Tim Eyman reveals that his old buddy Kemper Freeman Jr. is bankrolling I‑1125

1. Good morn­ing: You call your­selves the NW Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute. I also call myself a Pro­gres­sive. The dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion for pro­gres­sive means “favor­ing progress or reform.” There is no par­ti­san mean­ing of the word.

   Sup­port­ing light rail is by def­i­n­i­tion a regres­sive pol­i­cy. The pri­vate auto­mo­bile replaced pub­lic tran­sit 100 years ago. By sup­port­ing mass tran­sit, you are by def­i­n­i­tion regressives.

   That is why I no longer vote Demo­c­rat. Like Kem­per Free­man, I favor progress in region­al trans­porta­tion. We need more free­way lanes in order to increase vehi­cle speeds. This increas­es gas mileage and decreas­es our depen­dence on for­eign oil. It also saves com­muters hours of time each week, when we could be work­ing or spend­ing time with their families. 

   There­fore, by def­i­n­i­tion any­one like myself who favors increas­ing our free­way lanes, and using gas tax­es exclu­sive­ly for this pur­pose, is pro­gres­sive. Any­one who favors not build­ing more lanes, or even remov­ing them and replac­ing them with 19th cen­tu­ry trains is regres­sive, by the dic­tio­nary definition.

   I think it is time for a pro­gres­sive par­ty (encom­pass­ing folks who think like myself), to com­pete with the Demo­c­rat, Repub­li­can, Lib­er­tar­i­an, Green, and Tea par­ties, nei­ther of whom I would ever give a dime to.

   When­ev­er I am stuck in traf­fic, I look to the side of the free­way to see how many new lanes could be built. I’ve done this my entire life. That’s because I favor progress. That’s because I’m a progressive.

   Light rail will only reduce vehi­cle trips by 5%, as esti­mat­ed by the Puget Sound Region­al Coun­cil and Vision 2040. In con­trast, just 6% more vehi­cle lanes will decrease con­ges­tion by 36%. You can read more about this from the engi­neer­ing stud­ies of Dr. William Eager and others. 

   I have post­ed some of these along with Kem­per Free­man’s video on my web page. These traf­fic stud­ies are from expe­ri­enced Civ­il Engi­neers, not urban plan­ners. They will play a key role in the I‑1125 elec­tion this fall.

   You may review and let me know if you agree that build­ing more free­way lanes, and decreas­ing time stuck in traf­fic, is a pro­gres­sive idea. You may let me know if you think that light rail is a regres­sive idea, since as Kem­per and Dr. Eager explain, it will do noth­ing to solve con­ges­tion. The evi­dence is clear that Grid­lock will get sig­nif­i­cant­ly worse with mass tran­sit, and get 36% bet­ter with only 6% more free­way lanes.

   1. Hi Tom… Thanks for stop­ping by. Your com­ment is one of the more enter­tain­ing I’ve read in a long time, because you sound exact­ly like a lib­er­tar­i­an, but here, you are call­ing your­self a pro­gres­sive — and sug­gest­ing that we are not. That would make about as much sense as if any of us went to a right wing web­site and left a com­ment claim­ing to be a real conservative.

      On your own web­site — which you linked to and encour­aged oth­er read­ers to vis­it — you actu­al­ly admit that you are nei­ther con­ser­v­a­tive nor pro­gres­sive because you share both worldviews:

      I am an Inde­pen­dent, and gen­er­al­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and “Neolib­er­al” on eco­nom­ic issues, and very lib­er­al on social issues (i.e. I val­ue eth­nic diver­si­ty, reli­gious free­dom, wom­ens’ rights, gay rights, and nation­al health care). I am also an envi­ron­men­tal­ist, favor­ing pri­vate orga­ni­za­tions that pur­chase land for pur­pos­es of build­ing hik­ing and moun­tain bike trails. I have very lit­tle in com­mon with today’s Democ­rats, Repub­li­cans, and Libertarians. 

      You say you are not a lib­er­tar­i­an — and maybe you don’t iden­ti­fy as one — but lib­er­tar­i­ans hold con­ser­v­a­tive views on eco­nom­ic issues and lib­er­al posi­tions on social issues. It’s that mix­ture of views that makes lib­er­tar­i­an­ism its own dis­tinct ideology.

      Pro­gres­sives strong­ly sup­port mass tran­sit because mass tran­sit gives peo­ple a choice, a way to get around with­out a car. As George Lakoff and the Rock­ridge Insti­tute stat­ed in Think­ing Points, we believe that every­body should have access to tran­sit, so they are not forced to dri­ve to get to where they want to go:

      Tran­sit for all means expand­ing and improv­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion at the local, region­al, and fed­er­al lev­els. It means invest­ing in bus and light rail in urban areas to cre­ate clean, con­ve­nient, reli­able, and acces­si­ble webs of trans­porta­tion. It means invest­ing in high speed rail, to move peo­ple, goods, and ser­vices from city to city. Mov­ing with­in urban cores and con­nect­ing urban and sub­ur­ban hubs, these webs would extend to all auto-dense areas.

      Tran­sit for all is about val­ues. Improv­ing pub­lic trans­porta­tion is about giv­ing all Amer­i­cans the free­dom of equal access to social and eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties that enhance our qual­i­ty of life. Invest­ing in alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion is using the com­mon wealth for the com­mon good. It is an expan­sion of free­dom, cre­at­ing more diverse transportation. 

      Cities and regions that dis­man­tled their pub­lic tran­sit sys­tems decades ago at the behest of car and oil com­pa­nies have come to the real­iza­tion that they made a very cost­ly mis­take. If they had kept their street­cars, as San Fran­cis­co did, they would­n’t need to be spend­ing so much mon­ey now to lay rail.

      I’m not sure how much com­mut­ing you do dur­ing rush hour, Tom, but if you’ve tried to get around this region in a car dur­ing rush hour, you have undoubt­ed­ly noticed that you can’t get any­where fast. 

      That’s because so many peo­ple are dri­ving at the same time. Because our tran­sit sys­tem isn’t as good as it should be, many peo­ple have no oth­er way to get to and from work except by car. So they dri­ve. And the result is grid­lock. Too many peo­ple try­ing to get some­where at the same time. 

      Build­ing more lanes on our high­ways will only make con­ges­tion worse. As the authors of Sub­ur­ban Nation explain:

      The sim­ple truth is that build­ing more high­ways and widen­ing exist­ing roads, almost always moti­vat­ed by con­cern over traf­fic, does noth­ing to reduce traf­fic. In the long run, in fact, it increas­es traf­fic. This rev­e­la­tion is so coun­ter­in­tu­itive that it bears repeat­ing: adding lanes makes traf­fic worse.

      This para­dox was sus­pect­ed as ear­ly as 1942 by Robert Moses, who noticed that the high­ways he had built around New York City in 1939 were some­how gen­er­at­ing greater traf­fic prob­lems than had exist­ed previously.

      Since then, the phe­nom­e­non has been well doc­u­ment­ed, most notably in 1989, when the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Asso­ci­a­tion of Gov­ern­ments con­clud­ed that traf­fic assis­tance mea­sures, be they adding lanes, or even dou­ble-deck­ing the road­ways, would have no more than a cos­met­ic effect on Los Ange­les’ traf­fic prob­lems. The best it could offer was to tell peo­ple to work clos­er to home, which is pre­cise­ly what high­way build­ing mit­i­gates against.

      Fur­ther­more:

      The mech­a­nism at work behind induced traf­fic is ele­gant­ly explained by an apho­rism gain­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty among traf­fic engi­neers: “Try­ing to cure traf­fic con­ges­tion by adding more capac­i­ty is like try­ing to cure obe­si­ty by loos­en­ing your belt.” Increased traf­fic capac­i­ty makes longer com­mutes less bur­den­some, and as a result, peo­ple are will­ing to live far­ther and far­ther from their workplace.

      Build­ing more lanes is thus a com­plete waste of mon­ey. It will make con­ges­tion worse, not better. 

      The only way to effec­tive­ly reduce con­ges­tion is to give peo­ple options so they are not forced to dri­ve. Few­er solo dri­vers means less grid­lock. This is what light rail is all about: Giv­ing peo­ple a choice. 

      When Uni­ver­si­ty Link is com­plet­ed in 2016, it will be pos­si­ble to go from down­town to the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict in just a few min­utes, no mat­ter what the weath­er or traf­fic is like. I‑5 could be com­plete­ly and hope­less­ly grid­locked, and still, some­body tak­ing Link light rail will be able to go from West­lake Cen­ter to Husky Sta­di­um in less than ten minutes. 

      Peo­ple will leave their cars behind and hap­pi­ly choose rail tran­sit if it takes them where they want to go. Many solo dri­vers say they would use light rail if it only served their com­mu­ni­ty. When we expand Link, it will serve more com­mu­ni­ties, and more peo­ple will be able to ride it. I am look­ing for­ward to the day when I can step onto the train and be in Seat­tle in less than a half hour. 

      The sta­tis­tics that you offered in your com­ment are worth­less because they don’t reflect real­i­ty. We know that build­ing more lanes will not make con­ges­tion bet­ter, because it’s been tried in places like Atlanta and Los Angeles.

      Pro­gres­sives believe strong­ly that peo­ple should have choic­es. Spend­ing mon­ey only on high­ways and forc­ing peo­ple to dri­ve is not the Amer­i­can way. We owe it to our­selves to invest in more mass transit.

2. Hi Andrew … Thanks for your com­ments … You wrote:

   “Hi Tom… Your com­ment is one of the more enter­tain­ing I’ve read in a long time, because you sound exact­ly like a lib­er­tar­i­an, but here, you are call­ing your­self a pro­gres­sive – and sug­gest­ing that we are not.”

   Indeed, 90% of what you find on the net crit­i­cal of “smart growth” and “light rail” is from Lib­er­tar­i­ans and Repub­li­cans. How­ev­er, I am an Inde­pen­dent with pro­gres­sive view­points, and not a Lib­er­tar­i­an, since I favor nation­al health care, stronger anti-pol­lu­tion reg­u­la­tions, and tax cred­its for elec­tric cars and pas­sive solar, etc. etc.

   How­ev­er, I am NOT sug­gest­ing that you are NOT a pro­gres­sive. You and I prob­a­bly agree on more that we dis­agree, since we are both pro­gres­sives. Yet on light rail, we just dis­agree over whether or not build­ing more free­way lanes is a “pro­gres­sive” con­cept or not. 

   Mov­ing beyond these def­i­n­i­tions, you continue:

   “Pro­gres­sives strong­ly sup­port mass tran­sit because mass tran­sit gives peo­ple a choice, a way to get around with­out a car.”

   I’m all for build­ing sev­er­al trans­porta­tion net­works at the same time, and giv­ing peo­ple a choice. How­ev­er, in con­trast to you, I also favor more free­way lanes. And, it’s clear from the Puget Sound Region­al Coun­cil that light rail is not cost effec­tive, since it will only take 5% of all trips by 2040. So, instead of light rail, I’d love to see more bus­es, along with bus rapid tran­sit, bike lanes, and grav­el bike paths.

   There­fore, light rail is not the only option. It has been giv­en too much atten­tion by the media, where­as these oth­er meth­ods have not been well publicized.

   And regard­ing region­al grid­lock, you write:

   “Build­ing more lanes on our high­ways will only make con­ges­tion worse.”

   Accord­ing to Dr. William Eager PhD — civ­il engi­neer — a 6% increase in free­way lanes will DECREASE con­ges­tion by 36% (from the link above). He’s the engi­neer, so I trust his numbers.

   You wrote:

   “The sim­ple truth is that build­ing more high­ways and widen­ing exist­ing roads, almost always moti­vat­ed by con­cern over traf­fic, does noth­ing to reduce traf­fic. In the long run, in fact, it increas­es traf­fic. This rev­e­la­tion is so coun­ter­in­tu­itive that it bears repeat­ing: adding lanes makes traf­fic worse.”

   How can adding more lanes make traf­fic worse, when you are increas­ing the ratio of pave­ment, to the total foot­print of all the cars on the road?

   “This para­dox was sus­pect­ed as ear­ly as 1942 by Robert Moses, who noticed that the high­ways he had built around New York City in 1939 were some­how gen­er­at­ing greater traf­fic prob­lems than had exist­ed previously.”

   Do you have a ref­er­ence for this? and also this?

   “Since then, the phe­nom­e­non has been well doc­u­ment­ed, most notably in 1989, when the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Asso­ci­a­tion of Gov­ern­ments con­clud­ed that traf­fic assis­tance mea­sures, be they adding lanes, or even dou­ble-deck­ing the road­ways, would have no more than a cos­met­ic effect.….”

   Fur­ther­more:

   “When Uni­ver­si­ty Link is com­plet­ed in 2016, it will be pos­si­ble to go from down­town to the Uni­ver­si­ty Dis­trict in just a few min­utes, no mat­ter what the weath­er or traf­fic is like. I‑5 could be com­plete­ly and hope­less­ly grid­locked, and still, some­body tak­ing Link light rail will be able to go from West­lake Cen­ter to Husky Sta­di­um in less than ten minutes.”

   Yes indeed, note that Dr. Eager’s plan calls for two more lanes in each direc­tion on I‑5, from Lake­wood to near Everett.

   “Peo­ple will leave their cars behind and hap­pi­ly choose rail tran­sit if it takes them where they want to go. Many solo dri­vers say they would use light rail if it only served their com­mu­ni­ty. When we expand Link, it will serve more com­mu­ni­ties, and more peo­ple will be able to ride it.”

   The prob­lem is low pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty at about 2500 per­sons per square mile in the Puget Sound area. There are not enough peo­ple con­cen­trat­ed near light rail lines. The puget sound region­al coun­cil says that just 5% of all trips will be com­plet­ed by light rail in 2040.

   “I am look­ing for­ward to the day when I can step onto the train and be in Seat­tle in less than a half hour.”

   And, I would look for­ward to the same time frame, but instead, by way of either bus rapid tran­sit, or the per­son­al automobile.

   “The sta­tis­tics that you offered in your com­ment are worth­less because they don’t reflect reality.”

   Well, actu­al­ly the stats that I offered are from Dr. William Eager PhD who is an inter­na­tion­al­ly famous traf­fic engi­neer and educator. 

   “We know that build­ing more lanes will not make con­ges­tion bet­ter, because it’s been tried in places like Atlanta and Los Angeles.”

   Here’s a 2008 exam­ple where it worked, SR-67 par­al­lel to I‑15 north of Salt Lake City, the Lega­cy High­way, where con­ges­tion on I‑15 was reduced by 20% due to the new par­al­lel arte­r­i­al.

   “Pro­gres­sives believe strong­ly that peo­ple should have choic­es. Spend­ing mon­ey only on high­ways and forc­ing peo­ple to dri­ve is not the Amer­i­can way. We owe it to our­selves to invest in more mass transit.”

   I could not agree more with giv­ing peo­ple more choic­es. I do not feel that light rail is cost effec­tive. Oth­er choic­es are much cheap­er and can car­ry more peo­ple — such as more fre­quent bus routes, bus rapid tran­sit, and more free­way lanes. 

   In terms of air pol­lu­tion and peak oil, I favor nat­ur­al gas vehi­cles, dou­bling of gas mileage stan­dards, and tax cred­its for elec­tric cars. There­fore, giv­en my advo­ca­cy of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion into fuel sources, I am far from being a Libertarian. 

   As Bob Brinker repeat­ed­ly says, we are import­ing 12 bil­lion bar­rels a day from coun­tries who don’t like us and want to blow up Israel. We need to become ener­gy independent. 

   1. When dis­cussing our road sys­tem, we pre­fer the term high­way rather than free­way. Free­way implies that high­ways are free to use — and that is sim­ply not true. Road main­te­nance alone requires a huge amount of mon­ey. The more pave­ment we put down, the big­ger our road main­te­nance bud­gets have to be.

      The Puget Sound Region­al Coun­cil has nev­er said that build­ing light rail is not cost effec­tive. In its own Trans­porta­tion 2040 plan, the PRSC endors­es Link light rail, and calls for the imple­men­ta­tion of “an aggres­sive tran­sit strat­e­gy”. Here are the PSR­C’s stat­ed goals, as out­lined in the exec­u­tive sum­ma­ry:

      Com­plete Sound Tran­sit 2 projects and addi­tion­al Link light rail exten­sions to Everett, Taco­ma and Red­mond. Increase local tran­sit ser­vice by more than 100 per­cent in peak peri­ods and over 80 per­cent in the off-peak, while achiev­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies to reduce costs. Addi­tion­al local tran­sit ser­vice should be added to keep up with increas­ing pop­u­la­tion and job growth if it can be financed through oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies and tax base growth to off­set increas­es in arte­r­i­al delay. Pro­vide addi­tion­al all-day ser­vice with high fre­quen­cies (gen­er­al­ly every 15 minutes).

      If you’re famil­iar with the details of the vot­er-approved Sound Tran­sit 2 plan, then you know it includes mon­ey for expand­ed bus and com­muter rail ser­vice along with fund­ing for extend­ing Link light rail. 

      I have fol­lowed media cov­er­age of Sound Tran­sit for a long time. The media has giv­en plen­ty of expo­sure to Sound Tran­sit crit­ics, espe­cial­ly light rail oppo­nents. The rea­son light rail is in the media so much is pre­cise­ly because light rail oppo­nents con­tin­ue to try to stop Sound Tran­sit from build­ing the sys­tem the vot­ers approved. They’re try­ing to cre­ate con­tro­ver­sy where there should­n’t be any.

      You have put a lot of faith into the num­bers of one per­son. I trust the con­clu­sions reached by the broad­er engi­neer­ing com­mu­ni­ty about induced traffic. 

      As I explained, the rea­son that adding lanes makes traf­fic worse is that it encour­ages more peo­ple to dri­ve. It encour­ages peo­ple to make more trips. It’s like a self-ful­fill­ing prophe­cy. As the authors of Sub­ur­ban Nation phrase it:

      The ques­tion is not how many lanes must be built to ease con­ges­tion but how many lanes of con­ges­tion you want. Do you favor four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traf­fic at rush hour, or sixteen?

      The con­di­tion is best explained by what spe­cial­ists call latent demand. Since the real con­straint on dri­ving is traf­fic, not cost, peo­ple are always ready to make more trips when the traf­fic goes away. The num­ber of latent trips is huge — per­haps thir­ty per­cent of exist­ing traf­fic. Because of latent demand, adding lanes is futile, since dri­vers are already poised to use them up. 

      They add:

      While the befud­dling fact of induced traf­fic is well under­stood by sophis­ti­cat­ed traf­fic engi­neers, it might as well be a secret, so poor­ly has it been dis­sem­i­nat­ed. The com­put­er mod­els that trans­porta­tion con­sul­tants use to not even con­sid­er it, and most local pub­lic works direc­tors have nev­er heard of it. As a result, from Maine to Hawaii, city, coun­ty, and even state engi­neer­ing depart­ments con­tin­ue to build more road­ways in antic­i­pa­tion of increased traf­fic, and, in so doing, cre­ate that traf­fic. The most irk­some aspect of this sit­u­a­tion is that these road-builders are nev­er proved wrong; in fact, they are always proved right: “You see,” they say, “I told you that traf­fic was coming.”

      These excerpts are from The Amer­i­can Trans­porta­tion Mess, Chap­ter Five of Sub­ur­ban Nation (The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the Amer­i­can Dream), pages nine­ty and ninety-one.

      For more on the impact of Robert Moses’ high­way projects, I would rec­om­mend read­ing Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great Amer­i­can Cities, and The Pow­er Bro­ker by Robert Caro. 

      For more on the fruit­less­ness of adding lanes in Cal­i­for­nia, read “39 Mil­lion Peo­ple Work, Live Out­side City Cen­ters” by Car­ol Jouza­tis. This was pub­lished in USA Today on Novem­ber 4th, 1997.

      Final­ly, about the “per­cent­age of trips” met­ric that you keep using. As I said pre­vi­ous­ly, it’s worth­less. I’ll let two pro-tran­sit con­ser­v­a­tives, the late Paul Weyrich and Bill Lind, explain:

      [S]ense and expe­ri­ence, those two great con­ser­v­a­tive tests, tell us tran­sit is impor­tant. The sta­tis­tics that count total trips, even total urban com­mut­ing trips, tell us it isn’t. What gives?

      What has to give is the unit of mea­sure­ment. The seem­ing con­tra­dic­tion stems from the fact that count­ing total trips (or total com­mut­ing trips) does not effec­tive­ly mea­sure the present impact or poten­tial of pub­lic tran­sit. The anti-tran­sit stud­ies are apply­ing the wrong yard­stick. They are, in effect, try­ing to mea­sure flour with a ruler, or count inch­es with a spoon. Their num­bers are cor­rect, but the mean­ing they draw from them isn’t. To mea­sure transit’s cur­rent worth or future poten­tial, we need a dif­fer­ent measurement.

      They go on to say:

      A mea­sure­ment that allows us to cal­cu­late bet­ter the impor­tance of tran­sit – present and poten­tial – is tran­sit com­pet­i­tive trips. We need to ask not what per­cent­age of total trips tran­sit car­ries, but what per­cent­age it car­ries of trips for which it can com­pete. Mea­sur­ing tran­sit by count­ing trips it can­not com­pete for is like ask­ing how much orange juice you can get from a bushel of apples. More pre­cise­ly, count­ing total trips is mea­sur­ing how much orange juice you can get from a bushel of mixed fruit, only a por­tion of which is oranges. The frac­tion will always be small, but the prob­lem is the ques­tion, not the answer.

      So there you have it. I might add that not all trips that dri­vers make today are essen­tial trips. For instance, some­body that choos­es to go out on errands sev­er­al times dur­ing the day instead of com­bin­ing their errands is choos­ing to take more trips, and spend more time out on the road com­pet­ing for space with oth­er vehicles.

      In terms of mea­sur­ing spend­ing on trans­porta­tion projects (to deter­mine cost effec­tive­ness) the cor­rect mea­sure­ment for cost com­par­i­son is rev­enue pas­sen­ger miles. This is what plan­ners use to prop­er­ly com­pare modes of trans­porta­tion (train/automobile/airplane) against one another. 

      Research has shown that peo­ple who will not leave their cars at home to take the bus can be per­suad­ed to do so if train ser­vice is avail­able. This is one rea­son why it makes so much sense to build light rail. It real­ly gets peo­ple out of their cars. In cities like St. Louis, many peo­ple who ride the train own auto­mo­biles and have a choice in how they get to work, where­as a large per­cent­age of bus rid­ers are transit-dependent. 

      Since light rail gets peo­ple out of their cars, it does not can­ni­bal­ize bus traf­fic as light rail crit­ics claim. And it great­ly alle­vi­ates con­ges­tion, by pro­vid­ing a reli­able alter­na­tive to dri­ving. Those who con­tin­ue to dri­ve see the ben­e­fits, too, because there are few­er solo dri­vers com­pet­ing with them for space.

      This region has made a com­mit­ment to light rail. Light rail is a wise invest­ment that we sim­ply must make. The debate over whether we build a rail back­bone for this region needs to be over. I‑1125 is an ill-con­ceived ini­tia­tive that seeks to over­turn the will of the peo­ple by sneak­i­ly inter­fer­ing with the state’s plans to trans­fer part of the Homer M. Hadley Bridge to Sound Tran­sit. I‑1125 should be rejected.

3. First, I would like to state that I appre­ci­ate both of your well informed com­ments, and an edu­cat­ed argu­ment is one that I can not only lis­ten to, but respect. I have been liv­ing in Phoenix for the past four years, and the typ­i­cal argu­ment for or against tran­sit and/or more free­way lanes is “you suck” and “you’re dumb.” So, it just makes me long for the Puget Sound area even more. 

   Tom — You note that the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty in Puget Sound is 2500 per­sons per square mile, which is pathet­ic even by Amer­i­can stan­dards. That is tak­ing into account the region as a whole. When you look at this map http://tiny.cc/mhew3 you’ll notice that the area has done a par­tic­u­lar­ly excep­tion­al job at focus­ing high den­si­ty growth in strate­gic loca­tions (down­town, West Seat­tle, and key areas around freeways. 

   All data below from: http://tinyurl.com/3ohwzu
   For a bet­ter idea of the Seat­tle den­si­ty, the Seat­tle Metro Area ranks 746th on pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty world­wide with 2,800 per­sons per square mile while rank­ing 25th in land con­sump­tion. To be fair, a large amount of the includ­ed land con­sump­tion area is farm and for­est land. Mean­while, since 1950 the sub­ur­ban growth of the city has increased by approx­i­mate­ly 3+ mil­lion peo­ple while the cen­tral city has grown only about 100,000 (http://tinyurl.com/3nvp7t8).

   What you run into is the lev­el of VMT is increas­ing expo­nen­tial­ly com­pared to the amount of free­way lanes being intro­duced into urban areas. The FHA also rec­om­mends traf­fic man­age­ment as an effec­tive way to increase free­way capac­i­ty rather than build­ing new free­ways. (http://tinyurl.com/3dpvx4z). This runs into a prob­lem with two of your statements:

   “Light rail will only reduce vehi­cle trips by 5%, as esti­mat­ed by the Puget Sound Region­al Coun­cil and Vision 2040. In con­trast, just 6% more vehi­cle lanes will decrease con­ges­tion by 36%. You can read more about this from the engi­neer­ing stud­ies of Dr. William Eager and others.

   The Liv­able Region also con­duct­ed a study in Van­cou­ver when an addi­tion­al lane was added to a bot­tle­neck cor­ri­dor (a bridge) where it showed increased traf­fic. (http://tinyurl.com/3ju7dvn).

   So what do we do about this? LRT? BRT? While I agree com­plete­ly with the prin­ci­ples espoused by that increas­ing free­way lanes will increase con­ges­tion, what I am most con­cerned about with the con­struc­tion of more free­way lanes is it will lead to fur­ther sprawl. The sprawl of US cities is a direct cause of the free­way rev­o­lu­tion, and reduces the effec­tive­ness of pub­lic trans­porta­tion. That which you per­son­al­ly advo­cate, pub­lic trans­porta­tion relies on den­si­ty to make it finan­cial­ly fea­si­ble. What you see is in cities like Chica­go and New York where den­si­ty is intense and pub­lic trans­porta­tion is a pre­ferred alter­na­tive to the grid­lock of the local streets and free­ways, is that the fare­box recov­ery ratio is high­er (http://tinyurl.com/42778mc and http://tinyurl.com/3n7zyxa) com­pared to those of sprawl­ing envi­ron­ments such as Puget Sound and Port­land (http://tinyurl.com/6xgnl5n and http://tinyurl.com/3jnrb47).

   In sum­ma­ry, the real crime is that free­way expan­sion encour­ages sprawl. The LRT sys­tem is not a per­fect sys­tem, and I see it as a form of regres­sion as well, but rather than regres­sion to a neg­a­tive, it is more of a regres­sion to the mean. What I mean by that is the cur­rent tra­jec­to­ry is unsus­tain­able and LRT is a cur­rent­ly avail­able and accept­ed form of trans­porta­tion that encour­ages high­er den­si­ty growth en route to high­er capac­i­ty tran­sit alternatives. 

   Just for fun, check out this link (I know I’ve post­ed a lot of them — this is the most impor­tant): http://tinyurl.com/3rqy4cl. What it shows is the hous­ing plus trans­porta­tion afford­abil­i­ty index of the Puget Sound region. What you’ll notice is that free­way expan­sion has increased the hous­ing afford­abil­i­ty through­out the region, but has increased trans­porta­tion costs that exceed the rec­om­mend­ed H+T costs in more areas. You’ll notice that loca­tions clos­er in which boast high­er hous­ing costs than those out­side pub­lic trans­porta­tion options over­all cost less on aver­age than loca­tions that are vehi­cle depen­dent. What High Capac­i­ty Tran­sit does is encour­ages intense, high-den­si­ty devel­op­ment. Free­ways have done noth­ing but encour­age low-den­si­ty growth which will only increase liv­ing expens­es. This does­n’t need a link. 

   Imag­ine a house/apartment locat­ed near­by a HCT line around Tuk­wila. Now imag­ine a house in Shore­line. Each house­hold has a mem­ber that is employed with­in a 10 minute dri­ve, and one mem­ber employed down­town Seat­tle. They are both locat­ed on the free­way, and thus can eas­i­ly access Seat­tle, or wher­ev­er, by car. Each is locat­ed 10.7 miles from down­town. The Shore­line house­hold owns two cars with $300 pay­ments and $90 insur­ance pre­mi­ums. The Tuk­wila house­hold owns one car. The sav­ings in Tuk­wila is $390 imme­di­ate­ly per month. The com­mute time is 35 min­utes from Shore­line and 26 min­utes via Link from Rainier Beach Sta­tion to Uni­ver­si­ty Sta­tion. Of course you save mon­ey, it costs $2.25 to take the Link as opposed to $2.00 to drive. 

   I’m not per­fect, I’m not a know it all. But I do know that in addi­tion to cost­ing cities and states infra­struc­ture costs by sprawl­ing out­ward, free­ways are cost­ing peo­ple mon­ey, cost­ing the envi­ron­men­tal bur­den of land con­sump­tion, and cost­ing cities and coun­ties mon­ey for infra­struc­ture cap­i­tal and main­te­nance costs. 

   Regard­less of the polit­i­cal label you put on your­self, you’re wrong for all the right rea­sons. Increas­ing tran­sit capac­i­ty in the city is the only way to grow in a pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic and social direction.

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