Seattle Traffic

Inescapable Solutions for Seattle Commuters

It is evident and guaranteed which changes are coming to solve Seattle’s burdened commute hours. The necessary, readily available lifestyle changes which are currently coming in to their own will make the value of regional mass transit and expensive construction projects negligible. Effects from this change will have far reaching impact to quality of life, pollution, and taxes and the end result will have much greater benefit than the public works projects which only invite more of what is wrong.

The average metro-Seattle commuter, who spends 24 minutes per leg in congestion, bares heavy household costs to operate their vehicles, increases pollution, and has a diminished quality of life as a result. High tax burden added to gas, car tabs and sales tax exacerbates the problem, and moreover, is largely unfair. The catalysts to drive change, however, are already in place and working in the current environment and will do more to help the region than any of the current lackluster government plans.

Utmost, the first and best solution is the least contemplated by commuters. Live where you work. This is the easiest solution to an ongoing problem where a likely small switch in lifestyle will increase your quality of living the most. Stay off major arterials and highways in the morning by cutting your commute distance to save time, gas, and car maintenance. You benefit with additional time, and more money to spend.

If you work downtown or in the city and are conscientious about relocating your family, remember that rapid growth where urban sprawl has already occurred has largely done away with the novelty of the suburb. Raising a family in the city is cost effective and provides all the benefits above. Downtown studies show that urban development is stronger than most other parts of the region and indicate this new trend. It is safe, easy, and many families do it.

Telecommuting is still a completely underutilized form of accessing the office. If you are afraid to ask your employer to do a job that does not require your attendance in the office, do not be. Your employer should be offering you incentives to show up at an office when it is not reasonable or efficient. Start by asking for a company car.

The high speed connections required to telecommute are ubiquitous and cheap. Setting up the connection to your office and securing it is likely already done in your work place leaving little up front investment by your employer. If you are an employer, save money on office space and equipment by promoting the use of remote access telecommuting. Many jobs do not require physical presence in an office as most tasks consist of emailing and other forms of electronic production. Instant messaging and cheap phone lines keep you close to the action and these tools already take the place of face-to-face communication anyway.

Now, for you regular commuters, a fair solution is to use the off peak commute hours of the day. It is a misnomer that Seattle has no more capacity. The fact is that Seattle has unused capacity.

Building additional infrastructure, in particular, highways, is expensive, and creates long term traffic problems even as the proposed “solutions” are being implemented called “construction downtime.” During this period, traffic is displaced and either absorbed by other main thoroughfares that already tend to run at capacity, or this traffic is discouraged off the roads entirely, in which case replacing the infrastructure becomes unnecessary. When implemented, large scale infrastructure growth promotes more cars on the road, draws city growth to these “high access” areas, and ultimately maxes out new infrastructure. There will always be maximum, optimal use of our roads regardless of how many lanes we have.

It is unfair to bare the burden of a system in which not all people benefit from and because the problem is only caused by road users. Monorail car tabs incorrectly penalize people who simply have cars, instead of taxing people who either use (and therefore ruin) the roads or by taxing those who would use the monorail. Taxing people who use the roads to pay for a monorail can easily be done with an excise gas tax, and reviewing the study of use fees which will be collected for the monorail quickly reveals that it is largely unbeneficial and not at all viable.

Be self conscious of your situation and resolve that the best solutions that can be made, you can make yourself. The solutions to our regional transportation problems are simple.

Send comments to jackson@etakers.com