Oh, and the fact that the few times I've been in I-5 North this week, it's been no worse than any other time of the year.

As for the Seattle Times link above, that is headlined "commuters not delayed" and Erica says is evidence that bad commutes did not materialize... it mentions a 30 minute delay to get through a small construction zone on Monday afternoon. Uh, that's a bad commute. That's a shitty commute... but still faster than taking transit. And that article does not even mention the backups on the alternate routes.

My commute from West Seattle to Capitol Hill has been awesome - best in years!! I've made it door to door in only 17 minutes on several days.

Keep it up Seattle Times!

http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/seattle/

But seriously, BORING!
This burning bridges thing is getting old. If ECB wants to move on to a real career, let her go already. Jeez.
Work for the Village Voice, or the Onion or push papers for a politician. Or something UGH!

insecure

Brodeur, though, states that the UW offered the spaces to staff in order to avoid traffic, and that Brodeur "asked to check in, too, to see what it was like and maybe relive my own college days of flip-flops all day, Aerosmith all night."

Later, she states that the nightmare of traffic actually contributed to people using transit and/or other routes, thereby avoiding mass congestion"

"...it took the fear of traffic and lost time to force an entire region of people to use mass transit. Because of one mile of roadwork. It was, and remains so far, a beautiful thing. Packed Sounder trains. Car pools. People got up before dawn to catch a 6 a.m. water taxi."

Brodeur is a joke, but so are you, ECB.

"Brodeur couldn’t find anyone."

She also wrote that 24 people had checked in. I don't know why anyone's shocked that UW staffers didn't run right home to their temporary dorm housing promptly at 5 pm.

Sure, it's not a lot of people, but what all of this non-disaster seems to show is that a lot of people temporarily re-arranging their schedules and commuting patterns has been something of a success I just can't figure out why this inspires such indignation.

Don't know what the fuss is.

Besides, real Seattleites never take I-5.

I was southbound, and the area that is currently black (as in stop-and-go) between the Yesler and Albro cameras was and is indeed jammed up with traffic that is going nowhere fast. The stretch where the work is going on (and between the areas the cameras on either side of it cover) is as much as you can see of northbound I-5 from southbound if you get off at Corson/Michigan.

That section may look pretty small on the area map, but I bet I saved at least 20 minutes on my return trip by taking the Viaduct. Was it a traffic jam all the way to the City limit? No, but it was probably still plenty inconvenient if you were unfortunate enough to be stuck in it.

If ECB were intellectually honest (I know, big assumption) she'd admit that restricting capacity on one roadway for three weeks isn't the same as tearing down a big chunk of capacity and replacing it with nothing (please, stop telling me about the surface+transit option, it's as much a load of shit, smoke and mirrors as the surge in Iraq). But that's if ECB were intellectually honest, which is like assuming that Dan Savage is straight or Charles Mudede coherent.

The column you linked to seems clear to me she's poking fun at herself for her absurd habit and then points to the virtues of others who are better than here.

She's self-effacing in the best way. And then you seem to feel the need to slam her too? It really just doesn't make sense to me.

Then you twist her words. And that's just not fair.