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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

#51

Post by drak0n1c »

amsha wrote: post #4
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.

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

Many lanes on important highways and connecting streets downtown are being made bus-only all the time, when they really should be Bus+Carpool or allow regular car usage outside peak hours.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#52

Post by aeling »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #15

Psst, Seattle also has a reliable, free, and open source pair of apps for knowing where you bus is and when it’ll arrive. These apps are built and maintained entirely by volunteers. (In the case of iOS, this is basically just me.) If you have any background in iOS or Android development and want to help improve your own commute in Seattle, come check out our projects and pick up a bug or two. Hundreds of thousands of…

Thanks for everything you do - your app is a huge part of the reason I can live in the Seattle area without a car.

One note - I just donated, but I almost bailed out when I saw I had to go through the whole UW process (especially when I then paid with PayPal, which has all of that info anyway....). I'm sure you're restricted to using their platform, but even better PayPal integration would go a long way.

Thanks again!

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#53

Post by davidw »

chroem- wrote: post #42
news_to_me wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, we don't invest in light rail at all? That's why we're in the traffic mess we are now — because voters 30 years ago didn't prioritize long term improvements.

We are shooting ourselves in the feet by intentionally diminishing road traffic capacity before the alternative is ready. You are not serving the underprivileged by making it too expensive to drive, since middle and lower income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas in the first place.

> middle and lower income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas in the first place.

That is a solvable problem: get rid of the zoning that keeps them out.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#54

Post by burger_moon »

andrewguenther wrote: post #35
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…

> 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... Did we live in the same city? This is the exact opposite of my experience with Seattle transit.

Ya I take the bus to work everyday and rely on public transit here 99% of the time I'm going anywhere and 'clean, frequent, on-time' happen, but are not the norm. Some of the express routes if you're lucky to live near them are frequent during day time weekly business hours but once you get outside of that and core downtown travel it gets much harder to get around. I put up with it but everyone I tell about my use of public transit here thinks I'm crazy for not owning a car, and I'd agree.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#55

Post by eksu »

throwawaysea wrote: post #37
amsha wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, lots of actions. I'll name just a few but this is FAR from exhaustive: - They have eliminated car lanes in favor of bike lanes that are typically not highly utilized - even in neighborhoods far from the downtown core, street parking is being eliminated for bike lanes, and is making even simple tasks hard and hurting quality of life (e.g. taking the kids to the dentist but not being able to park anywhere nearby).…

I don't know why this comment died, it's accurate.

If you disagree with the parent comment, give your viewpoint on why this isn't the case or these changes were good.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#56

Post by aaronbrethorst »

news_to_me wrote: post #19
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #15

Psst, Seattle also has a reliable, free, and open source pair of apps for knowing where you bus is and when it’ll arrive. These apps are built and maintained entirely by volunteers. (In the case of iOS, this is basically just me.) If you have any background in iOS or Android development and want to help improve your own commute in Seattle, come check out our projects and pick up a bug or two. Hundreds of thousands of…

Let me buy you a beer sometime. I can't tell you how valuable OneBusAway has been to me and my friends — no other transit apps I've seen in any city have come close to the utility it provides (even if the estimates are sometimes a bit off).

Thanks, I appreciate it :)

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#57

Post by runevault »

eksu wrote: post #47
bryanlarsen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you going to move to? Every big metro area in North America that is significantly geographically constrained has horrendous traffic: SF, NY, Boston, Vancouver, ...

Ideally Boise, potentially Salt Lake City or Bozeman or Spokane or Denver. Mountain West. If you or someone you know is hiring College Graduates in these areas, drop me a line.

Fair warning, Denver may not be Seattle bad, but people are moving here at a crazy clip and traffic continues to degrade as we fail to see improvements in roads or mass transit to effectively offset the growth. And with the possibility Amazon HQ2 landing here it may only get worse.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#58

Post by aaronbrethorst »

aeling wrote: post #52
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #15

Psst, Seattle also has a reliable, free, and open source pair of apps for knowing where you bus is and when it’ll arrive. These apps are built and maintained entirely by volunteers. (In the case of iOS, this is basically just me.) If you have any background in iOS or Android development and want to help improve your own commute in Seattle, come check out our projects and pick up a bug or two. Hundreds of thousands of…

Thanks for everything you do - your app is a huge part of the reason I can live in the Seattle area without a car. One note - I just donated, but I almost bailed out when I saw I had to go through the whole UW process (especially when I then paid with PayPal, which has all of that info anyway....). I'm sure you're restricted to using their platform, but even better PayPal integration would go a long way. Thanks again…

I hope that this can be made much easier in the future.

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#59

Post by briffle »

chroem- wrote: post #42
news_to_me wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what, we don't invest in light rail at all? That's why we're in the traffic mess we are now — because voters 30 years ago didn't prioritize long term improvements.

We are shooting ourselves in the feet by intentionally diminishing road traffic capacity before the alternative is ready. You are not serving the underprivileged by making it too expensive to drive, since middle and lower income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas in the first place.

How long would it take to widen the freeways to account for the same number of commuters that the light rail is predicted to carry? I'm guessing rebuilding all those roads, overpasses, underpasses, purchasing rights of way, etc, take some serious time and money..

Re: Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute

#60

Post by jboles »

stephengillie wrote: post #30
arcticfox wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

.

Nah, it's literally one express freeway bus. That's what's so great about Seattle public transit.
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