Widening I-405 Won’t Ease Traffic Problems

by Renee Kjartan, the Free Press

The I-405 Corridor Program is considering several proposals to easetraffic congestion, most of which constitute a direct subsidy to thehighway-building and auto industries.

The plan they most prefer calls for spending $7.7 billion to add fourlanes to the most congested 30-mile stretch of I-405. The group 1000Friends of Washington calls this plan “a monster highway widening thatnot only risks hobbling taxpayers for years to come, but threatenswetlands, salmon and neighborhoods up and down the corridor.” 1000Friends says the problems with the plan include:

1) It costs too much.

2) It won’t work. “Repeated studies show that new highway capacityrapidly fills up, making the costs of roadway expansionunjustifiable.”

3) It harms neighborhoods. “More highway capacity means arterialwidening through a dozen or more Eastside neighborhoods, leading tomore local traffic at higher speeds and more noise.”

4) It worsens sprawl and pollution. Many studies show that increasinggeneral-purpose lane capacity “encourages people to drive more oftenand greater distances, generating more sprawl. The additional freewayand arterial lanes lead to more oil-laden run-off into salmonstreams.”

Widening freeways destroys communities, increases noise, pollution,asthma (particularly among children, the elderly and the sick), andglobal warming. Widening won’t solve traffic problems, either. Manyhave likened widening roads to a fat person loosening his belt. Ratherthan acting as a solution, it just allows more of the same wrongbehavior.

Transportation Choices, a coalition of groups advocating an end tosprawl [info@405solutions.org] advocates Alternative 5, whichincludes:

Smart Growth. Use financial incentives to encourage more jobsand housing to locate in major centers with the best transit serviceand opportunities to walk and cycle in the corridor.

Trip Reduction. Fund more aggressive trip reduction programs,including an innovative Entrepreneurial Grant Program to purchasecapacity with demand-reducing incentives. Public, private andnon-profit employers, developers and property managers would havefinancial incentives to prevent traffic by providing incentives suchas Flexpass, parking cash-out, telework, proximate commuting, showers,bicycle parking, priority parking and vanpools.

Strategic Investments in Choke Points. Make strategicinvestments in general purpose and/or HOV capacity at key chokepoints. Aggressively implement Transportation System Management:signal prioritization & synchronization, ramp metering and HOVpriority.Strategic Transit Improvements. Invest in cost-effective,strategic transit and bike/ped improvements. This should include “fastbus” service, consideration of a new bus rapid transit (BRT) lane, andimprovements to bike/ped facilities in the I-405 corridor. Bus lanesand bicycles move more people at a lower monetary and environmentalcost per person.

Pricing. Consider pricing parking and new general purposecapacity to both moderate demand and provide revenue.

Neighborhood Protection. Fund traffic calming measures todiscourage and slow cut-through traffic on neighborhood streets in theI-405 corridor.

Contact Sensible Solutions for 405, PO Box 131, Seattle, WA 98111;206-298-9338; info@405solutions.org; orwww.1000friends.org.