Seattle to kill two busy lanes, claims traffic won’t suffer

Even though the First Hill streetcar is embarrassingly over-schedule and over-budget, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) is pushing for another streetcar. They plan to kill two general purpose traffic lanes for this project, in the heart of downtown Seattle, but – get this – they claim it will have only minimal traffic implications.

The streetcar would connect downtown Seattle to the overdue First Hill station (but, don’t worry, they claim they’ve learned from that project so you should trust them on another streetcar). It would run from Stewart and Westlake (which is inundated with traffic during every commute), then along First Avenue (which, also, experiences significant traffic during commutes) to Pioneer Square.

Drivers will have to give up one lane in each direction on First Avenue, in addition to 182 parking spots in the heart of some Downtown shopping. But, don’t worry: SDOT claims this won’t impact traffic.

Related: Another embarrassing setback for Seattle streetcar

“In most locations, we will not have a left turn,” SDOT Rail Transit Manager, Ethan Melone, told KING 5. “So that’s going to allow the general auto traffic to still flow pretty smoothly along First Avenue.”

This is beyond disingenuous. It’s a flat out lie.

Traffic on First Avenue doesn’t flow smoothly now. Taking two lanes from cars will somehow make it better because you’re restricting left hand turns? This doesn’t make sense on a number of levels.

For one, you’re not giving people who drive reasonable options to get to work Downtown.

Most of the people who are driving to work are doing it because they don’t have reasonable alternatives. If you live in Queen Anne, Eastlake or Northgate, you already can take the bus. The people who are driving are coming in from out of Seattle or neighborhoods that are under-served by a quick bus route. So, you will end up having just about the same amount of people driving, but now with fewer lanes.

Next, let’s throw in the parking issue.

You’re killing 182 parking spots right outside of Pike Place Market, a number of furniture stores, Showbox at the Market, and plenty of restaurants. Now, you’ll have more drivers wandering around the neighborhoods for spots. Only, now they’ll be stuck in traffic even longer, not being able to make a left to turn to get onto Second Avenue (and there are few spots on this route to make a right turn; where you can, you’ll have pedestrians in the way, thus you’ll be holding off the traffic behind you for each right turn).

Related: WSDOT creates traffic, then charges you for relief

Yet, SDOT will sit there with a smile claiming this will have no impact on traffic. How many times have they told us that, only to make traffic worse? Mercer is still called the Mercer Mess. Dexter Ave. in South Lake Union is mired in traffic after the city took two general purpose lanes away from drivers. Denny is disturbing; Westlake gets worse and worse; Fairview is unfair to commuters.

SDOT is an ideologically run local government agency. They do not like drivers. It’s not that they think driving is unsustainable for a growing city; it’s worse than that. And they do this under the guise of giving the commuters “options.” But giving options implies you’re not taking other options away. They’re purposefully making it harder on drivers.

I get that we need to provide options for other modes. I’m a huge proponent of that. I support bike lanes where they make sense; I support more bus routes when they make sense. In fact, I love light rail and streetcars – I’m just confident, like most of us, that the folks who run SDOT aren’t capable of completing a project that makes sense. Part of that is their incompetence, but the other part is their rabid anti-car mentality ends up taking on projects that hurt drivers for little more than sticking it to us for being evil polluters.