Somebody said that the MVET is a tax on cars for using the road. Well tell me about bicycles and using the road. And who decides that parts of the road are no longer to be used by cars because they are for bicycles? I don't remember anybody asking me if the lanes I used to drive on could be converted to bicycle lanes. Read this and tell me if anyone else has found something like this happening.

Seattle Declares War on Automobiles

October 20, 1999..........................Seattle Washington In an undisguised attempt to punish drivers for the expected passage of I-695, Seattle has decided to make the streets more congested. One of the first streets to experience this new planned congestion is Jackson Street, just south of downtown Seattle.

For many years Jackson Street has been a 4-lane thoroughfare to allow traffic easy access to the east side of the city. But this week from Boren to 23rd avenue it has been transformed into a 2-lane street with 2 bicycle lanes wide enough to drive a semi on, but clearly marked for bicycles only.

Another area that has fallen under the city's new policy is a strip, approximately one and a half miles long, of the east-bound portion of the elevated wagon trail known as West Seattle Freeway.

The section of road is four lanes wide and the second lane from the right has been painted and designated as buses only.

People who would normally drive in this lane to reach the exit without needing to cross lanes of traffic are now forced to travel one lane over from the exit lane.

The bus lane starts abruptly from nowhere and ends about fifty feet before the exit ramp.

-- maddjak (maddjak@hotmail.com), October 21, 1999

Answers

This isn't about I-695, maddjak, this is part of a long running program to demonize the car, although Seattle is a hotbed of this activity. Please see:

http://www.bts.gov/ntl/DOCS/retk.html

-- (craigcar@crosswinds.net), October 21, 1999.

maddjak & craig

I wish both of you would get back onto what I-695 is really about and quit posting these truths and facts here for us simple minded folks to see.

I-695 should be titled I-666 as it is only about killing OUR children, destroying the rain forest, forcing old people to eat dog food, making the cripple kid down the block crawl to the understaffed underfunded overcrowded libraries.

Plus killing cougars, throwing kittens off of overpasses, selling guns in schools, firing cops-parole officers-jailers-street sweepers- dog catchers-electricians-water crews-city planners. This means that streets will be filled with prisoners that should be locked up, water mains bursting, transformers not transforming, road apples piling up.

The only ones left will be the supervisors and council people. These are truely the only ones who know how to run a city or county government efficently anyways.

If you guys would just sit back and relax and let Locke and his secret plan have total control he might save us all from uncertain doom. I read it myself that he never-ever like the MVET in the first place.

Ed - hiding in my bunker ur basement awaiting the Apocalypse when I- 666 passes.

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 21, 1999.

Who said that removing car lanes increased congestion? It does quite the opposite if old lanes are available for mass transit like HOV or bus, or is given back to residents. Local residents can feel safer and give up their cars for short trips and walk or bike.

Here's an excerpt from the exact same thing done in San Francisco. This is from Nick Licata's "Urban Politics" email newsletter.

[ Six months ago one of San Francisco's main north-south arterials, Valencia Street, was restriped to reduce the number of travel lanes from four to two, while adding a median, dedicated turn lanes and bicycle lanes. Preliminary traffic counts show the new two lane street handling nearly the same amount of traffic as before, while traffic speeds have slowed and bicycle usage has nearly doubled.

The pilot project, initiated as a result of intensive grassroots campaigning from local neighborhood groups and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), must still prove itself for another 3-6 months and be endorsed by the Board of Supervisors before the changes become permanent.

Predictions that the street would fail with only two through lanes have proven inaccurate to date. Initial traffic counts by San Francisco's Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) show a slight reduction in Valencia's ADT, from 22,200 to 19,700, despite a 50% reduction in through capacity. Some of those trips have been displaced onto parallel arterials like Mission and Guerrero streets.

Bicycle usage has jumped after the addition of wide, continuous bike lanes. Counts show an increase of over 100% in bicycles, from 100 to 200 bikes per hour in the morning and evening peaks. DPT's hotline for public input into the project has also been overwhelmingly positive according to staff, with more than 90% of all respondents praising the changes.

Anecdotal evidence from residents living on Valencia Street is also pointing to less speeding along the two mile arterial, fewer accidents and increased pedestrian activity. The project may prove to be a model for mitigating traffic impacts along other heavily traveled urban arterials that are often disproportionately traversed and populated by lower-income residents. ]

To subscribe to the newsletter: --Send all messages to Majordomo@lists.speakeasy.org --To Subscribe: type "subscribe urbanpolitics" in the body of the message

-- Jeffrey Belt (jeffounet@msn.com), October 22, 1999.

Jeffrey

So lets pay for the cost of roads then stripe them for bicycle only use. Not only would we then be subsidizing transit 85% but bicycle use 100%.

Plus the 200 bikes an hour would equals oh about 200 people using these lanes. Is your argument that we should pay for expensive roads designed for traffic use then turn them into bike lanes. This would be a very good (sarcastic) use of tax dollars. How about we charge bikes a PCET (pedicyclist excise tax) for the cost of roadways, that would cover insurance, accidents, medical treatment, law enforcement, and construction as was stated on an earlier post about the cost of motor vehicles to society. Some of the bikes these people are riding only the rich can afford. So this would just be another tax on the rich.

Also Im wondering what happened to the 2,500 cars and 2,500 to 10,000 people that were in the cars. You say some are using different routes but where did the rest go. Did they vanish off the face of the earth, quit driving and use transit or maybe their taking another route to work also. This would mean that the other routes are now congested. So much for easing the traffic burden on surface streets.

Ed  driving the princess at Pascos homecoming tonight. try that on a bike

-- Ed (ed_bridges@yahoo.com), October 22, 1999.

Ed -

You're being sarcastic in your first paragraph, so I'm guessing you do know what I mean. Obviously converting roads to paths is much more expensive than building paths in the first place. Bike infrastructure is much cheaper than for cars, so I'd be very happy to pay a PCET based on my path usage, and MVET based on my road usage - my PCET would be way cheaper. Unfortunately, none of those fees are currently based on usage (should they be? Tolls everywhere?). Bikes are recreation for the rich only in the US - they're very handy means of transportation for short distances, and are used as such by huge numbers in poor countries like China, rich countries like Denmark, and even in many US universities.

But in this case, you're barking up the wrong tree. As you noticed, bikes didn't replace the missing cars. Traffic in nearby streets didn't increase enough for anyone to notice or complain to the SF PDT. I don't have the data, and I'll try to get it from the newsletter who published the article above. But here's my guess: most people driving these missing cars, are local residents who switched to walking. Surprised? 25% of all car trips in the US are less than a mile (50% are less than 3 miles). Local conditions can change those numbers, but I can easily believe the missing traffic (11%) is local residents who walk. If you need to travel a mile on a narrow sidewalk and busy intersections to cross, you take your car. If it's along a path that's nice to walk, with small shops or some scenery, and other people around, you don't take your car.

You still need your car to drive to Home Depot. But you don't to walk with your honey to the restaurant next block. Millions visit European cities just to get the chance to do that. I'm glad there's a growing number of places to do it in the US.

-- Jeffrey Belt (jeffounet@msn.com), October 23, 1999.

Jeff

I think your wrong abut the bike paths being less expensive to build from the start. First off if their going to be built along an established roadway, how wide is the right-of-way there. The city I work for their from 40' to 60' for residencial to 60' to 100' for main through streets.

The residencial streets are from 25' to 38' (newer) wide. The main streets from 38' to 80' wide. Now you have to add in a runoff area for cars that leave the roadway usually sloped at 3:1 figure about 20'wide for the main streets.

As you can see what happens is that the bike or foot path starts to run outside of the cities ROW. When this happens, the city has to buy land from the owners of it. This can and has cost more than what it would have cost to build a road within the ROW.

The way the cost can be reduced is to use abandoned railroad tracks which the city I work for is doing in a project slated to start next year. Unless the endangered salmon stop it. Don't laugh, this cause a 6 month delay in putting new traffic lights in along George Washington Way and a couple of other streets alread this year.

So yes I was being sarcastic but also practical at the same time

Ed - BTW the state held up this current street project until we could prove that there was no bull trout in the 1/2 acre swamp next to the new road.

-- Ed (ed_brigdes@yahoo.com), October 23, 1999.