Blog | Page 29

The Tacoma News Tribune reports this morning that the crumbling, 94-year-old Murray Morgan Bridge has been ordered closed by State Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond, raising strong city council concerns about access to Tacoma’s tidelands areas for medical or industrial emergency response. A 2004 estimate pegs rehab costs at $77 million, but only $25 million has been secured to date, the TNT reports. Current road and transit needs for the Puget Sound Region total $66 billion over the next two decades, according to a transportation governance commission created by the Washington State Legislature and Governor Christine Gregoire. Those needs are likely to grow. The population of four-county metro Seattle will rise from the 2000 U.S. Census level of 3.276 million by Read More ›

A recent proposal under Washington State DOT’s Trip Reduction Performance Program would utilize a “Flexible Carpooling” strategy in a pilot project for Sea-Tac Airport employees, removing 100 commuter round trips per work day. Trip Convergence Ltd. is seeking a WSDOT grant of $86,000 over two years to help launch a five-year “proof of concept” test of its user-friendly form of carpooling – described in this YouTube video. (Full disclosure: Cascadia Center is one of several regional entities serving in an advisory capacity to Trip Convergence Ltd. with respect to the above-referenced pilot project). According to Trip Convergence’s grant application to WSDOT, members would drive to a Park and Ride location near Interstate 5 and State Route 18 in Federal Way, Read More ›

Puget Sound’s arterial roads need more roundabouts. They’re much bigger than the “traffic circles” in residential Seattle, and do occasionally materialize in the suburbs here. More to the point, they’re cheaper than stoplights (both to build and maintain), reduce congestion and save fuel. Most importantly, roundabouts have 80% fewer crashes with injuries than regular intersections. The Economist makes the case for roundabouts, and notes there’ve been about 100 constructed in Washington state, which is approximately one-tenth of the U.S. total. Some other nations have exponentially more than the U.S., the magazine reports. So why don’t we use roundabouts more, and why aren’t they part of the solution? It might be a small win, but at this point, shouldn’t we also Read More ›

A report issued yesterday by Washington State Auditor Brian Sonntag’s office urges the state to more aggressively attack highway congestion, beginning with a formal declaration that congestion is a top transportation policy priority. The Seattle Times reported on the findings today. The transportation performance audit, prepared for Sonntag’s office by Talbot, Korvola & Warwick of Portland, goes on to make more than 20 specific policy recommendations. These include urging that the state legislature should: “empower a single body – either the Department of Transportation or a regional transportation entity for the Puget Sound Region – to allow for a more integrated approach to planning for congestion reduction:” “choose/identify transportation projects based on congestion reduction rather than other agendas;” “implement new Read More ›

Like any big city, Seattle has a diverse fleet of yellow, orange, and every color in between, taxi cabs. If you’ve taken a taxi in Seattle in the past month, you may have noticed something different about the car that picked you up. At least one taxi company is allowing gas-electric hybrids including the Toyota Prius to join its fleet. Which company is behind this “green” technology trend? According to the Seattle PI, it’s the same one that has faced criticism in the past for its monopoly at Sea-Tac airport: For the airport drivers, the hybrids have taken some of the frustration out of the county’s system, in which STITA drivers can pick up passengers at the airport and take Read More ›

The Seattle Times has a story this morning about new projections of a Washington state gas tax revenue shortfall of $1.5 billion, and the added impetus this gives to tolling as means of funding crucial transportation projects. The story says the expectation of state forecasters is for continued high gas prices and constrained demand, and that although the revenue shortfall is relatively small now, it is a real problem in the long term. But that is only half of it. As we learned at our technology conference at Microsoft this year, the Prius is the fastest selling model for Toyota in the Northwest. On deck for Toyota, GM, Ford and other manufacturers are plug-in electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) which use Read More ›

Approaching 2008, tolling has entered the mainstream and begun to influence transportation decisions throughout the country. At the same time – as Forbes magazine notes – transponder technology is enabling higher-speed, automated “open road” tolling, foreshadowing an eventual end to the era of tollbooths. Recent news reports underscore the increased momentum for tolling – although often the pathway to implementation is challenging, and some proposals pencil out while others ultimately do not. Let’s survey the tolling landscape. With the state facing a projected 30-year, $74 billion shortfall in needed road funding, Georgia Board of Transportation member David Doss has unveiled a plan which includes a 10-year statewide one percent sales tax hike to raise $22 billion for transportation, and which Read More ›

Being a good, environmentally-conscious citizen, I attempted to use mass transit to get from my home on Capitol Hill to my workplace in Renton the other day. I went to King County Metro’s trip planning page. The first round (point-to-point, .5 mile walk) culled 3 options averaging 3.5 hours and 4 transfers. The second round (point-to-point, 1 mile walk) gave 3 options, with two transfers and 3 hours. Third try (house address-to-Southcenter mall): an average of 1.25 hours, between one and two transfers. That does not include the 20 minute walk from Southcenter to the office in Renton. Total: close to two hours. Are you kidding me?! Between 2 and 3 hours to get to work… each way? Figuring this Read More ›

The nation and major urban regions within the West Coast Corridor of Cascadia and California – namely Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego – continue to grapple with costly road and transit projects and the threat of global warming. These stem in part from workforce and population increases. Against this backdrop, common-sense trip reduction strategies such as telecommuting deserve more attention. Adopted on a broader scale, increased telecommuting can: help control road congestion and future transportation infrastructure costs; and help limit man-made greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle-related air pollution. A recently-released study by Tiax LLC of Cambridge, Mass. for the Consumer Electronics Association calculates that telecommuting – or to use a much better phrase, telework – Read More ›

Our Cascadia Center held a leadership forum Weds. Sept. 19 titled “Greening The Highway from Baja to B.C.,” emphasizing the need for a unified West Coast effort to cut greenhouse gas emissions and congestion in the I-5 corridor through increased use of alternative fuels; diesel emission reduction programs; and on-board and in-roadway technology to save truckers and motorists time and fuel. Here’s our discussion brief on the initiative, and here’s a related radio story (and transcript) featuring Cascadia’s director Bruce Agnew. From the discussion brief: An important opportunity is emerging for a concerted West Coast strategy to unify alternative fuel infrastructure and green vehicle development, diesel fuel emission reduction, and intelligent transportation system technologies. Together these could yield substantial environmental Read More ›