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Roads & Rails - The Seattle Times vs. Common Sense

Submitted by grant on October 15, 2007 - 10:00am.

Well, well. It's been a long time, hasn't it? For those of you that don't know (and any of you that are actually reading), I am currently living in New York City as my wife attends graduate school.

There are many benefits to this large metropolis. One being an amazing transit system which was built over 100 years ago. It's the major reason why New York is livable and Los Angeles is a crap-hole. More about Roads & Rails in the next few weeks, but let's just say if we want a livable city, and not another LA, light rail is the answer. But more on that later. And I promise to keep updating this regularly now.

The Seattle Times (you know that wonderful liberal rag which endorsed Bush in 2000, continually calls for the elimination of the estate tax for the benefit of the family which publishes the Times, and generally has an idiotic editorial board stuck in the Seattle of 1981) endorsed a "No" vote of Proposition 1 (AKA Rail & Roads) today.

Goldy at Horsesass.org has an excellent post on this subject today but he also fails to point out perhaps the single largest fallacy in the Times argument:

The Seattle Times: Reject Proposition 1 - Oct 15,2007
Seattle may deny this, but the surest way to reduce congestion on roads is to build more lanes. So says a report issued by State Auditor Brian Sonntag last week, and so says human experience. New roads help.

Good job, hack-editorial board. The problem is, that argument has proven to be false time and time again by agencies more knowledgeable than Brian Sonntag.

In Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream the authors point out a famous UC Berkeley study, covering thirty California counties between 1973 and 1990 and found that, for every 10 percent increase in roadway capacity, traffic increased 9 percent within four years' time. Roads don't solve anything.

But the Times doesn't have to actually read any books on this subject to get a clue on why adding roads doesn't work. A simple Google search and a click on the Traffic Congestion article on Wikipedia will easily give you the best line that even the Times editorial board could understand:

Adding road capacity has been compared to "fighting obesity by letting out your belt"

I guess to the lumbering, stuck-in-the-past Times editorial board, that sounds like a delicious idea.

Posted in Elections | Smart Growth | grant's blog
wow a new post! good to

wow a new post! good to hear from grant again.

anyway i've gotta say... while i agree that the times ed moard is a bunch of hacks i think prop 1 would be a disaster - huge HUGE amounts of money and something like 1/2 of it going to more roads? screw that! we don't need more roads we need less single car drivers. building more transit options makes that possible, not creating endless supply of roads to drive makes that more likely. and we can do it, remember the 1-5 closure? (grant maybe you were already in NY) prop 1 is an unacceptable compromise for people who are really serious about promoting transit in order to improve our lives, our city, and our environment with regard to air quality and climate change.

Submitted by upchuck on October 15, 2007 - 11:19pm.
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hurrah! debate!

Hey upchuck! Yes, we both agree that the Times ed board sucks.

Prop1 definitely has it's issues, and I understand why enviros/transit people are against it, but here's why I'm Pro-Prop 1:

1. The Seattle Process. Yes, I wish Prop 1 had less roads and more transit, but 50 miles of Light Rail is not a small matter. You can bet that if Prop 1 fails, it will take 3-7 years for another Proposition to surface and you can also bet that it will have far less light rail up for vote as the interpretation the pols will get from a failure of Prop 1 won't be "think big" but "think calculated risk".

2. Like it or not, the west coast completely runs on the automobile. Now, it doesn't have to be this way forever, but the transfer from single occupupant vechiles centered system to a mass transit centered system will take decades. The road system does need serious upgrades and growth in certain areas to keep the current system running while a mass transit is expanded. Even is Prop 1 is passed, the majority of the new light rail system won't open until in the 2020's or late 20-teens. Traffic is the problem that Prop 1 is trying to fix. And traffic IS a serious economic problem and will continue to be for the greater Seattle area. It must be tackled through a combination of solutions.

3. Like it or not, Seattle and Western Washington cannot stop global warming on its own. Not to say that we can't make decisions to limit our impact, but whether or not we built a marginal amount of new roads or not in our region of the country will not make that great of an impact overall. The solution is a nation and worldwide solution. In my opinion eliminating the single occupant car to replace it with mass transit is not a viable or realisitic option. The solution is the transition from carbon burning engines to alternative fuels. With that said, I think we'll still need to build and maintain roads even in the perfect situation.

Excuse all of the spelling errors, but I'm at work! I've got so much to say on this but I'll keep posting & talking!

Let's get the debate rollin'!

Submitted by grant on October 16, 2007 - 9:48am.
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