The Bailo Plan for Greater Puget Sound:

Sink the 520 into Lake Washington (when no people are on it).

Read my lips. No new viaduct...surface option.

No new roads...no road expansion.

Eliminate and scrap light rail project.   Turn access way into bike lanes.

Use all "mass transportation" monies for establishment of subsidized taxi (texxi.com) service...computer routed shared taxi cabs.

Encourage people to swap out cars in 2010 for Chevy Volts, Toyota Prius and BMW Hydrogen (for the rich dudes in Bellevue).

Miles Was Right.

Less is More.

John Bailo
Sutext:

Roads simply fill up again. It is like digging a hole bigger to keep the water that is seeping into it from overflowing. If you added two extra lanes to all of the roads in NYC they would be grid locked again in a matter of months because more people would drive.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

is another story. I'm all for taking them out of forests, but taking the viaduct out of our city may enhance the view of the wealthy power brokers with multimillion dollar views and provide a park for people who picnic in the summer, but at the expense of anyone trying to go from the north side of Seattle to the south side. It definitely would not be a win win type of thing. It would be a classic power struggle with clear winners and losers, both sides trying to win by pulling the moral high-ground card. I cringe at the thought of trying to go south without one of our two highways. It would essentially cut Seattle in half--the northerners and the southerners. Slavery would probably take hold again, succession, civil war ...could get ugly : )

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

drivers should be encouraged to travel slower to save fuel and thus roads should not be expanded.

Yes.  Lower speeds lead to better merging which removes bottlenecks.  Also, as described in the book "Carfree Cites" the amount of space per car is much smaller at 30 mpg than 60mpg because of spacing between cars.

It has long been my proposal that all Interstate highway traffic be restricted to traveling at 30 mph during rush hours.

John Bailo
Sutext:

I stand corrected, gmunger.

Jabailo,

Every once in a while you toss a pearl. If you would just stop insisitng that global warming is a positive thing, your credibility would go way the hell up. Only fruitballs think that.

Speed limits would also do amazing things for biker safety. If cars in Seattle never exceeded 25 MPH on the roads they would be so much safer. Politicians are not touching that one with a ten foot pole.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

The argument that free-flowing traffic leads to a reduction in GHG emissions is weak at best. More likely, people will drive further as they can go further in a a given amount of time.

That has been well proven. U.S. suburban roadway design standards and level-of-service standards are obsessively focused on fast, free flowing traffic. When compared to walkable neighborhoods, those standards cause more vehicle miles traveled, more GHG emissions, and more traffic crash fatalities per capita.

For more about street patterns and VMT, see Connectivity Part 6: Vehicle Miles and Traffic

For more about street patterns and traffic crashes, see Connectivity Part 7: Crash Safety

Also, an interesting study about removing or reducing roads is Traffic Impact of Highway Capacity Reductions, which was mentioned by Jane Jacobs in her last book. Basically, it says that street networks continue functioning when capacity is reduced -- drivers find alternate routes or they switch to other travel modes, depending on what's most convenient.

Ped Shed Blog

Hi, GMUnger.  Actually, I have been back for nearly a couple of weeks; perhaps you have been away?

But be assured, I was not proposing that the Alaskan Way Viaduct be destroyed.  Nor do I know anything about how Seattle works.  But wasn't there something in Grist a while ago about how the structure is weakening?  And aren't there criticisms that the waterfront is not being sufficiently utilized for recreational purposes?  The Seattle Aquarium is over there, appropriately enough -- but is that a big enough deal?

(No comment on the huge arthropodoid sports stadiums that dominate the view to the south, save to suggest that if they were supposed to have a similarly brilliant effect on the Seattle harbor as does the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, well, um, no.)

So the idea seemed to be floating out there, that the viaduct should be closed off to traffic, and converted into a green space, a park, or a series of gardens.  Here in NYC, that has been done with a few blocks of old and abandoned elevated roadway in Chelsea and the West Village, close to the Hudson River.

Of course I would never wish to disturb BioD with the vision of the North and South of Seattle seceding from one another on account of the destruction of a major connecting thoroughfare.  No, not at all.  Instead, I would propose that there be built a tunnel.

And that is a very NYC solution.  Consider how in the early 20th century, mass transit was a system of elevated trains, the most famous of which fell victim to King Kong's twisted/twisting and yet righteous fury.  These have mostly been converted to subways, save for a few lines in far-uptown Manhattan and the outer boroughs.

So, no roads have been destroyed, they have only evolved.  I would indeed love to destroy the Cross Bronx Expressway, Robert Moses's creation, which must be one of the ugliest and most unpleasant roads on the planet.

Actually, it seems that one small but not unimportant road has been destroyed here, recently, or at least indefinitely closed: the 72nd Street exit of the uptown West Side Highway.  My source tells me that Donald Trump -- by no means my favorite New Yorker -- is behind it.  In the past few years he developed a neglected area west of Lincoln Center and built a few upscale apartment buildings there.  Apparently he thought that all that exiting traffic might discourage his prospective buyers.  In fact, I do not see that that could inconvenience too many drivers who would want to exit there, since there is another close by at 79th.  Also, the redirection of traffic might somewhat alleviate the horrid intersection of Broadway and 72nd, crossed by Amsterdam Avenue.

On the other hand, New York has been slow to follow the example of some other eastern cities, such as Philadelphia and Montreal, and close off a narrow downtown street having many shops along it to traffic, and allow only pedestrians.  We could do it if we tried: 5th Avenue from Central Park South to the NY Public Library would work, as would Broadway from Union Square to Houston.

On the different subject of how free-flowing traffic allegedly does not conserve GHG emissions: That is counter-intuitive, and Racc and Laurence should explain it.  It makes sense only if you are contrasting the circumstances of suburban driving to those of urban, stop-and-go driving.  Naturally the suburban drivers have greater distances to travel.  That is the way the suburbs are designed.

But you Westerners perhaps do not have much experience of our typically Eastern toll roads.  You have no idea what grief and anguish they cause, what heartbreak, to say nothing of painful and even embarrassing episodes with bladders that are pushed to the limit.

And so, one of the most splendid and admirable inventions of recent times, truly a blessing, and really Nobel-Prize worthy (the one for Peace, no less), is EZ-Pass.  Surely this whole group of commuters having to pass through the same toll-collection point are intending to drive comparable distances.  But while the ones with EZ-Pass go sailing fairly swiftly through, the others have to come to a complete stop, several times, and proceed like that for a number of minutes, their engines all the while going "Puff puff puff!  Damn you, Atmosphere!  Puff puff puff!"

Therefore this curious piece from today's NYTimes should raise some interest.  Pennsylvania actually wants to make its stretch of the northerly I-80 a toll road, even as the southerly I-76, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, has been a toll road for ages:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/26/us/26highway.html?_r=1& ...

The shrewd Governor Ed Rendell, Democrat, former mayor of Philadelphia, presumably knows what he is doing.  For one thing, he could use funds; he has needed badly to reorganize his highway patrol and security system, since last winter's terrific embarrassment, when, during a sudden colossal snowstorm high in the sparsely populated Appalachians, on I-81, not far from Hazleton (the bigoted, anti-Latino town that Lou Dobbs loves), a good number of drivers of all kinds, in all kinds of vehicles, were stranded for nearly 24 hours before help reached them.

Obviously there are questions that one may ask.  Less important for us are the legal ones, about whether a state can make an interstate highway, built with federal funds, a toll road, with proceeds going to the state.

More important is the environmental one: How much will the required slowing-down and stopping at a toll-collecting station, while the engine is still running, add to GHG emissions?

It is suggested in the article that toll roads are the wave of the future, and we just better get used to.

How 'bout that.  And here I thought things were getting better and better.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

It makes sense only if you are contrasting the circumstances of suburban driving to those of urban, stop-and-go driving.  Naturally the suburban drivers have greater distances to travel.  That is the way the suburbs are designed.

You explain the effect well. Here's another take on the issue by Kenworthy and Newman. And these maps illustrate what CO2 emissions look like on the city-wide scale: low in the center, high in the suburbs.

The case of congestion charging in London provides some interesting air quality results. Between 2002 and 2003, reductions in traffic volume caused an 8% reduction in CO2 emitted. Reduced traffic jams and idling, and therefore increased speeds, reduced NOx by 8%, PM10 by 7%, and CO2 by 7%.

(BTW, London is proposing additional charges for CO2 emissions. The cleanest vehicles would get free entry into the charging zone, and high-CO2 vehicles would pay a £25 fee.)

It's important to realize that while speeds have increased in London, the increases have been very small. The main effect has been to reduce gridlock and idling, not to allow freeway speeds. The average speed was 8.6 mph in 2002; that increased to 9.3 mph in 2006. Without congestion charging, the estimated average speed would be 7.1 mph.

London already had a low level of traffic crashes, but the congestion charge has resulted in 40 to 70 fewer personal injuries per year from traffic crashes.

Ped Shed Blog

This is a dilemma for me too. But I'm tending towards the road/rail package compromise.

I suspect Sound Transit has done their homework (with public opinion surveys, etc.) to produce a winning formula, in the volatile political environment here, where a right-wing backlash could easily derail transit planning once again as it has in the past.

A major concern is the regressive nature of the tax burden(sales tax). But even at a few hundred dollars per year per average family I think it's a good bargain. As peak oil unfolds, having a light rail skeleton across the region will make all the differerence to keeping the local economy afloat as oil shocks start to take their toll.

The light rail is not cheap (and opponents claim we could build a network of Rapid Transit buses for ten percent of the cost), but the light rail if approved will bring additional advantages in the form of Transit Oriented Development and increased urban density. (Most of the money spent will recycle and stimulate the local economy, anyway.)

Of course, if it's not approved, we may have the future opportunity to build a network of street cars along the major arterials and reclaim our transit heritage. But it does seem to be the case that the longer we postpone mass transit, the more expensive it becomes.

I would love to be an idealist and believe that we could stop all development of roads and get people to abandon their cars and seek other modes of transportation, starting today.  But realistically, how can we seek to pass an idealistic transit measure when in the current political climate we have to compromise with jokers like this:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/virgin/334080_virgin04.html ...