Comprehensive traffic reform
Published Mon, Jun 4 2007 11:48 AM
Technorati Tags: News and Politics, Elections, Transportation
What is it about politicians these days? They all seem to be hooked on "comprehensive" solutions to complex problems. "Comprehensive Immigration Reform" comes to mind.
It seems to me that often these "comprehensive" solutions are often worse than the problems they're trying to solve. What's wrong with the "divide and conquer" approach anyway?
I write software for a living. There's no way that I would even attempt to create a "comprehensive" software package all at once. Instead, I analyze the problem and break it down into smaller problems. I try to keep a big picture of the whole problem so that I have a guide for where I want to go, but I solve the smaller problems individually. It tends to work better that way.
It seems to me that solving society's problems ought to be approached in a similar fashion. We need to keep the big picture in mind, but we need to deal with problems in a way that lets us tackle them as we can, rather than trying an "all-or-nothing" approach.
Of course, one of the reasons why politicians use the "comprehensive" approach is so that they can ram unpalatable things down the electorate's collective throat. We've got a "big" problem, so we need a "big" solution. "Of course the bill's not perfect. Are you going to throw out the good for the perfect?"
So it goes with the comprehensive traffic package that Sound Transit is pushing on the voters this November. The real problem we have is traffic congestion. There are a lot of people that need to go a lot of places, and our highways are running at or near capacity. Simply put, we need more highway capacity, or we need an alternative way to move people around.
So what's the unpalatable part of the comprehensive traffic passage? That depends on who you ask, but for me it's the light rail package. Our current "light rail" solution, the Sounder isn't really light rail at all. It shares track space with freight trains. Because of this, it runs on a limited schedule. It's subject to delays when freight needs to move on the rails. Even worse, the part of the system that runs to Everett costs about $33,000.00 per year per passenger to keep running, above and beyond ticket costs.
This sort of "efficiency" isn't what we need. Especially when extending the system won't help with traffic congestion at all. Why should we spend $23 billion over the next 20 years for something that won't even solve the problem? Especially when the Seattle Times is reporting that we'll have to pay another $14 billion to cover the construction debt afterward?
If Sound Transit wins voter approval to extend light rail far beyond Seattle at a cost of more than $23 billion by 2027, taxpayers would still owe an additional $14 billion in construction debt afterward.
Financing costs mean that voters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties will be looking at a half-century commitment when they decide on a regional-transportation measure in November. The last bonds for the 50-mile rail plan, and other transit projects, would be paid off in 2057.
By then, Sound Transit's spending would exceed $37 billion, counting inflation and interest charges.
Everyone knows this plan isn't going to fix the real traffic problems in our area — congested traffic. It seems silly to spend more than two thirds of our money on light rail and neglect the roads. This is especially true when King County's own studies show that less than 10% of all daily commutes use public transit. Admittedly, those numbers are from 1998, but based on other, more recent, statistics it doesn't look like a significant change has taken place.
Sound Transit's proposal will be linked in a single ballot question Nov. 6 with regional highway projects.
Bottom line?
Add $37.9 billion in transit dollars to $16.1 billion for the roads, and the tally reaches $54 billion, including debt and inflation.
For the average household, this would mean $150 in new sales taxes next year and $68 in new car-tab taxes for the average automobile — figures that would go up with inflation until at least 2027.
Just a few years ago the people of Washington fought hard for, and won a big reduction in the cost of registering a vehicle. All of those gains will go out the window with this "comprehensive" transportation package.
Sound Transit leaders have said that with the expense, they're offering a far-reaching rail system to satisfy popular demand. "You've got a big problem, and you've got a big solution to solve the problem," Ilgenfritz said.
It sounds to me like the solution is a bigger problem than the problem they're trying to solve. Washingtonians already pay some of the highest taxes in the nation. It will be a tremendous shame to increase that tax burden for the next fifty years to pay for a "solution" that won't even fix the problem.
Cross posted at NW Bloggers.
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NW Bloggers trackbacked with "Comprehensive traffic reform"
What is it about politicians these days? They all seem to be hooked on “comprehensive” solutions to complex problems. “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” comes to mind.
It seems to me that often these “comprehensive...
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TLB responded with: In this case...
 | "Comprehensive" is a code word for "using promised border security and other promised enforcement as a means of pushing through the amnesty and guest worker program that our backers want", nothing more. |
Perri Nelson responded with: Comment Policy
 | TLB:
While I agree with the content of your comment, my policy is clear. You must provide a REAL e-mail address.
I'm going to let it slide, since you included a link to your website, but anonymous commenting is not allowed on this site. The next time you provide me with an email address like alksdfsdlfk@slfkjasdfkljsdf.com, I will not only delete your comment, but I will ban your I.P. address. |
Ben Schiendelman responded with: Congestion
 | We can't solve congestion. Roads, where individuals control their own vehicles, become congested - and increasing the number of lanes brings other factors into play as lane changes slow down traffic further, onramps and offramps and surface streets slow down access, and new trips are generated by the perception of new capacity.
What we can do is eliminate congestion entirely for some of the people in a corridor. 300,000 people a day would use Link shortly after buildout, and those people would no longer be stuck in traffic.
In terms of percentages: Those tiny numbers are extremely misleading, because they count *all* trips in the region. The vast majority of trips in the region are from you to the grocery store or the coffee shop, or getting lunch at work - they're not typically congested trips, so we don't need to build anything new to serve them. Another way to look at this is to consider a corridor like 90 or 5 - in the region, only a few percent of trips take place in either of these corridors - the same arguments can be made here against any given highway project, and they're just as fallacious.
When an apples to apples comparison is made - say, I-5 trips from UW to downtown versus Link trips from UW to downtown - Link would carry as many as half the trips. I believe I read recently that WSDOT claimed $25 billion would be necessary to add one lane each direction to I-5 from Seattle city limits to city limits: You can see this, as they'd have to tear down buildings on Capitol Hill, raze the convention center, remove part of a hill in S. Seattle, and replace that bridge - all while mitigating traffic. Conservative estimates of light rail between Northgate and downtown have it carrying three lanes worth of traffic in each direction during peak times.
Creating a multimodal system allows for competition that doesn't currently exist. We're locked into a roads-only system right now when roads no longer scale to meet the needs of the densities we're finding in the city. We've gone well past the point where the conservative argument for infrastructure investment is heavily in favor of rail. |
Perri Nelson responded with:
| Actually, Ben, look at the statistics. Only 9% of commutes took place on transit. The other 91% took place with private transport.
Not everyone works or lives in the I-5 or I-90 corridors either. It takes me 15 minutes to get to I-90 via 18, and about 20 minutes to get to I-5. Transit up and down that corridor isn't going to help me or the other people that don't live along it.
On the North end of the Sounder run, they get maybe 300 passengers per day. That's really not efficient. In fact, on the south end of the Sounder run, the few trips into town are pretty inconvenient if you work on Capitol Hill. Last summer when I took the trip, the bus trip from King St. Station actually required more time than it took me to walk.
The true conservative argument for infrastucture investment isn't in light rail. It's in a more flexible, and better thought out bus system. A light rail system that won't even be completed for twenty years is a poor way to spend our money when we have the problem now. |
Perri Nelson responded with:
| Something that's been bothering me ever since I replied to Ben's comment is that he says "We can't solve congestion". Well, we certainly can't solve it with light rail. Building more capacity will at least help to mitigate the problem, and it will do a better job of it than more money thrown down the rat-hole known as Sound Transit
This is what's wrong with the "comprehensive" approach to the problem. It's all-or-nothing, and the planners have already come out and said it won't fix things. Do we really need to spend that much money, for that long a time to not "fix the problem"?
Here's a little help with that 9% commute number from the 1998 report. About 55 percent of 1997 travel in King County was by single-occupant vehicle, while transit share
increased from 3.8% to 5.7% of all trips. According to the 1990 Census, almost 70 percent of commute trips were by
single-occupant vehicle, while transit captured about 9 percent of commute trips. Emphasis added.
That's with buses which are considerably more flexible than light rail. If we must have a mass-transit system, then bus-rapid-transit is a better, cheaper option that would serve more people over a wider area.
Couple that with more capacity, and yes, more highways, and while we won't have solved congestion, we will have reduced it. The current regional transit package won't even do that. |
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