This is what happens when the market is free to do as it pleases. The only justification to replace a community institution like the Silver Fork restaurant with a gas station is that the latter will make more money for the property owner. And this kind of thing is happening at a time when the city has massive transportation challenges that cannot be solved by increasing car traffic. We actually need more cars off the road, and more people in buses. The state of things is such that we need to seriously consider congestion charges in the city's core. Rainier is a nightmare during rush hours ("clogging," "gridlock," "logjams").

We also have to see the construction of yet another gas station in a time of anthropogenic climate change. The loss of polar ice means less sunlight is being reflected back into space. A warmer planet will result in a dramatically different Earth. One would think that a city that considers itself to be so progressive, so enlightened, would never permit such an obviously regressive thing to happen. But we find that even here, in Seattle, we are no better off than the folks on the other side of the mountains. We are very much dominated by the most primitive of market forces and impulses.

Rainier is like the whole the world; it does not need another gas station.