Mayor Durkan bizarrely pretends buses, rail, bikes don’t exist

When Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan announced plans to price you out of your car with congestion pricing, she tried to use every misleading tactic she could to get the support for this absurd and controversial policy. Because the only ones who support this are fringe urbanist trolls who have blogs read by other fringe urbanist trolls.

RELATED: KIRO Radio hosts react to congestion pricing in Seattle

In making the case, Durkan made a bizarrely, brazenly, false assertion.

“What we want to do is get people out of single-occupancy vehicles into other alternatives,” Durkan said. “To do that we have to have other alternatives that are real.”

Huh? First of all, fewer people are driving single-occupancy vehicles. I know that because the city literally never stops telling us that. But Durkan is claiming, preposterously, that we don’t have real alternatives to driving? What city does she live in?

Aren’t buses an alternative to cars that people are using, or did I make that up during some fever dream? I use that alternative all the time and it sure feels real to me (they’re really late much of the time too, but maybe I imagined that as well).

Do I walk around on imaginary sidewalks to get around Seattle? I walk almost everywhere. At least I thought I did. I know some fringe anonymous urbanists are mad with the crosswalks on Mercer. But I’m pretty sure I walk them a lot. In fact, I’m on video standing in one of them here. I assure you, we’re not that good at CGI to create this alternative mode to driving.

And all those unused bike lanes we’re tearing up streets to accommodate: those aren’t real alternatives? Granted, because commuting by bicycle isn’t keeping up with population growth, it’s specious of me to include them here. But Durkan and her Seattle Department of Transportation seem to like them.

Wait a minute: what about that streetcar line you just paused. I didn’t imagine the poor management that is costing us millions, right? And the light rail that goes through Seattle, between the U-District and Angle Lake? Another figment of our imaginations, I guess. Why’d we spend so much money on a party to celebrate what wasn’t a real alternative to driving in cars? Maybe the $850k was used for mushrooms we all took to imagine the possibilities of a real alternative.

But, to Durkan, we don’t have real alternatives to driving. Can someone explain what in the world she is talking about?

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