What we could do today, tomorrow and this year

I was speaking to a group of suburbanites against a ballot measure that would build more roads and transit (it was a proposition that costs 57 billion dollars, not finish a single road and the transit planned was worse than none at all). I gave my reasons why the proposal was so wrong and so on, and someone in the back yelled “Then what would you do instead?”

Good question. Here is my answer. You’ll notice that I will try to define the problem in a couple of sentences before I give the answers. Truly understanding the problem is the key to having the answers.

First, there is no way to build your self out of congestion. It won’t work. Cities like New York, Chicago and Las Angeles have tried it and failed. In fact, building more roads just creates more travel. Not only will there be more cars, trucks and other vehicles, but individual vehicles will travel more.

There are enough roads. It’s just that we all want to use a few of them at the same time. The average American city has paved at least 25% of its land surface for cars. Surely, if we spread out demand, there is enough concrete for all of us.

The second point is that 60% of congestion is caused by accidents, breakdowns and stalled vehicles. All of the roads in the world are useless if there are vehicles stalled, broken down or involved in accidents on those roads. You could do more to alleviate congestion by removing breakdowns and accidents than you can by building more capacity.

That being said, it is important to start working on solutions, both so that you can make some headway on the problem and to show people that you are at least trying. So the trick is to attack the problem from several fronts.

The first and easiest task is to spread out demand. The key is to flatten the demand curve as much as possible. This is not to say that you ignore the breakdowns and accidents. In fact, you need to do both remove the obstructions and modify demand. It just so happens that in the flip of the coin in my mind, demand modification won.

Change nearly everyone’s work schedule

Get rid of the 9-5, Monday through Friday work schedule.

Thirty miles north of Seattle are the huge Boeing 747, 777, and 787 plants. The assembly plants are about three miles east of the Interstate 5, the main north-to-south corridor. You leave I-5 and drive three miles on a spur freeway to the site. This roadway used to be jammed when the workers were released at the end of their shifts. Then Boeing got smart. Now, every worker has an individual, separate starting time—and ending time, of course. When the individual’s eight hour shift is up, they pack up their tools, clean up and head out. Their replacement (Boeing is working around the clock) comes in and takes their place. The result is that Boeing loses no production time as shifts change and the spur highway out to the Interstate 5 three miles away flows easily.

Obviously, there are people in the general workforce that must start at 9:00 and stop at 5:00 but they are a tiny minority. Most work is more flexible than that.

Newsweek is reporting that 27% of us will be telecommuting by 2010. Even if we aren’t all telecommuting, I would bet that many of us spend the first hour or two answering emails, taking care of the phone messages or just catching up on the news that affects our industry. This could be done from home.

Inform people of alternative routes

OK, so say that you are on the road and traffic begins to back up. Once again, I call on technology to the rescue.

We need to set up ‘traffic speed ahead’ indicators. These simple displays would consist of three numbers: the top number would be the average speed of the cars in the next mile, the second would be the average speed in the next five mile and the final number would give the speed of the next ten miles. These indicators would be placed at ‘decision points’. Let us say that you are approaching the on ramp for the southbound freeway into town. The indicator lists the speeds as “18”, “42” and “55”. This would tell you at a glance that there is a very bad problem within the first mile of the ramp, but that the rest of the freeway is moving well. You would skip this ramp, use surface streets to reach the next ramp south and use that access instead.

As Global Positioning Systems become more commonplace, they will improve. Truckers will not be afraid to try alternative routes even in unfamiliar areas. The GPS will guide them expertly around traffic. They will eventually be enabled to deliver exact alternatives with real-time savings displayed. By the end of the decade most new vehicles will come with GPS.

Clear the way during peak hours

There are some vehicles that simply should not be on the major highways during peak hours of traffic: mobile homes, huge ‘over-sized’ trucks, army convoys and a few others. There is no practical way of stopping them, but you could fine them if they get involved in an accident, breakdown or stoppage. Make the fine so high that no right-thinking company would risk it. Why in the world can’t they move the mobile homes between midnight and four AM; is someone waiting for them somewhere at 9:00 AM? (These vehicles are driven by pros and their record is probably better than most. That misses the whole point. It is not that these types of vehicles are involved in accidents and breakdowns disproportionaly, it is that when they are involved, it is a great big mess.)

If congestion persists, toll Single Occupant Vehicles off the road at peak hours

The political pressure to toll is becoming too great to resist. It can be turned to the advantage of those that want to reduce congestion. Nineteen out of twenty cars in the commute traffic carry only one passenger. The gains from carpooling are paltry. But if tolling was designed to ease congestion, we could simply not toll anyone with more than one person per vehicle. If the toll was set high enough to compel people to carpool with even just one additional person during the peak hours, we could see the total of cars cut nearly in half during peak hours. And that would be anything other than ‘paltry’.

Study where, when and who is causing accidents and breakdowns, and then go out there and stop those accidents and breakdowns

Transportation experts will tell you that this has been studied to death. They are wrong. The State of Washington does not keep a computerized list of all of the vehicles left at the side of the road. They do not have a law that if your vehicle is abandoned three times in five years, we keep the vehicle until you prove that it is road-worthy and won’t be left again (or you could sign an agreement not to drive on the freeways).

A few years ago, a new Chief of the Patrol in the state of Washington directed the troopers to concentrate on four types of violations and issue tickets. The Big Four were drunk driving, excessive speeding, aggressive driving and not wearing a seat belt. No more verbal warnings, no stopping to help someone change their tire, don’t sweat the tail light out, just going out and issuing tickets for these four offenses. Where they did this, the fatalities dropped by 25%. Some of the drivers got off the road. Accidents fell and traffic moved.

Tell your law enforcement people that you want the accidents to go down and you will back them to the fullest.

One way to do that is to enact laws calling for the confiscation of vehicles for some infractions. Drunk driving, no insurance and truly excessive speed should be punished not by fines or jail but simple confiscation of the offending vehicle. Nothing else will stop some people. Sixty days for the first offense, 180 days for the second and permanently—with crushing the vehicle the third and final time. This may seem excessive; we just had a driver with several DUI’s go the wrong way on the freeway kill someone in the car that they were unlucky enough to hit. Now, that seems excessive to me. Had we confiscated their vehicle a couple of DUI’s ago, this accident would have never happened. By the way, the accident closed the freeway for several hours. Given that someone died, this is not the biggest part of the problem. But if the vehicle had been seized, the closure of the freeway also would not have occurred.

Get law enforcement to video their arrests. Watch as the conviction rate nears 100%. Wisconsin did this and their conviction rate is 92%.

Generally, get serious about traffic law enforcement. Go after those things that cause accidents. Confiscate the vehicle of those people doing these things. Keep up the pressure and don’t accept accidents as a normal part of traffic. Yes, there will always be fender benders but the really big, traffic-clogging accidents are caused by really bad behavior and we can stop this. All we have to do is decide to act.

Have law enforcement get in front of vehicles and then, lead them off the road

Law enforcement pulls up behind the offending vehicle and them follows them off of the road where they write them up a ticket. There are three things wrong with this out-dated approach.

First, the presence of the cop car does slow down the other cars on the road, but to some degree, they slow down too much. The cars behind them, seeing tail lights, slow and so on and pretty soon, you have traffic jams.

Second, too many cop cars are hit while sitting at the side of the road. Now, it is mostly drunks slamming into the back of the cops but this is a lousy way to catch drunk drivers. In the past year, seven state troopers have been hit at the side of the road.

Third, if the police pulled in front of the offenders, activated a lighted sign on their trunk that said something like “Slow down, follow this vehicle off of the road” with blue lights and sirens for added emphasis, this would virtually eliminate high speed chases. (The drunken driver that I cited above driving the wrong way on the freeway was being pursued by a police officer. Had the law enforcement vehicle been in front, there would be no chance that the drunk driver could have entered the freeway on-ramp the wrong way.)

Clearing accidents and breakdowns should be, after taking care of the injured, the highest priority

Imagine if I dropped a load of wood onto the roadway. Or someone had a mattress fall off their truck. Would we allow the obstruction to stay there? Of course not. When someone is involved in an accident without significant injuries, we should simply push the vehicles off of the road. Any additional damage that the vehicles suffer would simply be added to the damage caused by the accident. It is maddening to see literally tens of thousands of people stopped simply because we do not feel that we can order the state troopers or city police to push the cars off of the roadway.

The shoulder lane of the highway is the most important lane of any highway

In Seattle, in our great rush to build High Occupancy Lanes, we decided to use the shoulder lanes as HOV lanes. This was a giant mistake. The shoulder lane is where you take your accidents, where police write tickets and where we can safely put breakdowns. It is the lane that keeps the others—all of the others—flowing freely.

The shoulder lane should be considered sacred and treated as such.

Bring back the shoulder lane. Even though it would technically reduce capacity, it would substantially increase flow on all lanes. It would reduce congestion. Even if we had to forego HOV lanes, flow would be improved.

Design for flow of traffic

The trick is not to build more lanes of traffic but to use the lanes that you have to better effect. Cars stopped are lanes of traffic that do not work—in fact, the lane might as well not exist at all. Keep things moving on the lanes that exist and you won’t have to build more lanes.

There are the accidents and breakdowns, but there are also the single car parked in the curb lane after three o’clock in the afternoon that effectively reduces the lanes available by half. There are the traffic signals that are holding up thirty-five cars and two buses for no good reason because there are no cars coming in the other direction. There are too many entrances and exits on the old Highway 99 that make that six-lane road both slow and dangerous.

This is not to argue for all-flow, everywhere. The neighborhood streets should be flow-restricted. They should not be used as shortcuts for people and things going from Rainier Valley to Beacon Hill, from Greenwood to Wallingford and downtown to Capital Hill. But the major highways, the arterials and the freeways ought to be made free flowing.

Modernize your traffic control lights to move traffic—and for crying out loud, add ‘left turn only’ arrows. Restrict parking and treat blocking parked cars like the obstructions that they are (you don’t need to tow them across town; just take them around the corner or nearby and put a lock on the wheel). Go to where the chokepoints are on major throughways and eliminate those problems.

Change the laws—especially tax laws—to favor driving less, or not driving at all

Every law, every rule ought to be changed to always make it better to drive less or not drive at all. Right now, there is no real change in the cost of insurance (the largest single check that you write for the privilege of driving) if you drive fewer miles or don’t drive one day. Make every insurance company offer a policy that notes how many miles you drive and lets you pay by the mile. Better, consider making minimum insurance part of the cost of a gallon of gas. You buy a gallon of gas and twenty-five cents of the price buys you collision insurance (covers the other person in case of accident). Don’t worry insurance companies, there is still plenty for you to sell in the form of extra added coverage that most car owners will want. But if you don’t drive, you don’t pay for insurance.

We should help those who choose not to drive or drive less. The state could try tying your cartabs to the amount that you drive instead of the cost of the vehicle. The local cities could pay the sales tax on bikes. State and local governments could simply give people money—or more likely bus passes, rebates on bikes and the like—for not owning a car.

I know that some of us need to have and drive a car (I consider myself one of them). But every rule, law and tax ought to reward you for not driving or at least driving less.

The reason for this is simple: everything that you do to releave congestion opens a place and someone on a bus, in a carpool or who has switched to off-peak hours, says “Hey, I can drive alone at 8:30” --and does. Unless and until you get the total number of vehicles off the road, you are really just spinning your wheels.

Sisyphus rolled up the rock to the top of the hill every day just to see the rock rolling back down the hill, to begin again rolling the rock up to the top of the hill again. Then one day, Sisyphus said to himself “Hey, this is stupid” and stopped rolling the rock up the hill and then the rock didn’t roll back down and he went and started a dating service for the Gods on the Internet and made a million bucks and retired to Montana or something very like that. The point is, if you keep rolling a rock up the hill and the same thing happens every day, you really should try something else. I don’t have the answer, but I think that we ought to try lots of things, see what works, discard what doesn’t and stop doing what is obviously not working.

The Alaskan Way Viaduct

It should come as no surprise that the engineers came to the conclusion that the viaduct cannot be saved by adding some bracing and grouting around the foundations. Afterall, that is the least costly of the alternatives. It is even less surprising that the engineers came to the conclusion that the preferred alternative is to build a tunnel. Afterall, that is the most expensive alternative.

Engineers are paid a percentage of the total cost of any project. It should come as no surprise that they skip the least expensive alternative and endorse the most expensive. To do otherwise, they would have to be saints. Or stupid.

The fix-it alternative has been pooh-poohed from day one and it is the one alternative that makes sense. It makes sense if you realize that the viaduct has been through several fairly severe earthquakes without significant damage (moving a couple of inches is not significant if you are a two mile long, fifty feet high and forty feet wide elevated roadway; these things are designed—if they are designed right—to move a little). If you look at the report that was written BEFORE the 2001 earthquake, the report that predicted that the whole thing would fall down for sure at the next tiny quake, you realize that the structure has withstood what they promised would be fatal. Simply put, the viaduct isn’t falling. Not even close. The fix-it alternative is the cheapest, surest and best alternative.

So let’s assume that it has to come down. Then the next best alternative is to not replace it. Here the proof is in the pudding. Several cities have eliminated their elevated roadways and not one has suffered the predicted dire consequences. Rather, every city that has torn down their elevated roadways report great news. But let us assume that the critics of such an idea are right when they pronounce that ‘those other cities are different; their elevated roadways went through the city’, or that they had ‘alternatives that we don’t’ or some other bullshit excuse why we can’t do the same thing here in Seattle. Seattle has shut down some streets for months, even years and some how, some way the cars found a new way around, they managed to get where they wanted to go and the swallows returned to Capistrano. When they built the West Seattle high bridge, all traffic was routed through a cow pasture path of a street with people predicting hour long commutes to and from West Seattle. But people aren’t that stupid. They adjusted, took new routes, started earlier—or later—and West Seattle is still there. Right now, they are busting up the approaches to and from the Fremont Bridge like its personal, and still the cars, trucks and buses get through. Not perfectly, but they get through.

Before you spend a couple of billions of taxpayer money, you should at least try the ‘no-build’ alternative. I would think it would be criminal not to. I’ve already used the ‘stupid’ word too many times, but it fits here, too.

Even the re-build it alternative is better than the tunnel. Don’t believe the drawings: it doesn’t have to be that big or that ugly. Don’t believe the costs either: it doesn’t have to be so expensive. Look to Sound Transit, believe it or not, if you don’t believe me. Look to what Sound Transit is building from Tukwilla to SeaTac where the light rail will be elevated. It is in these few miles, where they finally agreed to go elevated, that they are saving $200 million (though they are wasting more than $200 million on the tunnels—they are not going to come in under budget) and shaving months off of the construction schedule (though they are going to run into so many problems in the tunnels that they will never really complete the light rail). Sound Transit has put in columns every one hundred yards and then they bring in the roadway in segments which have been poured off-site and lift them into place. They draw wires through the roadway, apply tension and finish a hundred feet every couple of days. The ‘roadway’ is twenty-seven feet wide and that is three lanes of highway. “Hey! Why not build two of these roadways, side-by-side and you end up with a pretty darn graceful and smallish viaduct that can be built in months instead of years!” By separating the two roadways with a couple of feet you avoid really bad head-on collisions and let sunlight to the ground below (think of it as a two mile long skylight). If you got on the stick, you could even use the off-site concrete yard that Sound Transit is using and the forms, but that would be too smart. Even if you don’t do that, you save a lot of money.

Which leaves us with the tunnel. The Worst Alternative.

You should never sink four billion into two miles of roadway. Put it another way: “There is no one mile of your total transportation system that is so damn important that you spend $2 billion per mile.”

Then there is the billion dollar question of how in the hell you get from the Alaskan Way to the south mouth of the Battery Street tunnel? Stand at the foot of the Harbor Steps and look up at the top of the Steps and ask yourself ‘how could a truck, car or bus get from here-to-there in a quarter mile?’ Then, somehow dig a hole about twenty feet deep and then ask the question again. Then, add moisture to the roadway in your tunnel climbing from subterranean Alaskan Way to Battery Street tunnel and you are feeling--well, at the risk of being redundant—stupid. Or if you will, blazingly, totally, George Bushably, stupid.

Now, if you still want a tunnel, go Google “Major tunnel fires” and notice that every major tunnel has a major fire. They will tell you that they will forbid flammable cargo. This ignores the fact that every car, truck and van is carrying flammable cargo—it is called ‘gasoline’. They will tell you that they will have fire suppressants and equipment and blah, blah, blah because by the time that the fire happens, all those guys are dead and someone has forgotten to recharge the foam, the wires have corroded and blah, blah, blah and it’s another major tunnel fire and these things happen. Personally, I don’t want to be in a two and a half mile long tunnel when someone goes sideways and someone smashes into them, setting them on fire and a couple of others catch and explode. And I would sure not like to be the mayor that thought up this tragedy-waiting-to-happen.

Finally, I am not sure where Seattle, this country or this world is heading. But I am pretty sure that ‘transportation’ will change dramatically in the next twenty odd years and I don’t think we ought to be building four billion dollars of anything that is in response to our current problems. Better to fix-it or try to manage it without replacing or if we must replace it, do it with a little better technique than we usually do. Anything would be better than digging up the city and spending every dime we got on a tunnel.

Or maybe I’m stupid, but I doubt it.

No more lanes of traffic

The Seattle PI ended a recent editorial with “…the current assumption is that new road plans will open up new lanes and increase highway capacity.” (4/9/07)

The only thing that new lanes of pavement open is more traffic. Nowhere in the world has new lanes solved the traffic and transit problems. Each new highway, freeway, bridge or roadway is hailed as the one that will ‘solve the problem’. Think “I-90” in the late 1970’s; rebuilding the bridge wider and bigger was the promised solution to cross lake traffic. All it did was get more people to move over to the eastside, drive more and drive longer. The number of cars on I-90, 520 and even going around the lake did not decrease—in fact, they increased. And this is true whenever you increase the lanes available.

Go out and get a tattoo: “More lanes means more traffic.”

Even as a transit advocate, I am not stupid enough to think that transit can solve all of our traffic woes. You will never take a load of leaves to the dump in a bus, nor deliver a bunch of refrigerators in a monorail or rush your aged parent to the doctors in a light rail train. So while we need transit, we need traffic capacity. But rather than building ever more lanes in an ever futile attempt to ‘build our way out of congestion’, we need to understand the problem. Only by understanding the problem can we begin to tackle the issue.

First, the traffic is not as bad as it is made out to be. Traffic makes for very funny Dave Horsey cartoons, but we really are not even close to gridlock. Most of you reading this drive to work; I drive for a living. I drive a tour van. I drive most days from the north end of Seattle to the airport and back into downtown during the morning rush hour. On nearly every day, I am held up for a few minutes—but that is all. I maintain a speed of nearly fifty miles an hour, day-after-day. I listen to the traffic reports on the radio and when I-5 is bad, I take Aurora Avenue. Yes, of course, traffic is bad near Safeco Field after a game, but even then I can get out of there in under fifteen minutes (big hint: stay off the major roadways and use the alleys). Traffic in isolated areas—around the Fremont Bridge, the Husky Stadium and the Spokane Street/I-5 interchange among many—can be bad. But these are momentary, can be avoided easily and no amount of building will change them.

Traffic is simply not that bad.

Second, if you carefully note what the traffic reports tell you, you will know that the largest part—estimates are that it is 60% of the problem—are accidents and breakdowns. Now, accidents and breakdowns are not entirely avoidable (that’s why they are called ‘accidents’). But many accidents are avoidable. Many breakdowns are foreseeable. Imagine if we put the monetary effort into clearing accidents and breakdowns that we propose to building new roads? We need to examine and record all accidents—and then, go there and prevent some of those accidents! We need to see who and what is breaking down—and then, stop a few of those breakdowns!

Third, the absolute key is not building new lanes but traffic management. We have the ability to tie the traffic control system to the true, real-time needs of the cars, trucks and buses. The costs of these computer controlled traffic lights are going down, for the same reason that your personal computer costs are going down. Even at the old prices, it would be far cheaper to computerize our traffic control than to attempt to build enough lanes—and that won’t work anyway.

There is much more to traffic control than just traffic lights. We ought to be investigating, initiating and where appropriate, implementing them.

We should examine and document what is causing accidents and then direct the police to making accident reduction a priority.

Three minutes saved by improved traffic control is the same three minutes saved by clearing the freeway for three miles so that you can go sixty miles per hour.

We can change traffic for the better. I know that we can because we have—and it works. Notice how the traffic reports rarely mention the spur freeway that goes from the Everett plant to I-5? They used to mention it all of the time. Then, Boeing changed their program; every worker in that plant (and there are thousands of them) have a different start and stop time. Every minute, a different worker is let off from work. Result? No big traffic jams.

This is just one example of where a little common sense goes a lot farther than a billion dollar’s worth of new concrete.

Fourth, as a last resort, we can initiate demand management. “Demand management” is just a euphemism for “tolls” and I am opposed to “tolls” as usually done. Usually, tolls are simply charging to use the roads and that means that the poor are denied access and the rich are granted the use of the roads. Frankly, I don’t care if it is a dime: it is wrong to let some use the roads and not let others.

But there is a way: as a last resort, I would advocate for what they did in Singapore decades ago. They did not charge a vehicle for entering the city; they charged you for each empty seat as you entered the city. Full cars, trucks and so on, paid nothing. Most drivers simply carpooled up and drove in free. (Those rich people that wanted to ‘show their wealth’, paid $10 an empty seat and this was enough to pay for the toll booths, enforcement and so on.)

Studies show that nineteen out of twenty vehicles going across the I-90 are single occupant cars, but that other one out of twenty vehicles carry forty percent of the people across the I-90 bridge. We could set up tolls that only charged if you were a single driver (commercial vehicles and transit ‘dead-heading’ would be exempt). I think that very few drivers would choose to ‘drive alone’. If I am right, we would see half of the cars on the road, overnight.

One reason why traffic control, accident reduction and removal of breakdowns doesn’t get priority is that the political people don’t get to have a ribbon cutting, contributors to their campaign fund don’t get big contracts and there is something terribly sexy about building the most expensive bridge or roadway or whatever.

If you listen to the radio traffic reports there are a couple of days a year that we hear ‘traffic is light’: the days that the federal workers have off and no one else does. Federal workers are a small, but significant, number of employees in Seattle. I mention this only to demonstrate that we do not need to cut huge numbers from the traffic flow; a few cars, here and there, will do the trick. A couple of fewer accidents and a handful less of cars abandoned in the street will go a long ways. Better traffic management and control will do more than any new bridge, road or highway.

We have paved over twenty-five percent of the city of Seattle with concrete for our cars. More concrete will not solve the problem. Certainly, we can make better use of the vehicles we have on the concrete already poured. Enough with the concrete already.

Lighting the way

Footlights on Burke Gilman Trail

The Burke Gilman bike trail in Seattle’s northend is a major, significant transportation corridor, used by several thousand people a day.

It is a paved, separated biking and walking trail that leads to, and through, the University of Washington. Since it utilizes the old railroad right-of-way, it has no hills and few street crossings.

If proof of its utility is needed, look no further than the fact that the University of Washington has all of its bike parking places taken (in fact, it can’t or won’t build enough bike parking places). Look at the real paucity of bikes at Seattle University or the Seattle Community Colleges. They have the same demographics as the UW and many of the students at these campuses would welcome a chance to bike to school but there are no safe and separated bike trails to those institutions. The Burke Gilman has saved the University from being inundated with cars.

The Burke Gilman bike trail could be even better if it were lighted, especially during the winter months when we get only eight hours of sunlight. I am not talking huge street lights shining down from twenty feet above. I am calling for footlights that would illuminate only the pavement of the trail itself. First, these type of lights would not shine into nearby homes and businesses. Second, it would take far less energy to light near the pavement than to light from high above.

When I proposed this to a friend, he said that the cost would be prohibitive. I said “We light the roads—all of the roads—throughout the night and no one seems to mind the expense”.

What a great way to tell non-car users “We are thinking about you; we want to help make you safe and comfortable.”

Uber traffic circles

In Seattle, there are ‘traffic circles’ in the middle of many ‘uncontolled intersections’ where two non-arterials—side-streets—meet where there are also no stop signs or traffic lights. You must drive around the traffic circle

These traffic circles are very good. Where they have been installed, they reduce accidents by 97%.

Up on Capital Hill, between Fifteenth Avenue East and Nineteenth Avenue East, between Aloha Street and John Street, there are traffic circles, but instead of merely being a landscaped circle in the middle of the intersection, these traffic controlling breaks in the road go from corner to kitty corner, diagonally through the intersection.

These are better.

(For the nervous-nellies reading this, they leave enough room for fire trucks, cops and ambulances to get through, if a bit roughly.)

Not only do these Uber Traffic Circles slow down everyone but they virtually eliminate people driving through the neighborhood as a shortcut---as they used to. The onliest reason for driving here to go here. People can still drive home, deliveries are made, emergency vehicles can get through, but oh, what a change a few curbs, a little dirt and a couple of trees make.

Tolling SOV's

First, let’s make it clear that I am against paying to use the roads.

We paid for these roads with gas money and other taxes; we should be allowed to use them.

Worse, I would hate to see a world in which these gas tax built roads paid for by nearly all of us would be now given to those with the money to pay for access.

But having said that, there is something to be said for getting some vehicles off of the road.

So I think that it would be alright to put a toll on those non-commercial vehicles that have only one person in them—during peak hours. If you have more than one person, no charge. If you are driving during non-peak hours, no charge. No charge for commercial vehicles. Only the single occupant vehicles driving at peak hours would be charged.

Frankly, this is something that I would consider as a last resort measure. I am convinced that there are many things that we can do to relieve congestion but if we have to, we can toll SOV’s. It would work.

Nineteen out of twenty cars on the road at peak hours has only one person. If everyone doubled up, we would take nearly half of the cars off the road. Now that is congestion busting.

Telecommuting

In “Our ability to deal with the traffic could pave the way for future success” (Seattle Times guest column 8/31/07 by Sims and Gregoire points out that the predicted nightmare of traffic gridlock during I-5 construction did not happen. (For twelve days or so, they closed down three of the five lanes on Interstate 5 leading into Seattle for replacement of huge expansion joints.)

Gridlock was not avoided by people taking transit. It was avoided because people commuted smarter.

The Sounder trains may have seen an increase in riders, but even packed, they moved only 2,000 people. The problem is, I-5 has 130,000 cars and trucks a day.

Buses didn’t move many more than the trains and the extra buses became part of the traffic that remained.

Don’t bother mentioning water taxi. They do not carry even 500 people all day long and are nothing more than a boondoogle of the worst sort.

What really happened when they closed down three of five lanes of northbound freeway was that thousands—tens of thousands of drivers—either went at other-than-peak rush hour times or used one of the other ten to fifteen lanes of traffic that lead into downtown Seattle.

Let us count the lanes:

--East Marginal Way (and even West Marginal Way to Spokane Street) has two and even three lanes that are almost never full.

--First Avenue South and Fourth Avernue South both are major, four lane arterials with hardly a light or traffic.

--Airport Way South (a personal favorite of mine) is a road that you can assume there is almost never another car on it.

When I was learning to be a cab driver in Seattle (back in the days when they actually trained cab drivers to get somewhere fast and the shortest way possible) they told us not to use the freeways. They are nearly always full, may trap you in a major jam and are almost never the best way to get anywhere.

Better, a lot of commuters simply put off driving into work between 7:00 and 9:00. Some hardy souls actually came in earlier.

But this November, the voters are being asked to tax themselves to build more roads, bigger transit, extra buses, light rail to the Husky Stadium and more roads. Most of the $17 billion is for transit that will carry almost no one.

What we need to do is take care of what we have. We don’t need to build new roads; we need to repair what we have. We need to realize that we have paved 25% of the city and within all of that concrete we have more than enough for our cars, trucks and vehicles.

We cannot spend every dime we have and ever will have on trying to build our way out of congestion. We can commute smarter, drive smarter and even haul freight smarter. New York, Chicago and LA have tried to build their way out of congestion and failed. Let’s try something different. Let’s try something smarter.