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Comment by jmspring | Hacker News Reader

Seattle (neh, Tacoma to Bellingham) has built up suburbs around highways unable to keep up with demand. That is the primary reason for traffic. Infrastructure around Seattle is not going to make up for sprawl. That sprawl goes all the way to Snowqualmie and eventually Ellensberg.

The whole of that part of WA is a shitshow where infrastructure has not kept up with demand. No, light rail and housing along such will make up for the greater shitshow.

I’ve been dealing with the area for over 20 years. The ferry system is also falling apart and that affects those that may take bridges instead of ferries.

The gridlock in that area impacts the ports and truckers, but their impact is small compared to the other things that make it a shit show. Seattle / WA driving habits don’t help matters either.

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Grew up in the PNW but thankfully moved away 25 years ago before most of the growth. In my opinion the PNW has long been the place where the growth goes unchecked but the cultural animosity for cars has prevented effective expansions of the transit infrastructure. I'm not saying cars are the solution, but I'm saying the pols and voters up there have refused to acknowledge the reality that cars play a major role in our current transportation scheme.

I applaud them for working to expand their light & heavy rail options, while also maintaining a (IMHO) decently effective bus system. But that obviously isn't enough. The reality is that people continue to choose single passenger vehicles and the government hasn't don't much to address it.

I understand the opposition to single passenger vehicles, but the failure to expand transit corridors when land was cheap will have lasting impacts on the ability to expand rail and mass transit networks as such expansion becomes impossible due to cost.

The reality is that, barring a major economic change(which, granted, may finally be here), people will continue to choose single passenger vehicles and not supplying the infrastructure for them means they are even less efficient while they sit in traffic.

>the cultural animosity for cars has prevented effective expansions of the transit infrastructure

I'm not sure I understand this point? For one, if anything there's a clear preference for cars as the default mode of transportation.

Yes, a clear preference among the population. Yet the folks in power seem antagonistic to cars. Look at how the population of the area has grown and yet the freeway network is about the same as it was when I was a kid.

There are still many places in the region with only a single major north-south freeway. You can add all the lanes you want, but a single accident can take your 7 lanes of traffic out of commission. We need more transportation corridors to provide redundancy.

Building freeways induces demand for single occupancy vehicles. Building transit induces demand for transit.

If Seattle never build another freeway, but keeps building trains and bus rapid transit we'll come out WAY ahead.

That's how you make a region suck for decades while your transit dream matures.

Building freeways gives you room for HOV lanes and busses, and even rail if you plan it right. Not building freeways is a demonstrably failed policy in the Sea-Tac region.

It's like how SF suspended the traditional criminal justice system before they had a working replacement. Sure, they'll get it right someday but in the meantime you just have to put up with a few decades of crime. But hey, one day it will be perfect and ideologically pure.

Everybody wants more freeways, no one raises their hand when asked if they would give up their house for the right of way.

> Grew up in the PNW but thankfully moved away 25 years ago before most of the growth.

Seattle has always been a boom (and bust town). I grew up their 20 years ago, and my dad lived in Seattle after his tour ended in Vietnam. The same things we complain about today, we were complaining about them in the 90s and dad was complaining about them in the late 60s.

The boom city nature of Seattle means that it goes through periods of lots of growth quickly enough.

> people will continue to choose single passenger vehicles and not supplying the infrastructure for them means they are even less efficient while they sit in traffic.

Building more freeways usually just attracts more demand. We will never build enough roads to satisfy single driver occupancy demand. The only way to win this is by moving people around more efficiently. If Transit can’t work in Seattle, the city is simply doomed and it’s growth will implode (another bust…it’s not like we haven’t had a few of those before).

IIRC the boom started around the grunge era(30 years ago) when people in east and central cities started to realize Seattle sucked less than their frozen wastelands. I don't think it has slowed down since. All cities have booms and busts, but that doesn't mean you plan for the busts.

You fix the added demand with zoning and a comprehensive regional growth strategy. Not building freeways to service the demand you've have for decades is just insane.

I don't think there has been a single new freeway added since I can remember(early 80s). There is still a huge reliance on surface streets and 2 lane roads to get to the bedroom communities on the outskirts. Not adding lanes to, say, hwy 18, hasn't done a damn thing to limit growth in the east side. It has turned the region into a giant clusterfuck around rush hour though.

Again, Seattle has been a boom town ever since it was founded. The grunge era was actually kind of a bust (if you remember, unemployment was a bit high and housing prices were stagnant in the early 90s), but the start of maybe what we can consider the current boom?

Seattle is a boom town, it doesn’t just have a conventional boom or bust cycle. All west coast big cities (Vancouver BC, Portland, SF, LA, San Diego) have a similar rapid growth profile with similar problems. Note that none of these cities have been able to solve them adequately, and we ran out of space to build new freeways decades ago, so that solution is never happening, even if anyone thought it would solve the problem at all in the first place.

A city like SLC, which has room to add freeways along with republican run government to add them, hasn’t been able to fix its traffic problems either. In fact, they just get worse as the new freeways encourage more sprawl.

So an impractical liberal city and an impractical republican city both chose unsustainable paths and ran into trouble?

I think you need to combine realistic freeway growth with other growth limits to restrict sprawl or, you're right, you become SLC/PHX/etc.

I lived there for 12 years - Seattle has a "don't build it and that won't come" attitude, but they keep not building, and people keep coming.

That sounds about right. Moreover, even if Seattle wanted to build something (anything), it would play out like this: * 10 years of planning * 10 years of lawsuits * another 10 years of planning * 20 years of very slow building

The famed light rail is supposed to reach Issaquah (from Seattle) in 2041. That's if everything goes according to plan.

The famed Seattle Process "Consensus thru Exhaustion"

Even worse, it is 2035 to Ballard and West Seattle, which are much more central than Issaquah and still lack anything but bus.

We need better mass transit in western WA. Not just municipal but wider scale. to deal with traffic congestion. I live south of Olympia and needed to go to Seattle, so I checked amtraks ticket prices and it was cheaper for me to pay gas and parking driving there and back then to take a train. So that means another car on already congested road and taking up one of the limited number of parking space. I want better mass transit but it needs to be affordable for anyone to use it and what we have isn't

I have spent many years working for a large employer there. Flying up from the Bay Area was, hour drive to airport, hour to plane, hour and a half flight, 20min to car rental, 60 to 180min bitching about getting from SeaTac to Redmond/Bellevue. Which is stupid. Carpool lanes made no difference. Infrastructure sucks there.

Even when staying there, let’s say Woodinville or Kirkland. Driving to Bellevue or Redmond let alone Seattle sucks worse than those.

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