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Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

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Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#21

Post by mulmen »

eksu wrote: post #17
amsha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any specific actions Seattle has taken to make the driving experience worse?

Interstate 405 toll lanes, turning two way roads into one way roads to add a bicycle lanes in many places, lowering arterial speeds from 30 to 25mph and in downtown streets from 25 to 20mph. The 405 toll lanes originally removed capacity on off peek hours by removal of the HOV lanes, until pushback had them undo it. 2 person HOV was removed. The way the WADOT has been measuring success of the toll lanes is by polling…

What part of 405 is in Seattle?

I have been commuting through downtown the last couple weeks and while traffic is heavy it's totally manageable.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#22

Post by stephengillie »

beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

Bus routes are a circuit, so they are more heavily impacted by traffic than other modes of transportation. Thus, heavy traffic regularly makes Seattle's commuter buses 10-20 minutes late. The bus from Mountlake Terrace can sometimes be over an hour late, and rush hour makes this a 2-hour ride on top of the wait.

With a car, you can hop off the freeway and take a side street and you're there in 30-40 minutes instead of 2+ hours.

If you want to discuss borderline-criminal mismanagement, there's the $50 billion ST3 plan. We could put one WA State resident on the moon for that price.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#23

Post by beisner »

mulmen wrote: post #12
beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

I'm not sure you can attribute HOV lanes on an interstate to the city of Seattle. Most of the I-90 bridge is not even in the city limits. In this case maybe you mean "Seattle" as in "Seattle Metro area" which would be fair. ST + Seattle Metro transit seem to be doing a good job considering the realities of transit around here.

You're right, of course. I don't really know how the city coordinates with the state, but I'd assume that there's certainly collaboration w.r.t. main conduits of traffic into the city, as well as with the greater Seattle metro area.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#24

Post by mulmen »

andrewguenther wrote: post #13
amsha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there any specific actions Seattle has taken to make the driving experience worse?

Yes. Approval of an insane number of construction sites in downtown core has lead to absolute gridlock, the removal of lanes on arterial roads for wider bike lanes, and the 405 toll lane are the first which come to mind.

Are you suggesting the city approved building permits to discourage driving?

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#25

Post by arcticfox »

news_to_me wrote: post #6
eksu wrote: post #2

How Seattle is winning the war on cars: make driving a car into the city a living hell, and actively peruse road expansions that make commute times worse to move people over to mass transit. Mass transit use up, quality of life down. I've grown up slightly outside of Seattle and have been working at some startups, but I'm leaving at the end of this year.

Quality of life down for most drivers, maybe. But by focusing on transit, moving around and in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for, so I'd say overall quality of life goes way up. Best of luck to you in your new city :)

I just experimented on Google Maps with an arbitrary route: random place near Microsoft campus to a random nice park in Seattle: 1hr30 minutes.

Car: 23 minutes. Even during the awful 520 rush hour, it's still ~15-30min faster.

> in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for

Pretty hard to imagine losing 2hrs on a round-trip into the city is a benefit for anyone that can't afford to live in the city proper.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#26

Post by eksu »

news_to_me wrote: post #14
andrewguenther wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely agree. Traffic in Seattle is some of the absolute worst in the country. 25% of workers drive to work only because there isn't even enough room on the road to fit more of them. Getting around Seattle is a massive pain in the ass and public transit just isn't keeping up.

To me, this is just evidence to expand public transit even more. There's only so much road space, and as the population grows we need to more efficiently utilize it – busses and rail are some of the most efficient ways. While we always need to support some car use cases, public transit is really the long-term solution to traffic.

I would love to have good public transit, but being someone who bused from 2008 until 2015 it will never happen.

Busses in the city are plagued by our homeless. A lot of the busses simply don't feel safe, especially if you're a female traveling solo.

The exception to the rule seems to be the 'commuter' busses, double deckers that go to park and rides straight downtown, but park and rides are full by 6:30 with not enough parking, and service is limited.

Connecting busses out of county (Community Transit, Gnomish county) sucks, no service out of 9-5 hours Monday through Friday. Total roundtrips for most people start at 2 hours and go up to 4 (my commute to college and home).

Ultimately, the buses are torn between two opposing causes: serving disadvantaged members of the community by being cheap and helping people commute at odd hours, or serving mass commuters that work downtown, and it fails at both.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#27

Post by arcticfox »

beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

Maybe inside of Seattle it's "good", but when I lived near Microsoft I would have to allocate 3hrs+ for a round-trip into the city by public transit.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#28

Post by news_to_me »

arcticfox wrote: post #25
news_to_me wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality of life down for most drivers, maybe. But by focusing on transit, moving around and in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for, so I'd say overall quality of life goes way up. Best of luck to you in your new city :)

I just experimented on Google Maps with an arbitrary route: random place near Microsoft campus to a random nice park in Seattle: 1hr30 minutes. Car: 23 minutes. Even during the awful 520 rush hour, it's still ~15-30min faster. > in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for Pretty hard to imagine losing 2hrs on a round-trip into the city is a benefit for anyone that can't afford to…

Fair enough, but I take measurements like these as a need to further improve transit. For example, the light rail reaching Redmond should help that particular route a lot.

In general, it doesn't make sense to invest in making it easier for cars as the population grows — it's not as sustainable as improving transit, since public transit is a far more efficient way to transport people.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#29

Post by Bensch »

arcticfox wrote: post #27
beisner wrote: post #9

To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good . Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are (finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially across the lake). The bus system is especially…

Maybe inside of Seattle it's "good", but when I lived near Microsoft I would have to allocate 3hrs+ for a round-trip into the city by public transit.

Maybe before the new 520? There are now continuous bus lanes for most of the 545's route.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#30

Post by stephengillie »

arcticfox wrote: post #25
news_to_me wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality of life down for most drivers, maybe. But by focusing on transit, moving around and in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for, so I'd say overall quality of life goes way up. Best of luck to you in your new city :)

I just experimented on Google Maps with an arbitrary route: random place near Microsoft campus to a random nice park in Seattle: 1hr30 minutes. Car: 23 minutes. Even during the awful 520 rush hour, it's still ~15-30min faster. > in/out of the city becomes a lot easier for more people than it becomes worse for Pretty hard to imagine losing 2hrs on a round-trip into the city is a benefit for anyone that can't afford to…

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