What is it about 167?

[CarawayDJ]

Originally Posted by Ancalagon

Think of it as a time/money/space tradeoff.

The highest demand property is generally in the city, thus the prices are higher per square foot. If someone wants a bigger house, but without paying through the nose, they 'drive till they qualify.' The further out from the city you get the cheaper the house per square foot. The practical limitation to this is time. While you get cheaper housing, you add commute time (and in today's world you add transportation costs, gas ain't $.78 a gallon anymore).

So generally speaking, travel times are the limiting factor to sprawl. Once a road fills up, travel times stabilize and people don't want to move beyond x distance.

Add new lanes, traffic at first decreases, bringing travel in the times down with them. Meaning people can now move even further out, get an even bigger house, for even less money, and still get to work in the same amount of time. But then when everyone moves out to the next ring, they then have to travel on the same road as the people before, so all that 'extra space' on the road goes away and you are back to traffic jam, except now it's even worse.

That's pretty simplistic, but I think a half decent explanation of 'induced demand.'

Very well said. Adding lanes is only a temporary fix. However, if you have enough in-migration, you are eventually forced to do this. Fortunately for Seattle your reputation for rain keeps things from getting out of control. Oh, everygraystate has probably deterred a few thousand people himself. If Seattle had fair weather nothing you could do would prevent it from becoming the Bay Area II.

[Seacove]

Originally Posted by CarawayDJ

Very well said. Adding lanes is only a temporary fix. However, if you have enough in-migration, you are eventually forced to do this. Fortunately for Seattle your reputation for rain keeps things from getting out of control. Oh, everygraystate has probably deterred a few thousand people himself. If Seattle had fair weather nothing you could do would prevent it from becoming the Bay Area II.

So very true. I'm grateful for the rain.

[Ancalagon]

Originally Posted by CarawayDJ

Very well said. Adding lanes is only a temporary fix. However, if you have enough in-migration, you are eventually forced to do this. Fortunately for Seattle your reputation for rain keeps things from getting out of control. Oh, everygraystate has probably deterred a few thousand people himself. If Seattle had fair weather nothing you could do would prevent it from becoming the Bay Area II.

It really depends on where you put the people. The Growth Management Act demands that future growth be concentrated in the urban centers. In the Seattle area this is supposed to overwatched by the Puget Sound Regional Council which has done a mediocre job at best. However that is likely to change as there are major legal challenges to both the PSRC and municipalities (like Seattle) for failing to do enough to concentrate growth in urban centers. The good news is that the market might already be turning that ship around:



Business & Technology | Apartment developers bypass suburbs, target Seattle | Seattle Times Newspaper


As long as the trend continues, where we concentrate population growth in areas already well served by transit (and continue to build out fast, reliable, mass transit) we should be okay with the amount of lanes we have. Especially since Washingtonians are driving less and less:



Where Are My Cars: The Latest from Seattle | Sightline Daily