A new Seattle-area airport isn’t feasible — let’s focus on conservation and high speed rail

Yes­ter­day, respond­ing to the loom­ing wind-down of the Com­mer­cial Avi­a­tion Coor­di­nat­ing Com­mis­sion, the Seat­tle Times pub­lished an edi­to­r­i­al titled “NIM­BY­ism over­bur­dens America’s best air­port,” lament­ing that “the search for a new air­port has end­ed with­out a pro­posed site.”

The CACC, formed in 2019, was tasked with rec­om­mend­ing a loca­tion for a new air­port in the Seat­tle area. By the time the most recent leg­isla­tive ses­sion rolled around, the Com­mis­sion had put togeth­er a short­list of final­ists for what it deemed accept­able sites. How­ev­er, none of those sites were actu­al­ly acceptable.

Local elect­ed offi­cials, com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, neigh­bor­hood orga­niz­ers, and tribes all spoke out in what the Times’ Dominic Gates called “fero­cious” oppo­si­tion to each of the pro­posed loca­tions. The Leg­is­la­ture sub­se­quent­ly decid­ed to dis­band the CACC and replace it with a work­group that has no man­dates or deadlines.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee signed the CACC replace­ment bill and used his line item veto pen to kill off a pro­vi­sion that would have instruct­ed the group to look at build­ing a brand new air­port as well as expand facil­i­ties at the state’s exist­ing airports.

“Inslee hopes instead to focus on expand­ing exist­ing infra­struc­ture,” the Times edi­to­r­i­al board com­ment­ed. “But exist­ing infra­struc­ture can only expand so far.”

Sev­er­al pas­sages lat­er, the edi­to­r­i­al end­ed with this exhor­ta­tion: “State and region­al offi­cials need to go back to the draw­ing board and find an accept­able site for a sec­ond air­port before NIM­BY­ism breaks the back of the great one we have.”

By “sec­ond air­port,” the Times means a brand new air­port some­where in the vicin­i­ty of the City of Seat­tle. Puget Sound actu­al­ly already has many oth­er air­ports that can accom­mo­date jet air­craft besides SeaT­ac, like Boe­ing Field in Seat­tle, Paine Field in Everett, Ren­ton Munic­i­pal in Renton.

How­ev­er, none of those air­ports would be able to accom­mo­date the mas­sive pro­ject­ed growth in pas­sen­ger air traf­fic either. Hence the Times’ exhor­ta­tion that offi­cials “need to go back to the draw­ing board and find an accept­able site.”

The prob­lem? That’s not an action­able directive.

Here’s the real­i­ty: There is no “accept­able site” for a big brand new air­port any­where in this region, and no amount of research, plan­ning, or con­sul­ta­tion can change that. The state could spend a for­tune on more stud­ies and out­reach and it would­n’t make a dif­fer­ence. The out­come in five years or ten years would be no dif­fer­ent than what we saw with the CACC in the last few months.

There sim­ply isn’t pub­lic sup­port for cre­at­ing anoth­er SeaT­ac near urban­ized Wash­ing­ton, because it would be social­ly and envi­ron­men­tal­ly destructive.

Even com­mu­ni­ties with Repub­li­can lead­er­ship and plen­ty of right wing res­i­dents under­stand the fol­ly of a new air­port. This is not NIM­BY­ism, it’s con­cern for Wash­ing­ton’s future. What the peo­ple of this region clear­ly under­stand — but many com­men­ta­tors and plan­ners seem not to — is that the con­struc­tion of a new air­port would­n’t just entail build­ing some run­ways and terminals.

Look at the foot­print of SeaT­ac or any major metro air­port, and you’ll see park­ing lots, ware­hous­es, hangars, rental car facil­i­ties, petrol sta­tions, and the like.

And, of course, highways.

Big air­ports have mul­ti-lane high­ways going to them, because peo­ple have to be able to get to and from an air­port and no juris­dic­tion I know of has insist­ed on a tran­sit only approach for ground trans­porta­tion at their airport.

(I’ve flown in and out of a lot of dif­fer­ent air­ports all over this coun­try and across the world, and have yet to be in one that was only served by mass transit.)

A big new con­ven­tion­al­ly built “green­field” air­port out in the exurbs would thus result in a mas­sive amount of addi­tion­al sprawl… an out­come that is total­ly incom­pat­i­ble with our growth man­age­ment and cli­mate action goals.

It was par­tic­u­lar­ly amus­ing to read Steve Edmis­ton, a CACC mem­ber inter­viewed for Dominic Gates’ arti­cle, say: “We do not want to expand air­fields over exist­ing pop­u­la­tions… My focus as a cit­i­zen rep was pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment. We’re just not going to get it right if we keep focus­ing on urban areas.”

Again, build­ing a new air­port in an exur­ban or rur­al area will cause a mas­sive amount of new sprawl because the new air­port won’t be close to exist­ing com­mu­ni­ties. Imag­ine all the devel­op­ment that var­i­ous inter­ests would want to do along the high­way con­struct­ed to fun­nel traf­fic in and out of the new air­port. The neg­a­tive impacts to pub­lic health and the envi­ron­ment would be enormous.

Read­ing the Times’ edi­to­r­i­al yes­ter­day remind­ed me of encoun­ter­ing some old columns and edi­to­ri­als years ago cheer­ing for more and big­ger high­ways when I was doing research for one of the install­ments in our Flash­back series.

As I sift­ed through old news­pa­pers on micro­film, I read about some of the bat­tles from years past. Like the doomed effort to build the R.H. Thom­son Express­way:

Plans for the R. H. Thom­son Express­way dat­ed from the 1950s as part of an envi­sioned “ring road” sys­tem of inter­lock­ing free­ways sur­round­ing Seat­tle’s cen­tral core, includ­ing SR 99, I‑5, and planned east-west high­ways along the routes of Spokane Street and NE 50th Street.

The pro­posed north-south express­way east of I‑5, even­tu­al­ly named for long-time City Engi­neer Regi­nald Heber Thom­son (1856–1949), would have fol­lowed the gen­er­al route of Empire Way (now Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Way) from Ren­ton through South­east and Cen­tral Seat­tle. After a major inter­change with I‑90, plans called for it to head north as a lim­it­ed access high­way, cut­ting through the Wash­ing­ton Park Arbore­tum and link­ing to SR 520 and I‑5.

The high­way would then dip under the Mont­lake Cut and re-emerge near Uni­ver­si­ty Vil­lage, with a link to an east-west express­way cut and tun­neled along the route of NE 50th Street, before pro­ceed­ing north to Lake City.

The Express­way nev­er end­ed up get­ting built. By the 1970s, a lack of pub­lic sup­port caused the plans to be jet­ti­soned, mem­o­rably leav­ing a set of “ramps to nowhere” in the Wash­ing­ton Park Arbore­tum that are being removed as part of WSDOT’s State Route 520 Mont­lake inter­change mod­ern­iza­tion project.

Back then, there were those who said that we need­ed those high­way projects to accom­mo­date “future pro­ject­ed growth.” Sound familiar?

The Times notes: “Sea-Tac offi­cials hope to start a total of 32 projects total­ing $10 bil­lion by 2032. Aggres­sive though it sounds, it’s nowhere near enough. Even if they suc­ceed, the air­port will still cap out at an annu­al capac­i­ty of 65 mil­lion, air­port offi­cials say. Yet by 2050, vol­ume is expect­ed to dou­ble to 100 million.”

At no point does the edi­to­r­i­al chal­lenge these growth assump­tions. It assumes we’re locked in to such a future and must deal with a mas­sive traf­fic increase.

But what if we choose a dif­fer­ent path? What if we decide as a region that we don’t want vol­ume to dou­ble? What if we choose a con­ser­va­tion strat­e­gy for avi­a­tion instead of a growth at any cost strat­e­gy? What if we com­mit to build­ing high speed rail so that we can quick­ly and effi­cient­ly help peo­ple get to where they want to go with­out need­ing to crowd into an air­borne tube?

Accord­ing to the Port of Seat­tle, most peo­ple who are fly­ing in and out of SeaT­ac are on domes­tic itin­er­aries. In 2022, the total num­ber of pas­sen­gers at the air­port was 45,964,321 (includ­ing yours tru­ly). Over 90% of those were domes­tic pas­sen­gers: 41,582,500. Just 4,381,821 of the pas­sen­gers were international.

Some of that domes­tic vol­ume is to Alas­ka and Hawai’i, of course, which we can’t build high speed rail lines to. But a lot of it is to oth­er places in the Low­er Forty-Eight. Los Ange­les, Chica­go, New York, Mia­mi, Den­ver, Hous­ton, and so on would be exam­ples of major out of region des­ti­na­tions that have Amtrak rail ser­vice now and could have high speed rail in the future, along with cities in Cascadia.

And if you look at the list of dai­ly depar­tures, you’ll see quite a few flights are whol­ly with­in our region. Air­lines like Alas­ka offer numer­ous roundtrips to Van­cou­ver, Port­land, Spokane, Boise, and Red­mond (Bend), for exam­ple. If Cas­ca­dia had high speed rail lines par­al­lel­ing I‑5 and I‑90, many of those flights could be eas­i­ly replaced by rail trips. Par­tic­u­lar­ly for Port­land and Van­cou­ver, going by rail would be faster due to not hav­ing to nav­i­gate air­ports at both ends.

Our research has found plen­ty of sup­port among Wash­ing­to­ni­ans for expand­ing Amtrak Cas­cades in the medi­um term and con­struct­ing a new high speed rail sys­tem in the long term to improve mobil­i­ty in the Pacif­ic North­west. That is where we should direct our ener­gy and resources. The U.S. used to have arguably the world’s great­est rail sys­tem. Nowa­days, Chi­na, Japan, Tai­wan, and Europe are way ahead of us in using rail to pro­vide a great trav­el expe­ri­ence at high speed.

But it’s not too late for us to invest in the mobil­i­ty options we need and deserve.

Take a look at our polling on this top­ic from last year:

Building ultra high speed rail

QUESTION: Wash­ing­ton and Ore­gon are study­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing an ultra high-speed rail line between Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia and Eugene, Ore­gon cost­ing between $24 and $42 bil­lion that could sup­port trains trav­el­ing at speeds of up to two hun­dred and twen­ty (220) miles per hour. Build­ing the line would require pur­chas­ing a sig­nif­i­cant amount of land to con­struct brand new tracks, but it would allow for faster trips between major Pacif­ic North­west cities. Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose build­ing an ultra high-speed rail line between Van­cou­ver, British Colum­bia and Eugene?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 51% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 25%
  • Some­what sup­port: 26%
• Oppose: 41%
  • Some­what oppose: 16%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 25%
• Not sure: 8%

Making Amtrak Cascades faster

QUESTION: Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose updat­ing and imple­ment­ing Amtrak Cas­cades’ Long Range Plan to elec­tri­fy exist­ing inter­ci­ty rail ser­vice, allow­ing trains to trav­el at up to one hun­dred and ten (110) miles per hour on exist­ing tracks with loco­mo­tives that do not pol­lute, at an esti­mat­ed cost of about $10 bil­lion in state and fed­er­al funds?

ANSWERS:

• Sup­port: 62% 
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 34%
  • Some­what sup­port: 28%
• Oppose: 28%
  • Some­what oppose: 11%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 17%
• Not sure: 9%

Faster and bet­ter pas­sen­ger rail ser­vice needs to be in our future.

Seat­tle has a long and proud his­to­ry as a leader in avi­a­tion. NPI believes that we can remain an avi­a­tion leader even if we choose a con­ser­va­tion-anchored strat­e­gy to man­age the air traf­fic of the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s.

We don’t agree that fail­ing to build anoth­er big air­port in Puget Sound will mean los­ing out on tons of busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. The fear expressed in Dominic Gates’ arti­cle that those oppor­tu­ni­ties will go else­where is mis­placed. Oth­er states and metro areas are going to be in the same sit­u­a­tion we are, with a pop­u­lace just as unwill­ing to sup­port the con­struc­tion of big new airports.

As Bloomberg’s Justin Fox explained in an arti­cle that ran five years ago:

One expects to encounter gigan­tic new air­ports under con­struc­tion in East Asia, or along the Per­sian Gulf. In North Amer­i­ca, not so much: Den­ver Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, which opened for busi­ness in 1995, is the last big-time, all-new air­port to have been built on this con­ti­nent. Lack of avail­able space near big cities, envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns and polit­i­cal obsta­cles have all stood in the way of build­ing more.

We can pri­or­i­tize inter­na­tion­al flights with our exist­ing infra­struc­ture and upgrades to exist­ing infra­struc­ture to com­pete in that are­na, while work­ing to elim­i­nate domes­tic trips or con­vert them to anoth­er mode, ide­al­ly rail. Doing so will save an enor­mous amount of mon­ey, pre­vent increas­es in pol­lu­tion, and allow us to adhere to our cli­mate action goals rather than mak­ing a mock­ery of them.