SDOT to blame for awful commute into Seattle

Taken from Monday’s edition of the Jason Rantz Show.

Though the I-5 commute Monday morning was an anomaly, every morning many of you have to do that drive into Seattle and encounter significant traffic jams. The same is the case on I-405.

It was another horrible commute Wednesday morning with many travel times clocking in well over 90 minutes.

According to the state’s annual corridor capacity report, as reported in The Seattle Times, commuters experienced a 57 percent increase in total hours of delay for the entire I-5 corridor through Everett, Seattle, and Federal Way during 2011-13. The traffic on 405 is 39 percent worse during that same time period.

The Times reports that the average morning trip from Everett to Seattle took 50 minutes for a solo driver, up from 40 minutes two years earlier.

But the “reliable” travel time, which can be achieved 19 out of 20 days, soared to 80 minutes instead of 62 minutes. An average transit ride, including stops, lasted 49 minutes, compared with 39 minutes for carpoolers. Total hours of delay per person increased from 5 hours, 27 minutes in 2011 to 8 hours, 40 minutes in 2013.

Meanwhile, total vehicle and miles traveled per person remained flat! In other words, you’re not driving any more than normal and there aren’t more cars on the road.

How can that be? The Washington State Department of Transportation says, “I dunno!”

“I don’t have a great answer to that,” Sreenath Gangula from WSDOT said. “The root cause is, there’s only so much capacity.”

I don’t think that’s the root cause. As The Times points out, in some places the capacity has been reduced. For instance, look at the Mercer Mess, where lanes are routinely closed for construction.

On I-405 south, east of Lake Washington, you’ve got lane construction projects going on. This is an area that’s seen 36 percent more congestion.

WSDOT is reluctant to give any concrete reasons. But I have some, particularly because this is reviewing traffic to and from Seattle between Everett and Federal Way, which basically can be discussed as north and south into and out of Seattle.

Here’s why it’s harder: Seattle leaders in the City Council, in the mayor’s office, in SDOT, have made it harder for cars to get around the city in their effort to get people onto Metro buses, on bikes, and on foot.

I’m not critical, per se, of this effort. I think it’s ultimately better for the environment and better on traffic to get cars off the road, but that’s why you’re seeing increased congestion.

When you make it harder for people in Seattle to navigate via car, when you close lanes to traffic, when you tell people they can’t turn right onto Mercer from Dexter south (an extremely busy intersection), when you tell drivers they have to get off Third Avenue, and when you take away lanes on Second Avenue or on Broadway for bicycle lanes, there are consequences, intended and unintended.

The consequence is more congested streets in the city, which then back up onto the freeway off-ramps because there’s less space for the cars going off the freeways to get onto. For example, look at the Mercer Mess, where the city is dragging its feet.

It takes a miracle to get onto Mercer, to get on I-5. Once you’re on, it works great, but the signal timing is atrocious. You get stuck on Dexter trying to make a left for three signal cycles. Next time, that driver will migrate to a block north to get on, but that light isn’t set up for the increase in traffic. Thus, there’s more congestion there.

Then you’ve got people trying to get around, having to go west up Mercer because traffic is bad. They try to go around, making the congestion around Mercer intolerable. Then you can’t get off Mercer because of all the construction for bike lanes and whatnot. That just causes more messes.

Now, is this all a ‘War on Cars?’ Consciously, no. I don’t think folks get in a war room with the precise desire to make our commutes miserable, but it’s subconscious and it’s inevitable when you all have this shared idea that you want people out of cars. So subconsciously, you start to do things that hurt drivers. It’s that ideological position that informs the decisions you make.

Taken from Monday’s edition of the Jason Rantz Show.

JK