Are there manufactured traffic slowdowns on Election Day?

Taken from KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

There was horrible traffic Tuesday morning. It took two hours and twenty minutes to get from Everett to Seattle and there were reportedly no major accidents or blocking problems.

“Traveling south from Everett? Your best bet is to go back to bed. Can’t do that? Start walking. 130 mins Everett-Seattle,” the Washington State Department of Transportation tweeted during the morning commute.

KIRO Radio Traffic Reporter Chris Sullivan said there was really no good reason for the delays.

“This was so frustrating because there was no problem. This was not a Monday from two weeks ago when we had a jackknifed semi at Northgate that caused an 11-mile backup. This was a day where there were no accidents of any significance during that time frame. There were no stalls of any significance at that time. It was just the volume. Everybody who wanted to get on the road on I-5 got on the road at that time and there was just not the capacity to hold all of the commuters that were going at that one particular time,” said Sullivan. “What gets me so fired up is I want to figure out why this happens.”

I’ve been telling people for years why it happens. It happens because officials want it to happen. They want these traffic jams to force people to do a couple of things: (1) The toll lanes are coming and they want people to be so desperate that they’ll pay anything when they implement the tolls on I-5. (2) They want to force people onto their preferred mass transit. (3) They want people to vote for big government.

I remember the first time I talked about a manufactured traffic jam was Election Day 1996 when Sound Transit was on the ballot. Dave Ross and I anchored the election coverage that night. I said on the radio that night that I thought the state had manufactured the traffic jam to make people vote yes for Sound Transit.

I’d love to do a study and see what the commute time is on every single Election Day in our state. I bet on Election Day, traffic is dramatically worse than whatever the median is for each of those given years. I would put any amount of money on that.

I think that if people are desperate, that they are more likely to vote for government to solve their problems. There may not even be a transportation issue on the ballot, but people are more likely to vote for the big government people that are in control right now.

But they’ve neglected to take care of the vast majority of us that commute by car. We’ve got to start getting rid of the people in charge around here. Are you finally ready to get rid of the people that have manufactured this road crisis?

Taken from KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson Show.

JS