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Building new highways doesn't lead to lessened congestion on the existing ones, it leads to additional population growth and/or sprawl which ultimately leads back to equilibrium congestion on all the roads, old and new. In the words of President GW Bush, it makes the pie higher.
Kindly point to a city in the world where more freeway construction has led to a medium- or long-term reduction in road congestion. Or one where light rail or rail mass transit has led to the same thing. Los Angeles? Boston? London? If people can travel farther to live and work, they will, up to the point when they hate the commute time, at which point they move house or job. Statistically very dependable.
Google "Braess' Paradox."
Meant to add, an SR 18 - 202/203 alignment for a "foothills freeway" would encounter massive engineering costs due to poor soils and flood issues in the Snoqualmie Valley. We confronted this issue during the growth management planning process, when I was a chief planner and city administrator in the valley. We also determined that the "desire lines" for an outer ring were negligible, aside from a bunch of truckers who saw it as a way of avoiding the scales on I-90 just west of SR 18.
And since then, federal highway funding has evaporated, and with it, most new freeway construction across the country.
Absolutely untrue. Sure mass transit is needed, but we also HAVE to expand freeway capacity- it's just a reality that all major metro areas in the world deal with because the simple fact is that people drive cars, and no matter how much transit is available there will always be a very high number of people driving for any number of reasons. You have to expand highways AND transit- the benefit of transit is that you don't have to expand the freeways as much as you would have had to otherwise- but that expansion still has to happen. I don't know of any other major metro area that does not expand freeways to keep up with demand. It's just a simple requirement!
Not true, I can cite many examples of that not being true. Dallas is a prime example. Also, I explained sprawl in the original post. Good grief. Read the original post.
I did, and saying that sprawl has reduced the value of I-405 is confusing chickens and eggs. I-405 facilitated that sprawl, just like highways do everywhere that they're added to an urban region. Did you live here when I-405 was built? Do you remember Bellevue in the 1970s? I can cite LA, SF, every metro region in the Midwest and east, even Texas, as examples of the same story. Read this article written by a traffic engineer regarding Dallas: How Highways Hurt Dallas – D Magazine
Quote:
Originally Posted by jm31828
Absolutely untrue. Sure mass transit is needed, but we also HAVE to expand freeway capacity- it's just a reality that all major metro areas in the world deal with because the simple fact is that people drive cars, and no matter how much transit is available there will always be a very high number of people driving for any number of reasons. You have to expand highways AND transit- the benefit of transit is that you don't have to expand the freeways as much as you would have had to otherwise- but that expansion still has to happen. I don't know of any other major metro area that does not expand freeways to keep up with demand. It's just a simple requirement!
Most metro areas are doing nothing of the kind; most are struggling to maintain what they've got, and some are removing freeway miles altogether. The feds aren't paying for new roads any more, except in a very few situations, and even then usually as the result of some political pork barrel gimmick. They're too expensive, too litigious, and take too long.
Transport infrastructure advocates, be it for rail or highways, need to understand the correlation between expanded transport capacity and population growth and movement. Again and again, around the world, the statistics have shown that increased capacity (more lanes or more trains) can increase traffic congestion. It happens because a large group of people perceive the new infrastructure as being able to permit them to travel farther to work in the same time, not faster from the same point. (Note I didn't say "all.")
Real estate developers (and employers if they're mobile) take advantage of the new infrastructure to build housing, commercial or employment facilities, which over time we call "sprawl." Microsoft could NOT have moved to Redmond until SR 520 was extended and upgraded in the 1980s. Ever wonder why they call SR 526 the "Boeing Freeway?"
Or take BART in the Bay Area. When BART was being proposed it was ballyhooed as taking cars off the Bay Bridge, and putting people into trains below it. Never happened. Some of the people who had been driving did indeed opt to take BART, but that simply created excess capacity on the bridge which other people immediately occupied now that they perceived the drive commute as being easier. And they thought they could live in places like Walnut Creek or Fremont and have an easy commute into San Francisco, and the real estate developers were quick to fulfill their dreams of suburban bliss. Then they found out that the commute wasn't what they'd hoped for, so they lobbied to have I-580 and I-680 expanded to ease their commute. But that didn't work either, it just facilitated additional sprawl farther out, and those roads filled up to equilibrium promptly.
In Seattle, Sound Transit has hesitated to advertise light rail as a congestion solution; they just let the consumers and voters think it will be. What it is doing now and will continue to do is facilitate population growth in the "urban villages" (what a laughable term) surrounding the stations. That population will be in addition to the people already living here, i.e. net population growth. If Sound Transit had been truthful in its advertising that light rail would serve some hundreds of thousands of new residents 20 years from now, but not have an impact on traffic - ever - do you think ST3 would have passed?
So I'm sorry to sound negative on this stuff. I've been working in these fields for decades (too many to state) and I don't like it when people develop false hopes, especially when they cost taxpayers billions in corporate welfare payments to lawyers, engineers, and contractors.
None of this is to say we shouldn't invest in infrastructure upgrades and improvements. Improved flow management on existing highways can work wonders, even if our robotic cars aren't going to drive us to Target next year. Headway on train schedules can be improved, bus corridors and lanes can be added quickly and cheaply with a huge benefit/cost bump compared to new rails or roads, there are a variety of congestion-pricing tools that the state or local government can apply (although not as many as some people think, thanks to that pesky State Constitution.) But the real key to congestion management is land use policy, not transport infrastructure. Always has been.
Absolutely untrue. Sure mass transit is needed, but we also HAVE to expand freeway capacity- it's just a reality that all major metro areas in the world deal with because the simple fact is that people drive cars, and no matter how much transit is available there will always be a very high number of people driving for any number of reasons. You have to expand highways AND transit- the benefit of transit is that you don't have to expand the freeways as much as you would have had to otherwise- but that expansion still has to happen. I don't know of any other major metro area that does not expand freeways to keep up with demand. It's just a simple requirement!
Vancouver B.C. doesn't have any freeways. Just because some cities have become addicted to freeways doesn't mean all cities have. Seattle and San Francisco are much more similar to Vancouver than L.A. San Francisco tore down their own Viaduct (the Embarcadero). In many cases, freeways were built not to meet demand, but to open up cheaper land for development. Building a freeway in an already developed city is very expensive.
Geography is a major factor. Large bodies of water, inlets, bays, lakes, high hills. Seattle is not Phoenix or Las Vegas.
"You have to expand highways AND transit" - when suburbanites had the chance to vote for exactly that in the Roads & Transit measure, they chose to vote AGAINST Transit (and light rail). Seattle did vote for both. It would have been MANY times cheaper then. Now, not only do we not have the political will, but we also don't have the money, to do both.
Vancouver B.C. doesn't have any freeways. Just because some cities have become addicted to freeways doesn't mean all cities have. Seattle and San Francisco are much more similar to Vancouver than L.A. San Francisco tore down their own Viaduct (the Embarcadero). In many cases, freeways were built not to meet demand, but to open up cheaper land for development. Building a freeway in an already developed city is very expensive.
Geography is a major factor. Large bodies of water, inlets, bays, lakes, high hills. Seattle is not Phoenix or Las Vegas.
"You have to expand highways AND transit" - when suburbanites had the chance to vote for exactly that in the Roads & Transit measure, they chose to vote AGAINST Transit (and light rail). Seattle did vote for both. It would have been MANY times cheaper then. Now, not only do we not have the political will, but we also don't have the money, to do both.
This is the answer. Both highways and transit. One over the other is worthless, the combined strategy will be the best result.
Absolutely untrue. Sure mass transit is needed, but we also HAVE to expand freeway capacity- it's just a reality that all major metro areas in the world deal with because the simple fact is that people drive cars, and no matter how much transit is available there will always be a very high number of people driving for any number of reasons. You have to expand highways AND transit- the benefit of transit is that you don't have to expand the freeways as much as you would have had to otherwise- but that expansion still has to happen. I don't know of any other major metro area that does not expand freeways to keep up with demand. It's just a simple requirement!
I'm pretty sure we're showing that a lack of major expansions is possible, since that's actually happening and will continue for the foreseeable future.
To clarify, the current system acknowledges that many people do drive. We're keeping a massive road system and even expanding it in moderate ways. It's only the net additive capacity that will be mostly transit.
I think mentioned in another thread...while 605 is all as good as dead, it doesn't prevent WSDOT from completing the 18 from north of Kent over Cougar Mountain and improving the I-90 interchange, which is needed, not only providing a strong new corridor, but also serving Snoqualmie Ridge, a growing suburb just past this location.
Vancouver B.C. doesn't have any freeways. Just because some cities have become addicted to freeways doesn't mean all cities have. Seattle and San Francisco are much more similar to Vancouver than L.A. San Francisco tore down their own Viaduct (the Embarcadero). In many cases, freeways were built not to meet demand, but to open up cheaper land for development. Building a freeway in an already developed city is very expensive.
Geography is a major factor. Large bodies of water, inlets, bays, lakes, high hills. Seattle is not Phoenix or Las Vegas.
"You have to expand highways AND transit" - when suburbanites had the chance to vote for exactly that in the Roads & Transit measure, they chose to vote AGAINST Transit (and light rail). Seattle did vote for both. It would have been MANY times cheaper then. Now, not only do we not have the political will, but we also don't have the money, to do both.
Thats not true. Vancouver does have freeways... Highway 1 comes to mind.
Agreed, Vancouver does have freeways, though not in the inner city. They start up just outside downtown, and even then they are modified freeways, IMO, as they have some curious on and off ramps, not quite up to U.S. Interstate standards, but they don't have to!
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