"Building wider roads means bigger traffic jams and dirtier emissions"

I'm definitely convinced that a snarky movie critic knows more about this than actual highway engineers.

The Washington Post, when discussing a plan to widen the Beltway, had this to say:
"The opposition to Mr. Hogan’s plan is led by elitists who think people who must drive to work — in construction, health care, laboratories and countless other job sites ill-served by transit — should suffer in ever-worsening traffic. "

And that description suits you well too Matt.

Car bad! Car baaad!

I know a few folks who live in Vancouver WA. Building the MAX over the Columbia River is a Massive bonus for that city, and an absolute godsend!
It’s a 50 year tragedy that Seattle voted down light rail circa 1970 - but just wait till Sound Transit goes to Bellevue & Redmond - you think it’s crowded now? Hah!!

Housing and transit are of course hugely related. We've pushed well past the point where cars make sense for most people to get to work, but we haven't built up most of our city to suit. Massively upzoning would both solve our housing shortage and make our transit systems much more efficient if done well. Lugging buses all over our suburban-style single family neighborhoods doesn't seem like the best solution to either of these problems.

New highway lanes == Increased emissions.

Always has.

Always will.

Stop building new highway lanes.

@1 -- You are assuming that traffic will be better if we put money into widening the road. This ignores induced demand (look it up, if you aren't familiar).

The biggest problem is that increased road building doesn't scale. As more and more people use the wider road, you get less and less for the money spent. In contrast, putting money into transit scales very well. Transit ridership increases as you increase frequency, or add new routes. This creates a virtuous circle (the cost per rider goes down as you increase service). Switching to trains for the busiest routes becomes more cost effective, as does investing in speeding up the trains or buses. Thus investing in transit makes more and more sense as the city gets bigger. For a city like Seattle (and definitely D. C.) they have long since reached this point. Major road building projects won't result in significant public benefit, while transit invests will (assuming they are sensible).

A lot of what has been proposed is good, and represents a subtle change in transportation spending (away from big highway projects towards a mix of smaller projects, maintenance and transit spending). I guess time will tell what the results will be at the local level. Before the pandemic, Seattle was one of the few cities with increasing transit ridership. This happened largely because city voters decided to spend more money on bus service. If the state kicks in, and our buses (all over the state) run more often, it would be a great thing.

But a lot of what has been proposed looks like either misguided proposals, or bullshit. High speed rail is a great example. This is bullshit. The state has had plans for high speed rail for quite some time (https://www.aawa.us/site/assets/files/7322/2006_washington_state_long-range_plan_for_amtrak_cascades.pdf). All they need to do is implement them. We would then have trains running somewhere around 90 to 125 mph. No, these aren't bullet trains, but they don't require the enormous expense of bullet trains, nor the huge amount of concrete (which is not good if your goal is to reduce global warming). We simply don't have enough people along the corridor, nor enough density in Seattle to justify bullet trains, and eventually -- after we do a new study -- we will come to that conclusion. This is a clear case of the perfect being the enemy of the good. You will only get a handful of additional riders once you go faster than 90 MPH -- it just isn't worth it for such a (relatively) small city like Seattle. We aren't Japan (or the East Coast, for that matter, which still doesn't have bullet trains). We should build what has been studied already, and put money into projects that would serve way more people (like boring old regular bus service).

Free youth fares are nice, but again, that seems like bullshit. When you have a fare-free system (which is becoming increasingly popular worldwide) you get a lot of side benefits (https://seattletransitblog.com/2022/04/26/eliminating-cash-fares/#comment-893471). You don't get those when fares are free with a class of riders, and you still have to deal with the loss in revenue. The agencies would probably be better off using that money on service, or capital improvements (e. g. more bus lanes).

So much of this just seems misguided at best, or bullshit at worst (e. g. people get irrationally excited over bullet trains). Given what I know about Marko Liias, I would guess the former. He seems like a very nice guy -- his heart is in the right place; I just don't think he knows much about a lot of this.

Yes, we’ve still got a long way to go, because these transportation systems glide over homeless encampments full of impoverished human beings who could use these transportation boondoggle dollars for food and shelter.

These boutique transportation projects must be the favorite pastime of the dopey aristocrat class and idle rich because the budgets are astronomically under-forecast and real construction costs are enough to make you jump out of your chair and fill your pants.

Mass transit projects provide and alternative means of transportation, however they do not reduce congestion or reduce travel time compared to automotive transportation, which explains why Seattle area streets are bustling with single occupancy vehicles, be they electric, petroleum powered or some hybrid thereof.

In the alternate universe of the transportation bureaucrat, 25 miles of light rail track projected to cost $1.7 billion (not including trains) have resulted in 23 miles of track which, when completed, in reality cost the taxpayers $5.2 billion.

Oops! Can you say 300% cost inflation?

Needless to say, environmental cost studies and pseudo-intellectual group gropes add to the policy confusion and budgetary overhead.

Transportation mavens say “pass the shrimp” while lighting cigars with $500 taxpayer bills.

Mass transit system advocates probably drive in single occupant vehicles to and from their earthly duties like PETA protesters who throw blood on unsuspecting purveyors of fur, only to celebrate their adventure with a McDonalds hamburger.

(1) If free mass-transit for under-18-year-olds catches on, will free mass-transit-for-everyone be far behind?

(2) If rail-rapid-transit across Lake Washington via a floating bridge works, why would rail-rapid-transit across the Columbia River via a highway bridge possibly not work?

(3) High Speed Rail works best for short and "regional" routes, where the traffic density justifies the tremendous capital costs. HSR lines in Japan, France, Spain, Germany, China average millions of passenger trips per year.
Seattle-to-Portland, Seattle-to-San Francisco, Seattle-to-Vancouver BC, Seattle-to-Spokane traffic density is in the hundreds-of-thousands per year, not even close to the break-even point.

It probably makes a lot more sense, if you absolutely positively must build HSR, to build a line from downtown Seattle to the airport.

This is the same problem that's dooming HSR in California, Los Angeles-to-San Francisco. The traffic density is not there to justify the cost. Who's going to say Yes, Let's Spend A Trillion Dollars ( or more ) so that we can ride a train to Bakersfield, almost as fast as we can currently get there by driving?

(4) Why are we even talking about fast but expensive mass transit infrastructure, when the COVID epidemic these past 2 to 3 years have shown us that working from home makes a lot more sense? Why not just spend a fraction of the cost to provide REALLY high speed internet ( like they already have in Japan and Europe ) instead, and reduce our commuting time to ZERO?