WASHINGTON STATE

Implemented regionally, tolling and congestion pricing will be the key that unlocks the door to more efficient use of major highways in Puget Sound. Incentives for more telecommuting, carpooling, vanpooling and off-peak travel will grow substantially, as tolls and especially time-variable congestion pricing are instituted over the next few years. Tolling coupled with investment by public employee and labor union pension funds will also help close funding gaps on major road, bridge and transit projects needed to accomodate economic growth and environmental protection. Despite some political resistance, this paradigm will transform transportation infrastructure development across North America in coming years and decades. Let’s once again take a partial and recent survey of the landscape, starting with Puget Sound. Just last Read More ›

The Washington State Department Of Transportation authorized a preliminary consultant inquiry – recently completed – into the feasibility of a tunnel to replace the congested, dangerously earthquake-prone and windstorm-prone State Route 520 Floating Bridge across Lake Washington from Seattle to the Eastside. It’s one of just two bridges across the 22-mile long lake, and the jammed, 60s-vintage four-laner carries 155,000 to 160,000 people per day. The odds-on favorite to replace it is……a new, wider and safer floating bridge. However, well-heeled communities at both ends have strong concerns about bridge-related noise and air pollution, and on the Seattle side, about current roadway impacts on the Washington Park Arboretum. These concerns could translate into expensive mitigation measures attached to a new bridge, Read More ›