According to Erica Barnett over at WorldChanging.com, the recent lane closures on Seattle's I-5 failed to create a highly anticipated traffic snarl. In fact, half of the usual 120k per day traffic simply "disappeared." This led Ms. Barnett to the only possible conclusion: eliminating roadways is an excellent way to reduce traffic! How's that again? "Drivers are adaptable. When faced with the prospect of gridlock—and given ample warning and time to prepare—people found alternate routes, rode transit, worked from home, and avoided unnecessary trips." That doesn't sound too bad at all! In fact, it sounds great! To be fair, Barnett is not entirely insensitive to the Pollyanna factor. "For congestion-as-incentive to work in the long term, it has to be paired with alternatives that are viable in the long term– flexible work schedules that allow workers to stay home a few days a week, mass transit that is affordable, frequent, and convenient, and an infrastructure that supports bike and pedestrian commuting, among other things." Yes, well, meanwhile, she says if King County Metro had provided more buses during the lane closures, they could have rendered the lanes unnecessary. Huh.
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I would only ride a bus if I absolutely, positively had to (I guess I don’t like people much). I think many agree, shouldering the finanacial and time burdens involved in automotive commuting (which on the face of it is nonsensical). The only “mass” transit that would stand a chance in this enviornment would be computer-controlled electric “taxis” riding on their own “rails”, where a commuter could read the morning paper in peace whilst (sic) being whisked to their destination.
I’m workin’ on it….
See:
http://www.cardevotion.com/Article/149/The_Dual_Mode_Bus_Train.html
Forget for a moment about congestion as incentive and realize that congestion is an unavoidable fact, whether we encourage it as an incentive to use transit or not. Traffic congestion gets worse every year and adding more lanes to highways does not solve the problem. The highway system cannot ever hope to cope with the traffic during peak times. It’s a mathematical impossibility.
I am all for providing drivers with real alternatives to commuting by car. I personally prefer commuting by train or bus as it does give me that opportunity to get some work done on my commute, whether it’s reading the paper, a book, or opening my laptop and getting a jump start on the day’s email. I love to drive, but boy do I hate having to drive in traffic.
American cities are going to have to do something serious about providing public transportation in the coming years. It’s no longer just about global warming or fuel consumption. Now it’s also about getting people to work on time so that commerce can move forward and it’s about giving real options to families that can no longer afford to own and operate four cars from the same driveway. It’s about allowing inner city, lower income individuals a way to get to a job so that they upward mobility and options beyond their neighborhood and station in life.
Barnett may not make a ton of sense, but she is on to something. Drivers are adaptable. The success of Bogota, Columbia is a great example of how some inexpensive changes to the existing road network and transit infrastructure can make all commuters, rich and poor alike, rethink their attitude towards commuting and transit in a very short time frame.
Americans are smart and fiercely proud of their country and I sincerely believe that if our governments at the local, state and federal level made serious commitments to improving the state of transit, if we prioritized transit over road construction in the spending of tax revenues, that city-dwelling Americans would take advantage of it.
Being an 11-7 shift worker, I envy day shift people who can take the bus to work.
I often drive to work as the “pilot car” through the winter snow–hours before the snow plows begin their work.
Carpooling’s out of the question. My one and only co-worker lives as far north of the job as I live south and thus we use only about 2 miles of street in common out of approx. 14-mile commutes for either of us.
The buses here start to run at about 5:30 AM and last run on some routes is as early as 6:30 PM, with nothing at all running by 11.
The plows don’t start running til the wee hours of the AM. Theoretically, they’d have to run whenever the bus ran, so I’d benefit even if I chose to drive over taking the all-night bus,which I probably wouldn’t do as I’m lazy.
Why get up 2 hours early shovel the drive, sweep the windows, scrape the windows, scrape again as my breath freezes to them, endure idiots who seem more interested in killing themselves and others than in reachind Point B in one piece, etc., when I live 3 blocks of flat street from a bus stop?
As I said, I sometimes envy the day shift their freedom to choose whether or not to drive.
Hey! Let’s ban cars while we’re at it too! That’ll take care of that pesky traffic problem once and for all!
What the article didn’t state was that all the anticipated traffic on I-5 moved over to I-405 on the other side of the lake and jammed up Bellevue instead.
People are pretty adaptive creatures (most of the time). If they know there’s going to be a problem somewhere, they either avoid it or look for ways to solve it. Just because the problem didn’t show up as anticipated doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It might have just shifted somewhere else.
“Americans are smart and fiercely proud of their country and I sincerely believe that if our governments at the local, state and federal level made serious commitments to improving the state of transit, if we prioritized transit over road construction in the spending of tax revenues, that city-dwelling Americans would take advantage of it.”
The problem there is that most of us live in the suburbs. Low density living is poorly compatible with mass transit. If we don’t live en mass, it’s hard to see how we could travel en mass. Understandably, most suburbanites will be oppossed to spending tax dollars on a system they’ll rarely (if ever) use.
I must remember to join worldchanging to compliment Ms. Barnett on her talent; it takes real talent to write a story this divorced from reality. Of course, it helps when you have already decided the outcome of the piece.
I work in Seattle. Everyone has been dreading the I-5 work. As a result, roughly 20% of the people I work with have gone on vacation. Others are working from home one day a week (which the company has only allowed during the period of the work) or have made other arrangements. My boss timed his surgery – which has a three week recovery period – to coincide with the I-5 work. I got lucky – I live well North of the work (in Kirkland), so it hasn’t impacted me.
It goes without saying that none of these techniques are sustainable over the long term. Of course, given her conclusions, perhaps they don’t go without saying.