Today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer article on the City Council's deadly dithering over a Viaduct replacement contained this intriguing paragraph:
[Councilman Peter] Steinbrueck said neither a tunnel nor a replacement viaduct "promotes trip reduction, nor provides a genuine transit alternative to the automobile for commuters and others using the corridor." He backs the "surface" solution and the use of more transit to move people as a cheaper option with fewer effects from construction.This statement leads me to wonder whether the City Councilmembers are mass-transit-for-other-people limousine liberals like Mayor Greg Nickels, or to what extent they are personally committed to reducing their own automobile trips and using public transportation. I just e-mailed the following inquiry to the 9 members of the City Council about their commuting and intracity travel habits. I promised to post their responses on this blog
UPDATE: Here is the response from: Councilman Richard Conlin (my questions in the extended entry)
1) How do you commute to work (e.g. private car, carpool, bus, bicycle, walk, etc.)?Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 29, 2006 04:08 PM | Email This2) Does the City provide free or subsidized parking for Councilmembers? what is the monetary value of this benefit, if any?
3) Please release all reports of intracity transportation expenses paid by the City for 2005 (including mileage, parking, Metro fares, etc.) This would include: expense reports for out-of-pocket expenses; unitemized allowances; prepaid expenses such as parking vouchers, bus passes; requisitions of city vehicles, etc. [Councilmember Clark need not answer this one]
4) If you customarily travel within Seattle on official business but not at City expense, please provide a reasonable estimate of the various modes of travel you use (e.g. 20 miles a week by private car and 5 miles a week by bicycle)
5) If you use an automobile for commuting or official travel, please indicate the make and model of the vehicle.
I assume the answer for transportation is the same.
Posted by: South County on March 29, 2006 05:01 PMIt's only a real emergency now if the city council believes that without trip reductions and alternatives to automobiles people are going to die in droves tomorrow, or maybe the Day After Tomorrow. Sadly, I think this is actually true.
If we don't all take the bus, a tsunami will hit Seattle. I'll be the first to blame Bush's tax cuts.
Posted by: Larry on March 29, 2006 06:44 PMMake it MANDITORY for all people that work in government in Washington state (or within the Seattle city limits at least) to take public transportation to work every day without exception.
We would eliminate 20% of the traffic on the road over night. Done.
Proof of concept: On those holidays (like MLK Day) that most people have to work but all of government gets off, the freeway is surprisingly navigable at the posted speed limit (and more) everywhere. Recreate that by making them all take the bus (or train or bike or skateboard or whatever they want).
The way I figure it, if these guys are so hot to get us into public transportation, if public transportation is that great, then those who govern and work for us should us it. In fact, I’d be more than willing to make their bus ride to and from work free. Seeing as we are already paying 75% of it now anyway, why not the whole thing?
As the Everly brothers sang: Dreeeeeaaaaam, dream, dream dreeeeeam . . .
Steve-O suffers the all-too frequent broad-brush swipe that assumes (and we know the joke about "ASS out of U and ME") that politicians and agency employees necessarily share some ideological bent, and desires that demand a sneer and revenge from himself. Not to mention, a certain unbecoming liberal trend towards "lording over" a subset of fellow citizens.
Now, in Seattle proper, I'm guessing that the pool of employees who are either inclined to, or have skills (civil engineers, for one example) that might be more likely to be sought by public agencies, are probably statistically biased towards the ideological bent of the community. But, in some respects, its fallacious extrapolation (I know, Steve-O...that's a BIG word!) to go from "All Seattle politicians have liberal ideologies" to "Seattle politicians are public employees. Therefore public employees are liberals and share liberal ideologies that hated by us who post on Sound Politics."
Do you have any statistical data to prove the 20% contention, or is it simply ankle-biting at people whose employment in the public agencies makes you suspect their political ideologies and prejudices, Steve-O?
Do traffic counts and driver surveys that lead you to that conclusion, or, is it just a conclusion drawn from an observation that "traffic moves faster (correct observation, but no apparent hard data from which to conclude a causal relationship -- since there are days that aren't holidays when, depending upon the time, traffic has moved reasonably well), and it must be a significant reduction since it is (assumed, again, no hard data to support/deny the assumption), and government workers don't work today (correct, but not excluding others), ergo... that's THE conclusion."Government employees commuting are the cause of congestion, and since they are trying to get US out of OUR cars..."
This, I see, is akin to the argument some months ago about the effect of the car pool lanes at the South 320th exit. Someone remarked that the congestion upstream of the HOV lane terminus was 'proof' that the HOV lanes were the cause, ignoring the fact that the southbound traffic volumes are approximately 20% higher north of the interchange (due to the homes and businesses in Federal Way that people are, based upon data, resulting in people getting off the freeway) than south.
But wait, that's based on traffic counts from a public agency. And WSDOT would lie on its traffic counts information (just like they put up the "It's Your Nickle" signs -- and changed all the signal timings -- in advance of the 912 vote)...right?
Steve-O, why not take the next step, and insist they on ride in cattle cars -- literally -- for them, if they ride Sound Transit? Isn't that good enough for them? And special markers on their cars -- and worn on their clothes -- to make certain?
I think it's the lattter. There are many Seattleites, even ones who drive in their cars every day, who fawn over such Utopian schemes. But they are not grounded in reality. The reality is that we have a car based society which has done little in the last 50 years to change that fact. We've built precious little transit, done little to expand roadways and bridges, all the while adding more people, more cars and more jobs that require commuting in all directions.
We cannot exist as a schizophrenic society that on the one hand, allows the kind of growth that has made us dependent on trucks and cars, and on the other hand, wants to shut down key arteries and build mass transit that we cannot afford.
If we are going to go down the road that Steinbreuck desires, we have to do so in a coordinated and viable way that will take from 50 to 100 years to properly implement and phase out the use of vehicles.
In the meantime, those here in the Sound would do well to act in a far more rational way, realize that the automobile is not going anywhere soon, and also realize that money does not grow on trees. The best alternative at this point is to either retrofit the Viaduct in place as they did with the double decker section of I-280 in San Francisco after the Loma Prieta quake. Or, tear down the Viaduct and build a replacement that is stronger, and as aesthetically appealing as a Viaduct can be.
I prefer the former option because any of the "build" options also require replacement of the Seawall, which is an extra boondoggle that can be postponed and adds probably $1 Billion to the cost.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 30, 2006 08:50 AM***Now here's the part you'll all love:***
The other far lefties on the council make fun of her for doing this.
Given that she rides the bus, she has to arrange city meetings around the bus schedule. So they laugh at her.
When she walks or bikes they make fun of her because she isn't in business clothes for the meetings -- kind of hard to bike in a suit.
They also complain about how she smells after biking to the meetings.
These same folks have voted to eliminate road capacity in Olympia to force more people to ride the bus, bike and walk. If only the "little people" knew how the city council realy felt.
I don't agree with Laura's poltics, but at least she's no hypocrite.
Posted by: Olympian on March 30, 2006 09:10 AM
According to the Washington State Patrol, ONE out of every FIVE cars on the road in Washington falls into one of these categories!!!
Why do we continue to let STUPID PEOPLE make bad decisions and have US pay for them…I guess it’s because they prescribe to “IT TAKES A VILLAGE” and they are not to blame, it’s societies fault, there mother drank too much, they dropped some bad acid in high school , no suave English !!!
WHEN WILL IT END!!!
I could not agree more. The driver's license test should be about 100 times harder than it is. If it were up to me, it would be easier to learn how to fly than it is to drive. There's a reason why good drivers seldom get into accidents and have high insurance ratings. I've only been in one minor fender bender in my whole life, and I learned from that experience. It's easy to increase your odds on the roadways, but you have to know how to drive safely. Most of the people on the road, don't deserve a license. If we simply made the test a lot harder, it would take all the fringe riff raff off the road, increase ticket revenue for those who defy the law by driving unlicensed, and in general improve the quality of driving which would in turn increase traffic flow and make the whole experience a lot more pleasant for everyone.
There's no reason to swerve dangerously in and out of traffic, to follow too close or too far, to ride the brakes, and do all of the various things people do in their cards that do not pertain to driving, but we still see these idiots out on the road driving every day.
Posted by: Jeff B. on March 30, 2006 10:26 AMSee Case Study: Sea-Tac Monopoly:
http://www.washingtonpolicy.org/SmallBusiness/PBPetersonIJBarrierstoEntryStudy.html
Posted by: gails on March 30, 2006 11:17 AMHe also states that this really wasn’t something that he had to respond to ten years ago.
O.K. folks think about this…if you were to plug up the City’s water mains what would you expect to happen? The pressure would increase and the system would spring leaks and fail.
Well if you plug up the collector and arterial system by implementing ‘traffic calming’ measures and allow angle parking along commute routes your transportation system is going to fail as well.
What happens is when the collectors and arterials no longer flow well enough to provide a benefit over cutting through neighborhoods, commuter traffic diverts onto parallel residential streets.
Before long you no longer have a transportation network, what you have is chaos.
Can you imaging what would happen if you tried to service every home in even a small town without water mains and a distribution system. It just would not work. How about the thought of each home having their power connection directly to the dam or other source?
Well degrading the capacity of every collector and arterial to the point that they offer no benefit over commuting through neighborhoods is a surefire way to cause the entire system to collapse. In one neighborhood in Tacoma first 'they' allowed angle parking on the collectors, then they put in speed bumps and traffic circles in the neighborhoods because through traffic was now speeding through on residential streets. The result? People are now jetting down the alleys at 30mph, there are traffic circles impeding the fire department from responding to emergencies and other ill effects.
It is my contention that this vandalism of the transportation network is deliberately done in order to make ‘transit options’ look good in comparison.
Give the man a Kewpie Doll!
Posted by: alphabet soup on March 31, 2006 03:14 PM