No matter your politics, this is not good:
COLLEGE STATION, TX — Traffic congestion continues to worsen in American cities of all sizes, creating a $78 billion annual drain on the U.S. economy in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted fuel—that’s 105 million weeks of vacation and 58 fully-loaded supertankers.
[…]
Worsening congestion, the study notes, is reflected in several ways:
* Trips take longer
* Congestion affects more of the day
* Congestion affects weekend travel and rural areas
* Congestion affects more personal trips and freight shipments
* Trip travel times increasingly are unreliableResearchers spent two years revising the methodology using additional sources of traffic information, providing more—and higher quality—data on which to base the current study.
The report identifies multiple solutions to the congestion problem that, researchers say, must be used together to be effective. These include:
* Get as much service as possible from existing infrastructure
* Add road and transit system capacity in critical corridors
* Relieve chokepoints
* Change usage patterns
* Provide choices
* Diversify the development patterns
* Keep expectations realistic
“Congestion is a far more complex problem than is apparent at first glance,” Lomax said. “The better the data we use to define the problem, the more successful we will be in addressing its root causes.”
Roads and Transit, baby.
Finally, there is an actual plan and not some band aid solution.
Vulcan can have their SLUT, I want my 50 miles of light rail and 12,000 park and ride spots.
The Sierra Club wants you to believe that billions of gallons of wasted fuel is good for the environment.
Every other environmental organization in this state disagrees.
We need more alternatives to sitting in traffic.
I am voting yes on Roads and Transit.
This all assumes that traffic will continue unabated after Bush’s bombing of Iran.
I’m not sure I’d count on that.
Does “Diversify the development patterns” mean not jamming more people onto less physical space all the name of densification?
The Piper
1 For the eastside maybe we can have something like Bellevue Urban Transit Technology For Upwardly-mobile Commuting Kindred.
@5
AAACCKKKK!!!!!
I was born in Seattle and we have added MANY lanes of traffic in my lifetime, but gridlock keeps getting worse. Wake Up! It is IMPOSSIBLE to add enough lanes to keep up with the number of people moving here — there simply is not enough room for new lanes to make a difference.
Gridlock will get worse and worse in the future unless we invest in a real transportation system that can move people, not cars.
Building new highways — like RTID proposes to do — does not solve congestion. We’ve been doing for 50 years and look where we are today. More cars, more greenhouse gases, more traffic. What a waste.
Vote “no” on RTID and send the message that we want real traffic solutions and mass transit — not sprawling highways and global warming.
[DELETED — OFF-TOPIC]
It would also help if we stopped tying the work schedule to the Sun.
@8
What “sprawling highways” are you talking about?
and what mass transit plan should we be supporting? who will be introducing it down in Olympia?
Oh and @7 and @8, which part of the transit side of the package did you skip? The package isn’t just about building roads, many of which are to areas that have grown far beyond the capacity of the country highways that serviced them for decades. It has a significant amount going towards transit.
@12, unless trains can suck C02 out of the air, they cannot undo the damage done by a bunch of new highways. Right?
The highways poison RTID. Don’t swallow it.
@13 If you want to suck CO2 out of the air, plant some trees. If you want to lower new CO2 as well as CO and other gases from being sent into the air than build transit capabilities such as light rail and park n rides as well as lanes for the buses to travel down.
Hey scooter-
Your tired global warming argument is *yawn* tiring.
Your Sierra Club is being shortsited not to look at the land use shift that will surely happen with 50 miles of light rail…that will help cut down on trip miles.
How much are you getting paid by Kemper Freeman again?
Curious…How do you deal with the way people – those who are ostensibly supposed to be the beneficiaries of all this stuff – tend to continue to vote with their feet in support of cars and more highways.
Seems to me that most who want transit over highways want it so that the other guy will get out of his car leaving them more space on the freeway.
People…want…roads!
Besides…we’ll need them when next O.J. gloms himself a white Bronco for Low Speed II – The Sequal. Wouldn’t work to have him have to do it in a ST train.
The Piper
@ 16
That makes no sense. How do people vote with their feet to ride light rail that does not yet exist? Many people drive because they have been socially engineered to drive.
Besides, Sound Transit 2 has always had higher approvals than RTID, so a large part of the electorate understands that transportation problems cannot be solved by paving alone.
@14, how will we deal with all the other GHG sources? Can’t plant trees for them all. Not enough room on the planet.
@15, the highway lobby must have really powerful mind control drugs, because they’ve got an awful lot of credulous progressives(?) convinced that this is their last chance in the world for light rail. Bunch a zombies…
@18 The highway lobby? The highway lobby got f**ked on this one.
Remember, this was a $14B roads package a few years ago. Fortunately we have some good enviro groups in this state that do more than sell calendars. They got it shifted to include 10.8B for light rail and a bunch of transit improvements in the RTID.
Are you politically pure on every decision you make? Or just the one’s that will help you sell more calendars?
@19, if the highway lobby lost so bad, they why does RTID have so many highways? Geeze.
@20 So it is zero bridge or road improvements for you?
Where are we going to put all the buses?
I’m glad to see this report defining congestion as *waste* rather than mere inconvenience.
@21, this is junior high debating technique — false choices, fake RTID deadlines, switching the subject when you’re beat, and now an embarrassingly obvious straw man.
We have serious and complicated problems to solve… a little nuance, please.
@23 We’re only equipped for old ants here.
So…when all is said and done and at the end of the day…
What will the final, true, and actual cost of ST be? And are there any among you who don’t believe that ST is cooking the books just like it’s always done???
The Piper
“@12, unless trains can suck C02 out of the air, they cannot undo the damage done by a bunch of new highways. Right?
The highways poison RTID. Don’t swallow it. ”
Scotto’s comments get tiring real quick. All public opinion polls show people want basic and critical roads fixes for the short term, and trains for the future.
And since when did these phoney Greens decide HOV lanes for buses and carpools were a bad idea? Hello…
“What will the final, true, and actual cost of ST be? And are there any among you who don’t believe that ST is cooking the books just like it’s always done???”
Let me guess. PiperScott has no evidence or proof whatsoever that ST is “cooking the books.” Maybe he’s still stuck in the year 2001?
In case you ever feel like these liars are making some progress with their lies, just refer them to this:
http://www.soundtransit.org/Do.....091207.pdf
Think the anti-transit clowns have any kind of independent third party study to roll-out? Of course they don’t.
“We have serious and complicated problems to solve… a little nuance, please. ”
Naturally, scotto won’t be getting in to any viable solutions for these generic “problems.” Whining and complaining is just so much easier for the lazy pipe-dreamers.
It worked for Ralph Nader, right?
It might be safe to say that cars stuck in traffic emit more greenhouse gases and other pollutants than cars proceeding to their occupants’ intended destinations at reasonable speed.
The trick here is fixing/improving/expanding roads without falling into the trap of having them fill to capacity with more and more people in more and more cars going to more and more places. That might imply the desirability of expanding and improving transit in lock step with any highway projects, so that an attractive alternative will always be available.
@23
Sorry bud, but you’re the one throwing out high school debating techniques here. He asked you a simple question – can any work at all be put into our roads – even if it’s for bus lanes?
@30, you know the answer is quite obviously, yes, you can work on roads. This is really inane.
This might hurt your ears, but it is possible to actually fix what’s broken — which RTID neglects to do — without a massive highway expansion that will…
make global warming worse.
There are also a few good road projects in RTID — the Sierra Club has pointed them out, many times, and in many places, for example, here:
http://slog.thestranger.com/20....._local_cha
You need to do even more reading.
I try not to read the Stranger when they are giving hand jobs…
At least you acknowledge there are some good road projects. – we agree there
According to the Sierra Club, they like 70% of the road projects. – Personally, the number is higher than that for me, but we can agree to disagree.
I’m sure we agree that the light rail, HOV, new buses, bike lane improvements, etc…are all good.
So with all the things that are good in this plan, all the work it has taken to get everyone on the same team, and given the most recent polling that says individually a roads package would only receive 45.5% and transit only plan would get 49.5%…you’re opposing it?
If you want to talk about being nuanced, you should be yourself.
Your argument: “roads = cars = global warming”
Your solution: *crickets*
SLUT is actually a better acronym than the one Sound Transit was going to use for the new light rail.
Centrally Unifying New Train Service.
Oh, this is fun
And after RTID gets in, it will be Seattle who gets fucked…..again.
@28, sounds you’ve got a solution in your pocket — I bet it’s RTID!
But if you care about global warming, which appears to be assuming a lot, then you realize that RTID highways are not a solution at all, for the reasons we have discussed at great length.
Mass transit works, and we can get that after RTID is hopefully dead, but sometimes, you gotta get in a car, and then you need a highway.
It’s best if that highway is not jammed, don’t you think?
Study after study says that new capacity on conventional highways inevitably fills up, and then you are back to where you started, but at greater expense, and greater environmental damage.
This is why progressive cities like Stockholm, Bergen and London charge you to drive depending upon demand. For them, congestion is down and revenue for transit is up.
That ain’t in RTID, and if it passes, it will eliminate the possibility. If you’re playing chess instead of checkers, then you can think ahead, and realize that voters, who are already paying for jammed highways with an economically inefficient RTID sales tax, are not going to tolerate system-wide tolling.
So, even if I was a huge highway booster, I wouldn’t vote for RTID. No matter how you look at it, it doesn’t make sense.
Personally, I have no problem with congestion pricing in Downtown Seattle from 7am to 6pm on weekdays, with the money going toward transit in Seattle.
Now, let us see if Mayor Quimby’s owners, who own those parking garages and storefronts, let him.
Sounds like a great idea, maybe an idea for HA to get politically active on.
Will,
Adding road capacity that will spur housing growth in places like Bonney Lake and Yelm, when the people that buy those homes work in Tacoma and Federal Way is not a good idea and will not end congestion.
Good: Housing—>Employment
Bad: Housing——————————————————->Employment
Our current development pattern is the bad model.
@32, 70%: Will are you hiding?
Will said this too, and we pointed out that you don’t judge a package by counting line items. It’s like going down a shopping list and saying, “milk, eggs, Cheerios, Boeing 787.” I’m spending $120M and 75% of it is on food.
By Sierra Club criteria — and there is another excruciatingly long memo about what those criteria are — 20-30% of the highway money in RTID goes towards good projects.
The stuff that makes sense is cheap.
Lomax said. “The better the data we use to define the problem, the more successful we will be in addressing its root causes.”
Will here’s a diagram of the root cause of congestion for you.
Housing——————————————–> Employment=Congestion
Housing–>Employment=no congestion
We’d be better off if we spent half what they want to spend on RTID on moving housing closer to employment. Tax credits or a break on a mortgage for living within a 3 mile radius of where you work would be a good start.
We might cut down on the 40K or so people that get killed in car accidents a year too.
@31
Thanks for the detailed link.
So let’s get to the nuts and bolts here. I noticed that SR-520 is on the “concern over cost” list – please correct me if that’s a mischaracterization.
The 520 bridge is a vital corridor for commuters and already a serious bottleneck. There are two solutions to address this:
1) expanding 520 to have an extra HOV lane
2) building light rail across the lake parallel to the existing roadway.
Both approaches are part of the RTID.
If we approve RTID, you’re most likely correct that traffic will expand to fit the expanded 520 bridge and will accomodate more traffic until the light rail link across Lake Washington is completed. Even then, people will still likely use the expanded 520 bridge to capacity even as many people shift their commutes to light rail (although I think that many will just be shifting from the buses).
If we don’t approve RTID, and none of these improvements happen, what will happen? The people who have to commute from Seattle to the eastside Redmond every day (who make up the majority of 520 commuters) will grow increasingly frustrated with their commute over the years. Without seeing any transit option in their future, many of these people will just relocate throughout the eastside (especially as Microsoft continues to age as a company and has more employees with families), and therefore we could end up increasing, rather than decreasing, sprawl in the region.
If I understand what you’re saying, you’re claiming that if we vote down RTID this year, we’ll be more likely in the future to get a better proposal that doesn’t fund so many road projects. I just don’t see that happening. I see the backlash in the other direction. I think that as the ability for people to drive in this city worsens, their willingness to consider global warming as a factor in their decision-making process will decrease, not increase. Their willingness to think long-term and consider a transit project that won’t be done for 10 years will wane. I realize that we’re likely to disagree on that, but I think you’re being obnoxious in believing that you’re the only person dealing with the nuances here.
Our elected leaders and the government agencies they oversee made no serious effort to examine the global warming effects of these new roads. Given what we know about global warming this is negligence to the point of recklessness.
We actually know how to make our existing highways work better for all users and reduce wasteful driving — price them. The recent I-5 closure demonstrated that there is a huge potential for conservation of auto trips. Just like with electricity, solid waste and water, if you put price incentives into place people figure out how to make more out of less. You know, that crazy concept called efficiency. The current RTID plan is like WPPSS, rising population requires ever more power plants, rising population requires ever more highways. Back in the 1970s the advocates of conservation were called wackos who were going to be responsible for rolling blackouts for failing to support new power plants. Well, the environmentalists were right about power plants, and we are right about roads. We can use what we have a lot more efficiently by pricing it. That way we don’t need expensive new lanes, and we don’t even need to build HOV lanes — the existing lanes can flow.
The problem is not a technical one, it is a political one. They road advocates are losing, and this is our chance to knock them out of the game. They are clinging on to Sound Transit like a drowning man, and in the words of James Carville, when your opponent is drowning, throw them an anvil. It’s kind of embarrassing to see a bunch of liberals claiming they can’t beat the road advocates, and becoming apologists for elected officials who are way behind the public on global warming. Way to fight for progressive principles guys.
Roads yes, transit, Meh.
Go to the Bay area. They have busses and light rail and new freeways and adjustable carpool lanes and park and rides and dont forget BART.
And guess what? Traffic still sucks.
@39, If you want to fix 520, then fix 520 — don’t build a big heap of extraneous new highways.
Somehow, Seattle and the Eastside — the economic engine of the state — has been bamboozled into believing that it can’t fix 520 unless it also subsidizes, for example, the awful Cross Base Highway — a disaster, plowing through rare habitat found only in that location, and near undeveloped land, ripe for fresh sprawl.
Anyway, RTID does not really pay to fix 520. It is really, really arcane but in summary, RTID only funds about $1.1B directly, with another $1.2B from tolling. The Sierra Club waded through RTID docs like “APPENDIX C: Detailed Financial Modeling Results of the Blueprint” — you are welcome to do this enjoyable exercise yourself.
We also talked to several sympathetic government transportation planners who do this kind of this thing for a living, and concluded that the funding shortfall is partly made up with funds not actually dedicated to 520 — the legislature has not agreed to prohibit shifting money away to, schools, for example. In other cases, the 520 funding will require additional legislative action: the deal is not even done, and we are being asked to vote on it. I should add that some on the Sierra Club transportation committee also do this kind of analysis professionally.
Bottom line: the RTID board, and its president, whose pet project is the Cross Base Highway, was unwilling to cut other projects in order to devote sufficient money to 520. This is partly what we mean when we say “concern over cost.”
But this is all an incidental detail, because we know that RTID will make global warming worse.
You can speculate about what will happen if we are lucky enough to have RTID lose, but if RTID wins, we have certain failure.
@42
But this is all an incidental detail, because we know that RTID will make global warming worse.
No you don’t. And you keep saying this because you’re refusing to acknowledge the nuances of what will actually happen if this doesn’t pass this year. You are assuming that what we will get in the future will be better for the environment, and you do not know that. If RTID is voted down this year, we could be voting on something next year that is worse for the environment and also more likely to pass because it’s cheaper and doesn’t include as much transit. Your opposition to this bill on the basis of protecting global warming is essentially a gamble.
I explained to you the potential drawbacks to leaving the 520 bridge situation unaddressed (in terms of sprawl), and your response is to talk about the Cross-base highway. I think the Sierra Club’s intentions are good, but I’m worried that they’re overestimating how much influence they really have and overplaying their hand.
Piper @ 16:
Curious…How do you deal with the way people – those who are ostensibly supposed to be the beneficiaries of all this stuff – tend to continue to vote with their feet in support of cars and more highways.
Well, there are a couple of things here:
If the highways never fill up, and if the money gets paid for by the pavement fairy, and there’s always room to build more lanes, and if the neighbors (me for one) don’t resent a 20-lane freeway being built next to their house, then yes, roads and cars are great!
Now, on the flip side of this, the transit that is built has to actually work. I don’t take the Skytrain to work here because it makes me feel all warm and virtuous inside. I take it because it gets me to work nearly as fast as the car does, never gets stuck in Vancouver’s horrifying traffic jams (four words: Hockey Night in Canada), it’s clean, it’s pleasant, and I get to spend the commute time reading or zenning out rather than with my elbows on the steering wheel.
Likewise, mass transit is literally the fastest way, bar none, into the downtown core. No lights, no traffic, no $12 for two hours of parking. Jump on at Commercial Drive, jump off at Burrard Station 7 minutes later.
I haven’t had such good luck in Seattle. It’s 20 minutes door-to-door by car from my house on Beacon Hill to my old office in Lower Queen Anne. It was 1 hour 20 minutes by bus, and the bus is no joy to take. Thus, I went to work in Seattle by car, even though I would rather not.
If you build a system that people want to use, people will use it. It’s that simple.
Won’t it be nice to move beyond the idiodic transportation turf wars and all these faux experts carping about their pet peeves and opposing things to give themselves another long shot get their way.
Think about all the loudmouth nut cases out there who obsess over this when you cast your vote this fall and how much better life would be if they’d just quit their bitchy whiney ways. There are better things to do.
I’m voting yes to get us all moving better AND to best assure that all the do nothing ideologues shut the heck up and stay out of the newspapers and our faces.
I and my automobiles are all moving to Camano where even with your Queen of transportation Mary Margaret Haugen a train station is unlikely… Enjoy your massive car tab hikes, sales tax hikes, and the rest of the looting, I’ll be thinking and watching you all from the edge of the bay!
@43, no I don’t what?
Most of that post was about 520, and the purpose was to show again how RTID highways are not a win.
Yes, I suppose you could say that voting against RTID is a gamble; it’s a gamble like this: A man tosses a coin and it comes up heads. He asks you if you want to toss again, or do you want to bet it’s tails. A vote for RTID highways is voting for tails — a loss. I’d rather toss again.
@45, you’re attacking the messenger… I know that eases the conscience, but it does not help the cause.
@47
Yes, I suppose you could say that voting against RTID is a gamble; it’s a gamble like this: A man tosses a coin and it comes up heads. He asks you if you want to toss again, or do you want to bet it’s tails. A vote for RTID highways is voting for tails — a loss. I’d rather toss again.
That’s perfectly fine if you want to boil your argument down to something so simple. Just stop calling your position “nuanced” because it’s not.