June 2009

Nice to see, via hugeasscity, a “virtual online meeting” being hosted by the Seattle Planning Commission.

Hugeasscity notes, correctly, that such town-hall-type meetings are (often) “boring,” and it’s nice to be able to do one in your spare time without having to traipse to the local gym or community center and sit on uncomfortable chairs for two hours.

Interestingly, this “virtual meeting” is not really a meeting at all, but rather a fairly straightforward online survey. I guess they thought they could get more attention by calling it a “virtual meeting.”

However, this does raise the question: why aren’t there more actual virtual meetings on government websites? If the planning commission wanted to actually host a community meeting (instead of a survey), they could have put the video up on their site and put up a normal blog comments section to accompany it. My guess is that that would never fly, though. Governments are deathly afraid of putting user-generated content on their site (no comments allowed on the White House blog and YouTube channel, for example).

But why not? Anyone can stand up at a government-sponsored community meeting and spew all sorts of B.S. Often those meetings are transcribed, and the comments are put up on the web. What’s the difference between that and just letting citizens comment (publicly) directly on the site? If someone’s crazy and easily dismissed, it’s obvious, just as it is in the real world.

An interesting disagreement has broken out between The Obama Administration and Congress over the next transportation bill. The 5-year bill is due for reauthorization in September. Obama (and Secretary LaHood) want to extend it 18 months, presumably to take a more comprehensive look after the elections. We discussed this on my weekly podcast, for anyone who’s interested.

Congressional Leaders on the transpo committee — Democrat Jim Oberstar and Republican John Mica (a rare pro-rail Republican) — don’t want to wait.

We don’t know exactly why the administration is keen to wait. All they’ve said is that they want to take a more comprehensive look at the bill in 18 months time.

18 months, of course, takes us to December 2010, which is conveniently right after the 2010 midterm elections, which might make it politically easier to raise the gas tax. Theoretically, the economy should have picked up some steam by then, so the idea of raising taxes could be more palatable.

Paradoxically, though, if the economy picks up, the price of gas will pick up with it. It’s already back to $2.65/gal nationwide, and over $3/gal here on the West Coast. By 2010, we could be back to $4 territory, as increasing demand pushes up against supply. I’m skeptical that Congress will be able to find that exact sweet spot, when the economy has improved enough to make raising taxes possible, but hasn’t improved so much that the price of gas makes raising the gas tax in particular politically feasible.

One final point on this: the U.S. government is now the majority shareholder of General Motors. GM is pinning its comeback on the electric Chevy Volt. The easiest and most effective way to sell the Volt is through high gas prices. If you’re Obama, and you want to sell thousands of Volts, there’s really only one way to make that happen: higher gas prices.

Update:The Transport Politic notes that, according to Sen. Boxer, the new bill is probably DOA in the Senate anyway.

I’ve recently moved back to the CD after a few years away, and I’m riding on 23rd Avenue more, both in my car and on the bus. 23rd has been beaten up pretty badly by the buses over the years (buses distribute all their weight to a few points of contact with the road, and thus tend to beat up the street worse than cars). As you can see, the city recently made the outer lanes concrete instead of asphalt to help ameliorate this:

View Larger Map

(Incidentally, this is a nice example of why we need to look at transportation holistically — the buses are running on SDOT’s right-of-way, but SDOT needs to spend extra to maintain the road so buses can use it. We’re all in this together, in other words.)

Still, 23rd is kind of a mess. As hugeasscity recently pointed out, the right-of-way is way too narrow for a 4-lane street. It should be like MLK Way, with one lane in each direction and a center turn lane. the nice thing about Central Seattle is that, Rainier aside, it’s actually a very nice grid layout, meaning that traffic can very efficiently re-flow to other N-S arterials: 12th, 14th, MLK, 31st, etc.

[Yes, it would be slower on 23rd, but that's not a bad thing. I have to sheepishly admit that I often drive a few MPH over the speed limit on 23rd, and judging by the speed indicator signs set up there, I'm not the only one.]

A narrower 23rd with wider sidewalks would be a huge boon to the pedestrian life in the are (as hugeasscity notes). It would probably make it more attractive for someone to buy the old Philly’s Steak building , or for someone to open up a corner grocer at 23rd and Cherry, either of which would be great for street life.

Matt Fiske has a neat piece on density in, of all places, Crosscut. He argues that the land currently occupied by the soon-to-be-closed T.T. Minor elementary would make a great urban neighborhood in the Amsterdam mold.

Trouble is,The problem with the article is that the Seattle School District has no intention of selling or demolishing the school (which is probably a good thing, as someday the demographics of the neighborhood will change to make it useful again).