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Comment by FPGAhacker | Hacker News Reader

No kidding. Seattle should be an example of how not to plan a city. Traffic is astonishingly bad given the population.

The Seattle metro is a unique situation that exists outside of just city planning...we are trapped between various lakes, mountains ranges, and massive bodies of saltwater - and I don't say this in the regions defense - I have suffered an insane commute here before choosing to make the sacrifices necessary to live and afford to live in the city. At the same time the things that make commuting in this place difficult are what make it precious.

Hopefully ST3 comes to fruition as there simply aren't many more places to put highways.

This is true, the geography does create some traffic funnels.

Adding highways isn't the only tool available to transportation planners. Isn't it interesting how some intersections bog down at any capacity, while others are busy and still keep moving smoothly?

There are types of lane and intersection designs which never seem to work well, and I'm surprised that more isn't done to avoid or eliminate them.

Did they really plan it? I feel like no one expected Amazon to grow as much as they did. And the domino effect was everyone else started coming into the area because tech talent was here already (or across the lake in Bellevue and Redmond). I’m not a Seattle native so do correct me if that’s wrong.

the tunnel was always sort of dumb, but seattle had a really reasonable traffic growth plan for its expected growth. the actual growth has been way higher than the plan.

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