Jim Vesely, one of the editors of the Seattle Times, commutes to work in the I-90 express lanes and on the Viaduct. On the Mercer Island to Seattle stretch, he doesn’t even have to be HOV, because Mercer Island residents are apparently worth two plebians. He has likely never ridden a bus or a train. He is one of the last remnants of a school of thought that can no longer add knowledge to their understanding of traffic – he can’t grasp that adding more lanes causes more congestion than it could ever relieve, or that congestion can never be reduced through promotion of alternatives, but only through a limitation of capacity.
The mayor of Bogota understands these things. The mayor of New York understands these things. The mayor of Seattle understands these things. Urban planners and transportation engineers know that while you can smooth intersections, you cannot reduce congestion by adding capacity, because every minute of congestion you reduce on the highway you expand, you add twice or more to every roadway it connects to – because you create an inbound and an outbound trip elsewhere for every new trip on the highway itself.
This makes sense to everyone, doesn’t it? It’s not rocket science. But Jim Vesely and his ilk just don’t get it. They cling to the ancient idea that if you add a lane to SR-520, you’ll somehow separate people from each other – but you don’t. You just make room for more people.
Now for the contrary – and this is what terrifies people like Mr. Vesely. If you narrow a highway, you will, indeed, reduce congestion. Not on the highway itself – but on all the roads around it. We’ve heard plenty of times that light rail will only carry a small percentage of traffic (a ridiculous argument anyway) – but so do our highways. The streets surrounding them carry far more trips.
So when I hear Mr. Vesely champion retrofitting the Viaduct, I can only regard it as the sad selfishness of someone completely out of touch. We have an opportunity here to change our urban landscape, to erase a horrible mistake made many years ago. Why would we accept as sound advice the opinion of someone who has been so wrong on so many issues – someone who has always come out in favor of things that benefit him personally, and damn the rest of us? It’s obvious that this man supports retrofit because it is the one thing that will delay major closure of the viaduct until after he has retired.
Don’t let those with prehistoric ideas plan our future.
We know better than that.
When I first moved to Queen Anne I was really annoyed by the line of traffic that feeds from 99 to a little stop sign at rush hour. I couldn’t imagine why they didn’t replace it with a stop light, and let traffic flow. Over time I realized that this would just let traffic flow to the next stop sign. And if they also replace that with a stop light then traffic would back up at the main strip. Then they’d need to change the stop signs on the strip to stop lights, and widen the road, or we’d just sit bumper-to-bumper there instead.
Since that time I’ve changed jobs from a 45 minute commute to a 10 minute bike ride. I can’t say that stop sign was the reason for changing jobs, but the overall commute time certainly was.
Matt, as much as I get cranky about Link, we do probably totally agree on transportation engineering. :)
Narrowing highways is a fantastic idea, and we should say so out loud, at public meetings, through letters to the editor, etc. The point is we need to say it to the people who don’t read the Seattle Transit blog. :-)
Why for example, have we allowed the idea of rebuilding 520 by adding two lanes to go unchecked, or at least under-checked?
The public falsely perceives the debate to be between those who want to widen roads a lot and those who don’t want widen them. The ‘middle’ ground then is to widen them a little. We need to reset the zero point and make it clear that our desire is not to forgo widening, but to actually spend money narrowing roads. It will strike people as insane at first, and we will meet resistance, but the funny thing about the truth is, the more you repeat it, the harder it is to ignore.
Here’s an idea for a post: make a list of roads you’d like to see narrowed.
Ben, a simple question. Why does I-5 have 10 lanes (around Holgate St.), and not, let’s say, 2 lanes, one in each direction?
I would love to see narrowing/removing of the highways. I don’t think I would ever say it anywhere but in front of like-minded urban thinkers. The problem is, how can one say such a thing to people who believe the exact opposite? Most likely, the conversation would just spiral out of control to a wild-lipped spit flying argument. I once had an aunt’s step-father covering me in his spit because he couldn’t swallow due to his anger at my suggestion that not everyone needs to drive everywhere they go.
tony, I’m not worried about the HOV additions on 520. They’ll push up bus ridership more than anything else, especially as we’ll hopefully keep that HOV lane at 3 person only. We’re not adding any GP capacity.
sam, a simple answer. The federal government needed to keep people employed after WWII and Korea to prevent recession.
The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, which funded I-5 (as far as I can tell), was just before we started to understand how traffic works.