Northwest can no longer afford to reject transportation projects

For some reason today, there’s a barrage of ideas in the news about how to move us around faster. Everything from a new high-speed ferry that will zoom from Seattle to Tacoma to banning human drivers on I-5. You heard that last one right, driverless cars only on I-5.

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Oh, and there’s also the local lawyer that wants to ban all gas-powered cars, and the major car company currently testing unmanned drones big enough to carry a human for 20 minutes. Summoned on an app, this one person drone would come and pick you up, fly you over the snarl, and safely land without a pilot at your destination. Um, I think I’ll wait for the 2.0 version of this.

Piled on top, we also green-lit thousands of neon colored bicycles, a new trolley running right down the middle of First Avenue downtown and billions being spent on light rail. I think we can safely say that we’ve got ourselves in quite a jam. A traffic jam to be more precise.

On its face, the problem is pretty simple. With 1,100 people per week moving here, there are too many folks trying to get around at the same time. And it’s only getting worse. If only we could time travel back to the 70s and force everyone to start light rail back then when they had the chance. But there’s no way Doc’s DeLorean can get up to 88 miles per hour in this traffic.

Historically, there have only been two options: Go the route of California and build massive mega freeways; sometimes 20 lanes across. Or go the New York route and dig down with a subway system. The most populous city in the world, Mexico City, tries a hybrid approach. Subway system and a dedicated bus lane on all the major surface roads. It’s separated by a cement barricade from regular car and truck traffic, and you can fly around town for under a buck.

The one thing that all of those other cities has on us is that saw this coming decades ago, came up with some kind of plan, and did it. It seems like we’re in a constant state of catch-up in the Pacific Northwest. Because of the way large projects get funded here, when given the chance to fund big projects, we’ve always chosen to kick the can down the road. Now that road is a gridlock of proverbial cans full of angry drivers.

In a perfect world, we’d all live close enough to work that we could grab a cup of coffee and waltz on over. But that’s not happening anytime soon.

So maybe the Pacific Northwest has discovered a new approach. Yes to everything. Just keep saying yes and hope it gets better. It’s going to be expensive. It’s going to be painful, but maybe it will work. Who am I to say they’re wrong?