Seattle's mental gridlock over transportation

Angst and debate are allowed in Seattle. Unlike Phoenix, there's little boosterism here (the city's success is obvious), no pressure to just shut up and buy a house (with one of America's best-educated populations, people are informed and involved), and the love and concern people have for Seattle is genuine (as opposed to, 'at least it's hot and sunny').

Transportation angst is one of the big local sports, and yet not much gets done. Voters recently voted down a big package of roads and transit. And rightly so: it would have increased emissions by adding roads, as well as installed light rail in the wrong places. Plus, it would have taken 20 or more years to complete. Even the Sierra Club opposed it.

Still, any new measures will be long in coming, and I sensed some fundamental disconnects in the debate. Most of them go back to my basic premise that the next 30 years will be radically different from the past 30 years.

A little background for out-of-town readers: Seattle is blessed with a relatively compact urban footprint. There are many centers of density, including in the suburbs. No all-powerful developer lobby is pushing to build 20-lane freeways to nowhere. Voters are environmentally savvy. The bus system is excellent and heavily used by all socio-economic groups. Commuter rail is also highly successful.

Yet Seattle is self-consciously behind Portland in transit. Portland's light-rail system is excellent. Seattle's first line won't begin service until 2009, after years of debate and false starts (including a monorail plan that blew up). If you choose to live in the outlying suburbs, or choose to use a car, you face nasty traffic on the freeways. As in much of America, infrastructure is aging, from floating bridges to ferries. Faced with all this, Seattle's messy democracy takes time.

Time is not on its side.

My disappointment in the debate over the roads-and-transit package was the lack of focus on the future. Much of the discussion was so...1960s. The future will demand more transit options, and the right ones. For example, light rail from Tacoma to Seattle is needless and expensive. The money would be better spent expanding capacity for the Sounder commuter trains.

Meanwhile, light rail to the university district will work, and should be fast tracked. More small projects such as the South Lake Union Streetcar can effectively serve dense areas, tie them into the regional transit network and spur development. Seattle should become a national leader in finding the smartest ways to drive down the costs of rail-based transportation.

Personal transportation devices have all the roads they need (and no magic hydrogen car will suddenly appear). What road money is allocated, should be used to maintain what's there, or find a fix for things like the Alaska Way viaduct. Adding freeway lanes, much less freeways, only encourages sprawl and congestion -- just look at the mess of Phoenix.

Finally, Seattle should resist the rope-a-dope of those who say "just add more buses." Buses are usually stuck in the same traffic as cars, they lack the capacity of light rail, and many people don't like them. A bus-only choice years ago set Seattle behind Portland.

The answer is a balanced set of location-appropriate options: light rail, streetcars, commuter rail and buses. And the land-use rules to penalize sprawl for the costly, environmentally unsustainable mess that it is.

Comments

[Skip Redpath]

Come to Phoenix and see our light rail debacle!!
Yes..I voted for it. Promises after promises that now do not appear. When first started, it would take one from Mesa/Tempe/Phoenix downtown and to the airport. Well, that "airport" deal is no longer (except for another 1 billion!).
and now...1" to 7" splits in the rails that are installed.

Government in action.

Skip

[Jon Talton]

Unfortunately the media focus on every blip of a light rail project, while ignoring similar or worse things in road-building (e.g., the McKellips merge on the Pima Freeway). LRT is new, exotic and strange to many Americans -- until they ride it and realize how great it can be.

[Jon Talton]

Re blaming government:
It's instructive that millions of Phoenicians get reliable, safe water decade after decade thanks to government water projects, heavily subsidized, that made no "free market" sense. The private water companies have all the problems.

The Big Dig in Boston turned lethal not because of government, but because of a greedy, corner-cutting private contractor.

In Iraq, the lives of government Marines and soldiers are put at risk by private-sector mercenaries.

If light rail has problems in Phoenix, the big blame can go to the cowardly politicians who demanded, above all else, that it come in "on time and on budget," in the face of a worldwide spike in materials prices. These cowards were partly responding to the anti-transit nuts. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

[Gray]

Strange how the transportation issues of cities in different parts of the world have many similarities. Take German city Kiel, for instance. Like Seattle, it is located at a beautiful bay and is especially famous for its sailing opportunities (and for its not constantly sunny weather).

Ok, it's only half as big as Seattle, but it made the same mistake when it disbanded its streetcar system in the 70s. The busses to replace it are nowhere near in reliability of schedule and comfort of service. Only recently, Kiel started to establish light rail stations, but since there are so few of them, this can only relieve the bus transport somewhat and won't ever be able to replace it.

Compare this with Hannover, a city in the middle of Germany and of similar size as Seattle. There, the transport authority clung to its streetcar system as the main mean of innercity transport, and even modernized it in the eighties with subway tunnels and stations in the center. As a result, even though the streets are a congested in rush hours as in Kiel (and Seattle, I guess), there's no difference in travel times for the public transport users at all times of the day. And reasonable policies of customer oriented modernisation held public transport at a high standard throughout the years. This is a system that isn't centered on convenience for the stuff, but on the users' demands. There is a regular night time service on fridays, saturdays and hollidays (on other days, schedule pauses between, say, 2 and 5 o'clock), when there are special events like concerts of sports, there are additional trains covering it, and the ticket prizing is also centered on the demands (special offers for part time users, commuters, tourists, students etc).

Of course, all this is only possible because the streetcars survived. However, the Expo 2000 in Hannover led to heavy investments in public transport, made possible by federal supplies. Maybe it's about time Seattle gets another Expo? 1962 is long ago...