A zero-cost traffic fix for the Puget Sound area
Nov 11, 2013, 1:36 PM | Updated: Nov 12, 2013, 12:01 pm
KIRO Radio's Dori Monson shares a plan he says would be fool-proof in curing our region of all its traffic woes. (AP Photo/file)
(AP Photo/file)
Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.
As I came into the office Monday morning, I was driving the speed limit the whole way in. There was no traffic because it’s Veteran’s Day.
A few years ago, I noticed the Friday before a three-day weekend, like Memorial Day, Labor Day, those days, there is no traffic at all. So I went to the DOT traffic stats and just saw how many cars are on the road. I was wondering how many fewer cars were on the road those days. The answer is 10 percent fewer cars. That’s all it takes to go from gridlock to driving the speed limit: 10 percent fewer cars.
There was a new study (from Inrix) that just came out today that said Seattle traffic is the sixth worst in the United States. Governor Inslee is about to unveil his multi-billion dollar transportation tax plan at this special session. Everybody says we can solve the traffic problem if you give us billions and billions of dollars.
I am here to tell you right now, you can solve the transportation problem at zero cost if they would implement my plan.
This is all they’d have to do:
All government workers who do not have to deal with the public face-to-face, don’t work 9 to 5. About 15 to 20 percent of our total workforce is government employees. If you’re a government worker, we’d have a couple of shifts, 3 p.m. to midnight, 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.
By the way, even if you come face-to-face with the public, how nice would it be when you have to go get your driver’s license, to not have to take time off work and get to the Department of Licensing before 5 p.m? Why not have the DOL office open until 10 p.m. or 2 a.m.? You’d have zero lines and we’d have a government that is truly serving the people.
That is all it would take to solve our regional transportation woes, get government workers off the road between 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
I guarantee it would work. It would cost nothing. The one complaint I’ve heard about it is from government workers who say, what about our families. And I would say, if you don’t like the hours of your job, go get another job.
Before you agree to spending billions of dollars more for transportation, I want you to know there is a zero-cost option available that would solve, fool-proof, zero-cost, every transportation problem we have in this region.
Taken from Monday’s edition of The Dori Monson Show.
JS
