Comments on Gregoire, Then and Now

I thought you didn't like sprawl?

A $10 toll is going to drive sprawl on the sammamish plateau and out in snohomish county so people can avoid paying the $20 a day it would cost to drive accross those bridges.

Has she said anything to explain this apparent change of heart? If no, any speculation as to why?

It's not a $10 toll. The tolls they're looking at are more like $5, including a trip each way.

ECB must be right because every road project situation is exactly like every other one. There can be no deviation from the party line, comrades!

520's capacity is being increased from four to at least six lanes, and complementary plans could turn 25th ave ne into rh thompson expressway north all the way to Lake City. This isn't about reducing trips or encouraging carpooling. It's about a Democrat unable to raise taxes to pay for essential government services using the rhetoric of sustainability to pass the cost of bridge maintenance back to consumers.

@1 - um, no, it will increase the number of people living closer to their work in Seattle.

Next we institute strip searches of all people who last names begin with Eym..

Hey, sounds fair to me!

I guess with The Stranger Gregoire is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. I mean god forbid if she took a position, then after listening to the voters decided to change her mind. She of course falls below all those other politicians who have been perfect on every one of their positions...

I hear she wants us to either replace the Viaduct or decide on Surface plus Transit ... I mean, come on, we need hearings for the next ten years before we can come up with a Seattle plan and then vote it down!

How unfair! Who does she think she is, the Governor or something?

I can't wait until 2010 when we'll be having this conversation, er, battle about the Ship Canal Bridge! That bridge (AKA I-5 between the U-District and Eastlake) has it's earthquake safety expire that year, just like the Viaduct did last year (or has it been two years now?).

Hmm, I wonder if tax payers and commuters will vote for state funds to fix one of our main freeways. Or, since it's an interstate highway, maybe we'll have to get the Feds involved just to have someone make a decision for us!

Stupid passive-aggressive city that I love.

Um, to those who jaw about tolls shifting some travelers to take the bus -- has anyone looked at rush hour buses lately? I have, and they're full. Riders displaced by the new tolls don't have effective transit options right now.

The day those tolls are first applied, we need a fleet of additional buses out there on the tolled corridors. To not have them invites a huge round of civic warfare.

For several years the new 520 bridge was supposed to allow adding rail or other high capacity transit; this was a way to get pro transit folks to see it as sort of pro transit.

The new version seems to eliminate this.

Will,
Have you ever been on 520 during commute time? Traffic is 60/40 into the Eastside, and the 10,000 MSFT employees who commute from the city to the burbs are more likely to live on the other side of the lake.

Is it just me, or does Gregoire seem kind of anti-Seattle. Or, really, very anti-Seattle? Because King County elected her. And being anti-Seattle is not really gracious under the circumstances.

Will in Seattle @ 6

@1 - um, no, it will increase the number of people living closer to their work in Seattle.

Hate to bum your high sunshine, but Seattle is a bedroom community for the eastside, not the other way around.

You know apples, Erica? There are also oranges. They are different, and not just in color.

@6: Luckily I have a 6 digit salary so I can afford to live in the city. Many people do not nor will they be in any position to purchase a home/condo/box within Seattle city limits. Maybe those that can't afford to live here should move to Kelso or Yakima and take their jobs with them so they home can truly be closer to work.

Andrew and wile e have it right. The eastside has the jobs and Seattle has the worker bees.

Tolling will make it easier for someone to live further from their workplace and will allow more access to the distant homes i.e. sprawl.

The 520 plans will increase capacity adding more traffic to Seattle thereby making Surface/Transit more difficult.

Gregoire is campaigning on the eastside of the state by standing up to Seattle and the MSFT millionaires. They probably won't run ST in 2008 because the rest of the state hates them.

She can count on the Puget Sound vote because what else are we going to do? Is ECB going to vote for Rossi even if she figures out that S/T isn't being supported by the Gov?

The viaduct is being rehabbed as we type. Why are we spending $1 billion on the two ends? Best case for the S/T option is that they run from the tunnel down to AWB for a boulevard on the waterfront.

Bottom line ECB is happy because Gregoire has figured out how to build a bigger freeway and make it easier for those with means ($2500 per year) to rocket out to the hills to their mega-mansions, cool.

@10: Exactly so. Any proposal for tolls on 520 has to include increased bus capacity -- in both directions. The idea of all these suburbanites commuting into the big city is long outdated; huge numbers are going the other way as well. Just check the traffic cameras on 520 eastbound any morning, or westbound in the afternoon.

Having done some driving on the Tri-State Tollway around Chicago, I know from toll booths. And I gotta ask -- what's the global warming impact of hundreds of cars waiting in line to go through a toll plaza?

So the SLOG randomly removes my posts?

And why?

Explanation please. I took 15 minutes to type up a reply on this thread and now it is gone.

Selective editing? Don't like my angle?

As I stated yesterday..

Gregoire is a moron. Plan and simple. She's had 3 years to enact a plan. Wow she is now getting around to it. I wonder if an election is coming up soon?

We need an I-520 8 lane solution period. Nothing less. King/Sno county's population is growing faster and faster. We are adding more vehicles every day. Less lanes crossing Lake Washington is a riduculous farce for any new projects. I don't care what the price tag is. Just get it done and stop delaying as it gets more costly every year. Gregoire's 3 year delay have already cost the citizens another $500 million dollars.

All you eco-rabid freaks need to wakeup to reality. Taking away lane miles will not force a suburban population on the Eastside to start driving less. That is a liberal folly idea.

King County has to be the worst county government I've ever seen in this country. They refuse to address the fact we have a huge lack bisecting the 2 most important economic areas of the state. In 10 years Bellevue will be more of an economic force than Seattle. Have any of you seen the number of new skyscrapers going up in downtown Bellevue? The traffic nightmare will only increase unless we add 2 lanes in each direction across the middle of the county.

This whole issue is fraught with incompetence, mis-management, and stupidity.

We need to address King Co's automobile needs across Lake Washington immediately. Once that is done we can play with your other transit ideas.

I'd like to see the state's "leaders" immediately implement $2 tolls on both bridges. That revenue should be specifically earmarked ONLY for bridge construction and maintenance.

In fact I'd also like to see NO HOV lanes anywhere along 520. That would reduce a ton of congestion thru that highly travelled route.

We've seen that the social engineering attempt to "force" people into carpooling simply isn't working. Too many people have divergent spread out lives making car pooling a folly.

Enough with this failed expiriment already.

Ohh and props to yesterday's post Here:

Not tolling drivers in the HOV lane is a completely fucking stupid idea, which must be why Erica C. loves it, because at the end of the day Erica C. is all about teh stupid, as witness her mindless support of light rail or her hypocrisy regarding BRT as a viable alternative, unless of course the BRT is part of the surface/transit option for replacing the viaduct, in which case it's full speed ahead (see, Erica C. thinks that BRT is teh suck for her, she needs white rail, but BRT is *great* for other people.

Now, this is simple math, but I'm going to dumb it down a bit more for Erica. See Erica, your plan is stupid because it introduces a huge logistical hurdle for no substantive benefit (making dipshit eco-puritans such as yourself is not a substantive benefit). See, if you have a toll of Y dollars and you have X passengers in a car then the toll costs are Y/X per passenger. Now, if you're carpooling you agree to split the costs, so you split the cost of filling up at the pump (because gas stations don't give gasoline for free to carpools, although Erica C. would probably be in favor of that, but only so long as the carpool includes a handicapped person that otherwise might be riding a bus that she's on) and you split the costs of the toll. So implementing a toll all by itself makes carpooling more desirable because you split the cost of the toll among the passengers in the carpool. If we have a six dollar toll and I get two co-workers to carpool with me then we're each out 2 bucks and we've saved 12 dollars, just in toll costs, by not driving alone. Smart people, well people smarter than Erica C. anyways, can figure this out all by themselves and will, and thus you don't have to figure out how to implement a special discount for HOVs.

Of course HOV lanes are completely fucking stupid anyways, feel good bullshit designed to placate the sensibilities of stupid eco-puritans such as Erica C. In most of the places they're implemented in Seattle, most notably on I-5 south through downtown Seattle, they don't do anything but slow traffic down because they force SOV drivers to merge right, which slows down traffic for the other lanes, then the lane goes away just south of the James street exit and resumes south of I-90, which is completely fucking stupid. Also stupid is the fact that HOV lanes can be used by people with kids. Sorry soccer moms and dads, but hauling your little bastards to soccer practice is not commute trip reduction. It's not as if the little fucks are going to drive themselves.

A few judiciously placed tolls would do more for carpooling than all of the HOV lanes we've built so far. Of course if tolling is implemented I want to see 100 percent of the tolls go to road maintenance and not one dime for public transit or any other purpose. Public transit is subsidized enough as it is and in some cases over subsidized (Sounder heavy rail anyone?).

Posted by wile_e_quixote | January 10, 2008 7:50 PM

Thank you Wile_E ! Excellent points!

Reality Check

@23: I think the HOV lanes are important if only to help buses stay on schedule. If they get stuck in the same traffic as single-occupancy cars there's no reason to ride them. I suppose we could have dedicated bus-only lanes, but I imagine you'd like that even less.

And where do the cars come from and go to on the Seattle side of this 8 lane freeway? RC, a better idea would be to pave the lake creating a street grid and new real estate.

Or we could build an 6 lane freeway down the east side of Seattle and call it the RH Thompson. Or widen I-5 to 10 lanes. Let's just build highways across Capitol Hill.

Take the $5 billion and build a rail line to MSFT and let 520 sink.

Speaking as someone who commutes WITH A COWORKER from Issaquah to Kent 80% of the time, I say keep the HOV lanes on 520. I would probably drive by myself if we didn't have the HOV. I certainly wouldn't take the 3 HOUR bus ride via downtown Bellevue.

Shocked- shocked I say!- to disagree with the always articulate and verbose Mr. Check.

@27

Umm... Issaquah to Kent via 520? I suggest your party might want to invest in a GPS.

I've heard there are faster routes.... even if you drive solo.

Or so it seems to me.

Whoops. Reality Check, please enjoy the rare please of being right, and me being wrong. I was confusing I-405 and 520. Five years here is long enough for me to know better. Thank you for pointing this out.