John Gilmore once said: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Without discussing the truth or falsity of that famous claim (or my many disagreements with Gilmore), I'd like to try extending his idea to another area, traffic.
The Seattle area, where I live, has serious traffic problems, and has had them for decades. There have been many efforts to alleviate them, efforts ranging from the absurd — building an immensely expensive light rail system — to the practical — improving some of our main roads.
The practical improvements have often been blocked by opposition from the political leaders of that reactionary city, Seattle. (Some may wonder why I call Seattle reactionary. The answer seems obvious to me, but I'll give you some hints in case it isn't. Many, perhaps most, who live in Seattle favor 19th century modes of transportation, bicycles, light rail, and even trolleys, not just for recreation, but for serious travel. Similarly, it was common in past centuries to think that some races were not the equal of other races, and so required special treatment. That belief, too, is common in Seattle. Green superstition, which often has strong similarities to ancient nature-worshipping religions, is also common in Seattle. In fact, the city's mayor, elected just last year, is a long-time member of a prominent nature cult.)
Currently, obstructions from Seattle leaders are making it more difficult to make improvements that some traffic engineers say are necessary for our safety, especially in an earthquake. For example, Seattle leaders have called for changes in the plans for one of the main bridges over Lake Washington, Route 520, and in a replacement for the Alaskan Way Viaduct. The changes range from the minor to completely different projects, but all of them would slow progress on building replacements, all of them would obstruct efforts to alleviate our traffic problems.
Some, for example Microsoft, are trying to change attitudes in Seattle so that the city stops obstructing these improvements. I understand Microsoft's thinking, but doubt that their efforts are practical. It is hard, especially given the many problems with our local journalists, to change the obstructionist attitudes so common in the city to my west.
Instead, I think those of us who want to alleviate these traffic problems should begin to think about routing around the obstructions. Rather than engaging in endless fights with the reactionaries in Seattle, we ought to work toward solving the traffic problems outside the city. We should, for instance, put more effort into improving Interstate 405, and less into trying to resolve objections to a new 520 bridge or viaduct replacement.
Routing around obstructions to transportation improvements is probably good policy, as well as practical politics. For decades, our metropolitan areas have been becoming less centralized, less tied to commutes to a central city. In this area, as well as others, we should try to accomodate where most people want to live and work, rather than endlessly trying to force them back into the very central cities they have been fleeing.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at March 02, 2010 02:17 PM | Email Thishttp://www.census.gov/popest/cities/files/SUB-EST2007-53.csv
http://physics.bu.edu/~redner/projects/population/cities/seattle.html
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/321480_population28.html
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/407707_population30.html
Nicely laid out here visually: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle#Demographics
It dipped in the 70s but then began to pick up again. Seattle has averaged +36,000 population per decade over the past century.
You build out your transit needs to where the population is; that's standard for any smartly designed urban environment. Vancouver, London, Paris, New York, Boston, Toronto, SF, etc... was the train the best for today? Probably not, but for far long-term investment if such trends continue? Certainly, assuming that trend of the pat 100 years continues.
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on March 2, 2010 03:22 PMThe central city commute through is still pretty much the norm for all the major cities in the US, though, especially in the East. I'm not sure if you've ever commuted into NYC or Boston (I've done both) from outlying suburbs. Once we hit the 1,000,000 mark, having a variety of interconnecting rail lines will be helpful, but you'll still need to manage the highways outside of the city as you say.
Belleview is going to also eventually become a hub on the scale of Seattle. This area in 60-70 years could well be the new Minneapolis/St. Paul for density.
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on March 2, 2010 03:28 PMMeanwhile some numbers from the Census Quick Facts site: Between 2000 and 2008, Washington state grew 11.1 percent, King County 8.0 percent. Between 2000 and 2006, Seattle grew 3.4 percent, Washington 8.5 percent.
In my opinion, Seattle would not have grown in population during the last decade if our level of immigration, legal and illegal, had been lower. In 2006, 16.9 percent of Seattle's population was foreign born, while just 10.4 percent of Washingon state's population was.
Immigrants often have fewer choices about where they live, especially when they first come to the United States, and even more especially if they are not fluent in English. But as they adapt to the United States, most immigrants head out of the central cities, just like everyone else.
Posted by: Jim Miller on March 2, 2010 04:04 PMSeattle worships salmon.
Posted by: Matt M on March 2, 2010 04:40 PMYou'd think after the 8.8 Chilean earthquake, and now a reminder that Seattle suffers the same about every 1000 years, that Seattle's deluded planners would wake up and realize that their high-rise densification plans are the surest way to condemn the occupants to maiming or death.
But I suppose that most of those planners live in the suburbs, and prefer that others suffer their elitist social engineering, instead of selecting their own dwelling configurations.
Hint - most still prefer single-family dwellings and proper road networks, but our elites don't want to hear of no steenkin' preferences.
Posted by: Insufficiently Sensitive on March 2, 2010 07:39 PMThe 'Net will solve transportation and re-route around Seattle's poor leadership. As speeds and feeds improve, it will be possible to have full office LAN environments anywhere, and to do real time collaborative computing anywhere. This will greatly reduce the burden on our roads. And other technologies will help as well.
Meanwhile, the 19th century trains will become dens of thieves. No one wants to ride the unsafe, and useless trains to nowhere, that are nothing but terrorist targets. Especially when even the buses go from point to point.
And our current Local, State and Federal debt assure that Seattle will never be able to afford to build out rail to the full scope of its collectivist dreams. There's not enough money even in Obamaland to pay for all of the water crossings and deep bore tunnels it would take to make rail in Seattle, like rail in NYC.
But the Regressives will keep on foolishly driving us backwards. It's in their DNA.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 2, 2010 08:21 PM...rather than endlessly trying to force them back into the very central cities they have been fleeing.
Don't flatter yourself, Jim. No one is forcing you to stay here.
Posted by: tensor on March 2, 2010 09:17 PMThe real problem, is that Regressives don't like freedom and choice. It's a tough pill for Regressives to swallow, but most people prefer the freedom, efficiency, spontaneity, and reliability of their cars.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 2, 2010 10:25 PMThose of you talking about NYC traffic -- it's 10 times the population, so yes, the traffic there is bad also. But please have a look at a map before you compare it to here. There are multiple routes into and out of everywhere. New Yorkers would not tolerate the nonsense we are subjected to constantly by the eco-loons who run Seattle.
Posted by: jvon on March 3, 2010 12:54 AM"Seattle urban planners are obsessed with creating crowded urban villages where no one owns a vehicle."
Because in most of the city, that is heavily subdivided by geology and water, it would be completely stupid to encourage suburban style sprawl. It's the natural evolution of any urban environment -- why would Seattle be any different? Boston, New York, London -- dense urban environments with urban villages, that do just fine. Why would it be different here?
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on March 3, 2010 08:20 AM"Seattle urban planners are obsessed with creating crowded urban villages where no one owns a vehicle."
Because in most of the city, that is heavily subdivided by geology and water, it would be completely stupid to encourage suburban style sprawl. It's the natural evolution of any urban environment -- why would Seattle be any different? Boston, New York, London -- dense urban environments with urban villages, that do just fine. Why would it be different here?
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on March 3, 2010 08:20 AMI'm from New York, and if you're suggesting that NY doesn't have suburban sprawl, you're very very wrong. Manhattan is very dense, but it is a small island connected by bridges (lots of them), and tunnels that carries both cars and trains. The rest of the NYC area spreads out in all directions for a hundred miles or so.
Posted by: jvon on March 3, 2010 09:19 AMYou must be new here, or not from Seattle. We have things called "hills" that in NY or Boston would be considered mountains. We have a 1200 foot deep ocean bay on one side, and just 4 miles away a 3 mile wide, 200 foot deep lake on the other.
We are very active, geologically, and most of the downtown area is built not just on glacial till but packed mud, when they hosed down the hills to create the Denny Regrade.
Simply put: there isn't more room to grow in the central core without razing entire blocks and building much taller, bigger apartment buildings. But doing so on steep hillsides with 50-100 feet of liquifaction-susceptible soil isn't cheap.
We have a LOT of empty land North, East, and South of Seattle. Growth is happening out there against the wishes of "the elite" because it's affordable, and it works. Commuting from Edmonds or Lynnwood to Redmond is a lot easier than from Seattle to Redmond (I know, I've done both way too many times), meaning the new high tech industry that is growing on the Eastside is better accessed from the North and South.
Basically, our geography doesn't support high density like you want, and our job growth centers are outside the core area, where it's easier to get to the jobs from the suburbs than the city. It's simply insanity to demand people live where the prices are high and the ability to reach those new jobs is impaired.
I assumed you would know that...
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 3, 2010 10:15 AMYes, the "sprawl" goes for a hundred miles in every direction outside the four boroughs (State Island doesn't count, and is a suburban wart from New Jersey that snuck in). But all my posts here have been about the density IN the city. In Seattle, proper. I actually argued for helping the roads outside the city proper, since you can't expect for example someone in North Bend or even SeaTac to rely on Metro or Sound Transit 24x7.
In the city, though, south of Northgate, north of Roxbury, east and west of the water, it's a whole other ballgame. We have the density that will only increase. Population growth will not stop; so we need the local mass transit that is good and reliable. The outlying areas that commute in for work need their cars, but we also need transit for the people that commute from Seattle to Belleview or Redmond or South or North. The cities drive the economy and subsidize as much as take from the rest--it's thesame anywhere. The idea that urban areas are some enemy is a farce.
A lot of the newer job growth is happening in parallel outside of the city, but our geography does support high density if done right. That's almost the point, and planning for the far long-term. Yes, it will impact the suburbs in the short term to build out rail, but in the long term having that done will benefit everyone, since you could eventually link systems.
As for the seismic concerns, the problem is that people are still fighting higher-scale development in neighborhoods like West Seattle, Capital Hill, First Hill, Magnolia, Queen Anne... there are many areas you can build taller and denser.
Posted by: Joe Szilagyi on March 3, 2010 10:32 AMIt's clear that all Seattle and other regressive Blue city leadership cares about is power. They will build billions dollar mountains of good intention, but with no real strategy. Meanwhile, the costs of the credit card from China just keep adding up. And Uncle Obama is going to have enough money to bail out NY, CA, OR, WA, in addition to the Federal Gov.
What we need in leadership is not lawyers and politicians, but engineers who are experts at actually converting problems to solutions. But most engineers are not smarmy, fast talking scumbags like those that inhabit almost all of our political leadership. Most politicians are examples of failure. People who want a career in power, instead of contributing some service after having made real value in the private sector.
So, Seattle will continue to dither with enviro-nonsense, urban density, and other fads, while its real problems and debt get bigger, and business moves east, or out of WA altogether.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 3, 2010 11:11 AMBut how would YOU fix the fact that we need mass transit expansion in dense urban environments that aren't going away and will only keep growing?
@23 also, it's a talking point fallacy that "everyone" can afford a car. A car is as much a luxury to much of the American population as it is a requirement. It all depends on where you live and your current station in life.
Then the solution is NOT rail, but buses. Rail simply cannot climb many of the grades in Seattle, rail cannot be rerouted around accidents or mudslides or - if we have a serious earthquake - tumbled buildings. And bus routes can be changed as population changes. Lastly, buses are MUCH lower cost and faster to deploy.
Trains are simply a pie-in-the-sky fantasy for Seattle. But the powers-that-be will have their pie and everyone else will get to pay for it.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 3, 2010 06:20 PMSeattle could have lead the nation with a cheap to implement and easy on the budget Bus Rapid Transit system. Had we done that instead of rail, we would have built out much more of the infrastructure, and probably for less. We'd be the talk of the nation's transit planners for daring to think different. Instead, we wasted billions on a light rail, that does not solve either of the core transit problems.
Also, anyone can afford a car. It may not be a brand new car, but anyone can afford a car. I took out a loan in 1989 for my first car, a used Subaru. It was an excellent car. I bought it for about $3000. It didn't take long at all to pay off. And I wasn't making even $40K a year at the time.
It's about priorities and efficiency. If you live on a bus route, and don't want a car, fine. But for those who need one because they don't live on a bus route, or want one due to the convenience, they are affordable.
If all those poor people with the nice big flat screens I see glowing in their windows at night can afford those screens and cable, they can afford a car.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 3, 2010 07:14 PMIf building more roads was supposed to lessen traffic, then it is a failed government program, and should not be further supported with our tax dollars. Oh, that's right... government spending billions on roads: totally NOT social engineering.
We in Seattle also voted -- four consecutive times! -- for a monorail. Our local elites denied it to us, an outcome which was loudly applauded on this very blog. Watching that same author bawl snot all over his keyboard when surface traffic came to a halt during a subsequent Winter Storm did just a little to even the score.
Posted by: tensor on March 3, 2010 08:42 PMRoad are used for far more than just commutes. They are used by emergency services and transporting goods and services which is vital to our economy and cannot be done using light rail.
And we don't know if BRT would work because it hasn't been tried. I do know that you could have buses arriving every 5 minutes in every major commuting area for a fraction of the cost of light rail and then see if it did work.
Posted by: Palouse on March 4, 2010 08:06 AMHave you ever driven downtown around the SLUT, or Rainier Valley around the light rail? Not only do they slow down traffic at intersections (with auto-triggered lights), they can be held up as well with traffic over the tracks. Not to mention the YEARS of traffic messes the construction of those at-grade rail lines caused, and the loss of traffic lanes they force (space occupied by light rail could be used by cars instead). At-grade rail is subject to the same problems as buses.
And if your answer is build elevated railways like light rail down in Tukwila, those same elevated ROADS can be built for buses.
There is nothing that light rail brings to the table that cannot be done by a bus. However, light rail cannot climb the grades that buses can, cannot route around damage/construction, cannot route around other broken down buses (ever see what happens when a train breaks down? The entire system shuts down until you can shunt the dead train off the tracks), are not easily scaled (run small during the non-peak hours, large during peak hours), and a host of other things.
Really, tell me what SLUT or light rail in Seattle offer that buses cannot.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 4, 2010 09:02 AMLight rail was advertised as a way of delivering emergency services? Of hauling heavy goods? Do you use a hammer to turn screws? (You do know that most heavy shipment is done on rails, right?)
A mix of transportation options is better than relying on a "one-size-fits-all" approach of building only roads.
At-grade rail is subject to the same problems as buses.
Which is why light rail should not have been built at grade, yes.
There is nothing that light rail brings to the table that cannot be done by a bus.
So? Once you've built a dedicated right-of-way, the type of vehicle used on it is indeed secondary. Want to compare long-term maintenance cost of light-rail cars to busses?
However, light rail cannot climb the grades that buses can,
Yet, Beacon Hill has a light-rail station. How'd that ever happen?
cannot route around damage/construction, cannot route around other broken down buses (ever see what happens when a train breaks down?
Ever see what happens to a broken-down bus midspan on SR-520 at rush hour?
are not easily scaled (run small during the non-peak hours, large during peak hours)
Now you're just getting (more) silly. Of course the number of cars in a train, and the number of trains in an hour, can be adjusted per need.
...and a host of other things.
Et cetera, also, and such as.
Not to mention the YEARS of traffic messes the construction of those at-grade rail lines caused...
You know what has been a major disruptor of my commute this Winter? Construction of a highway overpass at South Spokane Street.
(A guy who proudly lives in SHANGHAI is lecturing us on how disruptive construction can be. Priceless.)
As far as grade goes, why are they cutting 200 feet deep on Capital Hill? Because the trains can't make the grade. Same thing would be true on Queen Anne or Magnolia. The counterbalance had cable-pulled trolleys like San Francisco, yet buses go up and down that road without a problem. You're being dense, but I guess that's expected.
As far as broken down buses on 520, they send a tow truck and get it out of there. You don't have to clear the entire track so you can send down another engine. Oh, and you still have that other lane so that traffic can still make it by, rather than blocking the entire rail line.
As far as adjusting the size of the trains, it's apparent you're truly ignorant of trains. My father and grandfather both worked for BN, working their way up. Adding or removing cars is done only at the switchyard and it takes quite a long time to do. It's not as simple as switching out buses.
And I wish Seattle could deal with construction as quickly and simply as Shanghai; the speed of construction over here is amazing. Rebuilding the main roads through the Bund for EXPO 2010 was a sight to behold. Of course, they work 24/7 so the roads are impacted for as little of a time as possible. Something WDOT and SDOT could learn from.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on March 5, 2010 07:49 AMI never made this claim. You stated we should not be using further tax dollars for roads. That is ridiculous for reasons other than just commuting. Just about everything you buy gets there on a truck, which require roads.
You do know that most heavy shipment is done on rails, right?
I have no objection to heavy rail, only light rail.
A mix of transportation options is better than relying on a "one-size-fits-all" approach of building only roads.
False. Spending billions of dollars on a mode of transportation that supports 1 or 2% of commutes is an absolute waste of money.
Posted by: Palouse on March 5, 2010 09:08 AM