypocrite, rob. Gore owns a big house, so what? Show me a wealthy CEO, celebrity, or major public figure who doesn’t. The guy was Vice Presidcent for 8 years AND a presidential candidate (and may be again); he’s still a party leader and world figure, who constantly meets with people — do you expect him to do that in a bungalow? You’re so totally full of shit.
@23 hey Goldy, just to show you how far the mental status of some of the trollfucks has deteriorated — they now think you’re Roger Rabbit …
Neurosis is rampant in the GOP these days …
Re: 25. You are getting hysterical rodent. Are you sure that the meds you are taking from your recent operation when you had your head removed from your ass are working?
Put the computer down and head out to Big Daddy’s for a coolone.
The aboriginal peoples had no problem feeding somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million people for about 5,000 to 10,000 years on the salmon runs.
Right, but that’s from Oregon to BC. There’s about 10 million or so people in there these days
I’m also sort of skeptical that you’re going to be able to have a huge salmon spawning aera when the Puget Sound and Hood Canal has turned into a giant toilet/waste system. Unless you plan on kicking a lot of people out and cleaning up a lot of PCB’s, I think the salmon population’s crashed for good.
Don’t they mostly grow tulips up there in Skagit County?
Shows what you know, man.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/.....ola21.html
Skagit County produces 75 percent of the cabbage seed for U.S. farms and exports to 90 countries, supplying half the world’s market. Along with cabbage, the rich river bottom soils are known for producing seeds for the cauliflower, Chinese mustard, collard, Brussels sprouts, kale and radish markets. It’s a $21 million-a-year industry for the county.
The valley’s mild winters, rich clay soils and long, dry summers make it ideal for high-quality seed production. Similar conditions can be found only in New Zealand, Tasmania, France and Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Lots of crops can grow in there: oats, peas, corn, and so on. Really, it’s outstanding agricultural land.