What will western washingtons next big freeway project be?

[Botev1912]

it's supposed be in 10 to 15 years. The technology is there. The only problem could be people's perception of self-driving cars and laws (no more traffic tickets)

[Seattle4321]

I wouldn't want to have a car drive me would you guys?

[pnwguy2]

This notion of self-driving cars is technologically possible, but I expect a huge backlash from those drivers who won't trust it. This is similar to computers being operable way back in the 50's and 60's, but didn't become mainstream until the 1990's. So I predict self-driving cars will be a concept for atleast a couple of decades before they are accepted by the mainstream.

Additionally, some drivers, if not most, actually enjoy the act of driving. How does this tech acknowledge that? These questions are not being considered here in 2015. They should. In fact, if I were a betting man, I would bet against self-driving cars. Don't think this is going to happen anytime soon, despite the technology.

[elkotronics]

Sort of like everybody being really, really slow ta buy in to the all-electric motorcar idea. It's gonna take a long while, if it ever indeed does kick in at all. Range and cost are big problems right now.

[sean98125]

We're going to be using the heck out of semi-autonomous car features like adaptive cruise control, predictive braking, automated lane keeping, and automatic parallel parking in the next 3-5 years. There are already a lot of moderately priced cars that have at least some of these features and I wouldn't be surprised at all to see the federal government mandate predictive braking in all cars by the early 2020s because of the huge safety improvement it represents.

This isn't going to be a sudden shift, but an evolutionary one as more and more vehicles have more and more autonomous or semi-autonomous features. Once we've been using predictive and adaptive features (and collecting billions of miles a year worth of data on their effectiveness) then it isn't going to be long at all until we're happy to just make the final step of taking our hands off the wheel and letting the car drive.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbjdmw8D9-Y

[Seattle4321]

WSDOT - I-5 - JBLM Vicinity - Congestion Relief Study
If you don't want to read the whole article it says, " Add one additional lane to each direction of I-5. Two lanes each direction would be Express Lanes restricted to through traffic only. Traffic entering or exiting I-5 in the JBLM area would use the outer three lanes." surprised they would add so many lanes so easily!

[Botev1912]

That's south of Tacoma. Won't benefit most of the people in Seattle area.

[pnwguy2]

This stretch is very dated. Some of the overpass bridges date back to the early 50's.

[fresh1]

closing a lane for a bike lane down the freeway