No carmageddon: How do we keep these breezy commutes?

Drivers around the region were likely “packing their patience,” but it turns out they didn’t need it as the anticipated long delays due to I-90 lane closures have yet to materialize.

Travis Phelps, with the Washington State Department of Transportation, said they think people can continue to keep delays at bay this week if they keep doing what they’ve been doing and adjusting their commutes to alleviate the pressure between Bellevue Way Southeast and the East Channel Bridge.

“More than double the people who typically travel during a 4 to 5 [a.m.] time frame got up and got out early,” said Phelps. “So the commute started off a lot earlier. It also died a lot sooner.”

Phelps also said that between 40 and 60 percent fewer drivers just weren’t on the roads.

“We’re trying to figure out exactly where these people went or what they’re doing, but whatever it is, it’s working,” said KIRO Radio’s Chris Sullivan who covered the story for The Tom & Curley Show. Tom and John wondered if something or someone is snatching people, like from the movie “Body Snatchers.”

“It’s bad for us on the radio,” said John Curley. “We don’t want 40,000 people to leave. We need them in their cars stuck, listening to us.”

The success so far in avoiding the delays Phelps said really came from everyone doing their part. “If we can think about this like hey traffic is a team sport, we can get through this if we all do our part. We could see this happen throughout the week, that is kind of what we’re hoping for.”

KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson would like to see these breezy commutes all the time and he has been pushing a theory for a decade that he says could work. He said this week’s success just proves his time shifting idea.

Monson explained he did a study about 10 years ago after noticing that commutes were light on a Friday before a three-day weekend. He asked the DOT for a car count on those Fridays before holiday weekends.

“What we found was that on the Friday before a three-day weekend, about 10 percent of the people take that Friday off, so they can make it into a four-day weekend. It appeared when you remove 10 percent of the cars from the road, you went from gridlock to free-flowing traffic.”

That led him to an idea regarding time shifting government workers.

“Since almost 20 percent of the workforce is government workers, if you got half of them working swing and graveyards and got them off the roads, we’d go from gridlock to free-flowing.” Read Monson’s full theory.

The exact methods for what is working so far, whether it’s time shifting, telecommuting or just staying home, is not entirely clear at this point.

As for how drivers in the region will fare the rest of the closure, traffic officials say we should be OK if we stick with what we’ve been doing so far.

“As long as we keep making the same adjustments to our schedules, we should be golden,” said KIRO Radio Traffic Reporter Kimi Kline. “So keep it up.”