Orphan Road - sr520 - Comments

Okay that makes me feel

bgtothen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:52:18 -0800

Okay that makes me feel better. I love writing on here but if no one reads it I feel like it is pointless.

Yeah, readership's been

Frank — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 10:04:22 -0800

Yeah, readership's been pretty solid the last 6 months or so. Some posts generate large comment threads, some don't. I think in general people care more about trains than roads. But we also have registration here, so only he hard-cores can comment (but it saves me the headache of comment spam).

Okay maybe we just need to

bgtothen — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:36:25 -0800

Okay maybe we just need to post more.

Hey. I read it daily.

Matt the Engineer — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:18:13 -0800

Hey. I read it daily.

Wow no one cares about 520.

bgtothen — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:42:35 -0800

Wow no one cares about 520. We need to bring back orphan road. No one reads it.

Toll booths by 2010, not

EvergreenRailfan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 00:20:20 -0700

Toll booths by 2010, not going to happen, especially a toll plaza like this one. Tacoma Narrows Bridge, could not tell if all the booths were manned in this photo, the Jersey Barrier is in the way. I do remember their was a line going through it later, and there were several booths open that night, then again, it was Thanksgiving, and WSF was all messed up, it was just as they took the elderly boats out of service. More people were going around that day than taking a ferry.

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c62/RanierBusrider/TollPlaza.jpg

Speaking of conceptions of

Oran — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:41:00 -0700

Speaking of conceptions of congestion, economic vitality, and urban transportation planning you might find Brian Taylor's article "Rethinking Congestion" (page 10) an interesting read. Or you can also listen to his keynote speech of the same name from the TransNow Student Conference in Portland from late last year.

Totally! That's the magic of

Frank — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:23:13 -0800

Totally! That's the magic of that kind of thinking, though. No taxes, no tolls -- just big, big freeways!!

No to tolls? Then where's

Oran — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:55:50 -0800

No to tolls? Then where's the money to build your monster 8-lane bridge going to come from? How are you going to mitigate all that increased SOV traffic onto I-5? Do we really need 8 lanes? I don't think so, and I live on the Eastside.

Silly eastsiders...

DJStroky — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 22:23:55 -0800

Of course she would want an 8 lane option, representing the 5th legislative district and all.

Ben is wrong

CJH — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 09:35:16 -0800

Ben thinks, rightly, that some people are going to push light rail on 520 over I-90 as a wedge issue. Ben, wrongly, thinks that the only way to prevent that is to say how great punting the possibility of light rail on one of the most congested transit corridors in the state out to 2040 or (more likely) 2050 and also say that buses like 545 are pretty much BRT so they'll be enough to serve the densifying 520 corridor. As an Eastsider, I think this is horse hockey of the richest bouquet.

This is a big, big, big failure of vision to drop the light rail ready component on 520 to save money because that choke point is precisely what will get people out of their cars and onto rail. Especially as denser housing and businesses replace the underutilized land along 520 and Northup. Also, as you noted, when/if East Link is built, I-90 is going to be a mess as the system expands south and west. If Portland and SF (in your example) are any guides, then three lines each running every 15 minutes are about the max that can be handled at a single crossing.

Also, the problems with transfers at Montlake are a canard. Most other rail systems have transfer points, will one there (taking 15 minutes if you JUST miss your train) kill ridership as much as making every Kirklander or Redmonder who wants to go to Seattle *always* take a 15 minute detour through Bellevue?

Oops... thanks! I've

Frank — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 08:53:08 -0700

Oops... thanks! I've updated the post.

True, we're not quite there. But between RTID and what the legislature's already committed, we're close. Add in a toll on both floating bridges and we're even closer.

You can see the WSDOT's (admittedly vague) finances if you go here and scroll down.

Call it the 520

madisonian — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 07:08:53 -0700

Call it the 520 bridge-tunnel: put the ugly parts near Husky stadium and the Arboretum underwater but use a floating bridge the rest of the way. But there's still no real plan to pay for it, is there?

More Tools for Dialogue and Debate

morganb — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 22:55:07 -0700

Frank, I hear your points. I too would prefer that GHG was not the only leverage point in the dialogue on roads. We don't want to put all our eggs into the climate change basket. But, the Climate Change metaphor is effective, because it is current with year's wave of attention on the topic. It is the vehicle of the day; it is in vogue.

What I hope is that we continue working on other arguments, like those you listed. I don't think that the issue of Climate Change is likely to disappear any time soon, but as we make progress on it we still need to be able to make progress on other issues, like flood control and water purification (wetlands). For now, arguing that roads can kill wetlands, which impact the water cycle and habitat, is too complicated for most venues.

btw - Shellenberger & Nordhaus will be at Town Hall later this month talking about exactly this stuff. I loved their opening salvo in 2004.

RE: Acting Locally

Frank — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 18:13:23 -0700

Morgan,

Thanks again for your comments, and for reading all of my blogs! :)

My problem with the current debate is that I feel like we're starting to equate building highways with global warming. The relationship is there, but it's tangential. Highways themselves do not clause global warming. It's the cars that drive on them.

It's convenient to use global warming as another reason to oppose highways, but I don't think it's a very good one.

I wholly agree, as I've said before, sprawl is inherently problematic because it requires great energy to move people great distances. Even the electricity in electric cars has to come from somewhere. So I'm all for denser development in general.

I just worry about the aims getting confused here. If we're worried about global warming, yes, you're right, cars are the issue, and so Washington State can do what California does, and impose strict emissions standards on the cars that are sold here, or more easily, we could impose a much higher gas tax. Either would do wonders directly for global warming.

Maybe I'm overreacting, but I think it's important to clarify the debate. For example, a few years ago, lots of environmentalists (like myself) got all excited when conservatives started worrying about oil addiction as a national security issue. It was another tool in our arsenal, we thought, to convince people to stop burning fossil fuels.

The problem was that those same conservatives turned around and said, "okay, so we'll just have to drill in ANWR and make more ethanol in Iowa." Egads, that's an environmental disaster on so many levels!

And of course, there are problems to sprawl in and of itself: congestion, destruction of farmland, obesity, etc. All of these things are problems and arguments need to be -- and can be -- made against them on their own terms.

Washington State's Growth Management Act is one of the best tools we have for dealing with this at the state level. At the county level, look what they're doing to make more walkable neighborhoods throught King County. This is all good stuff. More of that, I say.