According to a new report released by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Pew Center on the States, Washington is “leading the way” in transportation planning.
Washington is one of 13 states leading the way in having the essential tools—goals, performance measures and data—needed to help decision makers choose more cost-effective transportation funding and policy options. The state is a leader in measuring its transportation system’s progress in advancing five key policy goals, including jobs and commerce and mobility.
Which can only mean that most of our nation’s other states must be totally fucked. I mean, if all those essential performance measurement tools still resulted in choosing a deep bore tunnel as the most cost-effective alternative for replacing the Alaska Way Viaduct, can you imagine what’s being built elsewhere?
We have the tools and science to work our problems out without just laying down millions of square feet of concrete, but we’ve chosen to dig under those problems instead. It’s easier that way! Science is for nerds.
We lead in PLANNING – it’s just execution where we suck.
Washington leads in transportation planning, not in transportation action. Washington “has the goals, performance measures and data” but will plan for 10 years on the best way to replace one road and not actually do a damn thing.
The states that lead in transportation action are probably no better; it’d probably be Boston with the Big Dig, or Chicago with their permanent state of construction on freeways in black neighborhoods.
As the most trade dependent state in the nation,(20% of our state’s GDP) our transportation planning had better be top notch.
And by Boston, I mean Massachusetts.
i work professionally as a data miner/analyst. i can attest from repeated 1st hand experience that having great analysis is completely independent from having a culture that understands/embraces analysis & knows how to use it. this problem grows by orders of magnitude within large bureaucracies. early in my career, while working within such a large bureaucracy, i once had to repeat the same analysis 6 times over the course of 18 months to dispel the erroneous assumptions that our executives had entered the project believing. washington state may (or may not) do great analysis for transportation planning, but that becomes largely irrelevant if appreciation for analysis is not deeply embedded within the decision making process.
Your own quote says three of the metrics are jobs, commerce, and mobility. The jobs lobby (the unions and the construction companies) want the tunnel. The commerce lobby (the port and shipping companies) wants the tunnel. If mobility is measured as the numer of poeple we could move if only they all gave up their cars and rode busses, surfce-transit does look better. But if mobility is measured as capacity to move cars, the tunnel wins on that too.
Certainly surface-transit wins if the metric is what can make car-hating, density-loving, enviro-lefty urban hipsters feel the most smug and self-satisfied. But you’ll notice that metic is not on the list.
@2
Totally. Its why the 3rd runway at Sea-Tac took 10 years to long and 600 million over budget, thanks to NIMBYs.
Wait… this isn’t a joke?
Tunnels that nobody will use if they can avoid them, “Good to Go” that can’t find its arse in the dark, traffic planning that will compound congestion rather than relieve it (and lose money in the process – I’m looking at you, Lexus lanes.)
Bets on another floating bridge sinking?
Seriously, the rest of the country is just insanely bad. And Seattle has a bit of an advantage in these studies, because geographical features prevented a lot of sprawl back when most cities were sprawling like crazy.
So yeah, it really is that we’re less-bad-among-the-awful, but still, that’s something, right?
What part of “FIVE key policy goals, including jobs and commerce and mobility” don’t you understand?
@7
You’re wrong, David. The tunnel will move fewer cars than surface/transit, and far fewer than the viaduct it’s supposed to replace.
NaFun @13: I don’t disagree that the tunnel capacity would be less than the current structure: the curent structure has three lanes in each direction and the tunnel would only have two (plus shoulders). But I believe the proposed re-build would also only have two lanes in each direction, in order to have shoulders. And I am not aware of any study that claims that the tunnel has less capacity that surface-transit — could you point me to such a study? (I am aware of claims that, due to tolls, the tunnel capacity would be under-utilized, but that’s not the same as claiming that the tunnel doesn’t have the capacity.)
@14 – No, it is the same. The tolls are part of the whole system, which will only carry 45000-55000ish trips per day. It could move 80000 or more if it wasn’t tolled, but then it’d cost an additional half billion dollars.
Nafun @15:
Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s assume 50K cars/day is the number to beat. Is there some claim that a widened Alaskan Way under the surface-transit plan (which I believe is the main non-transit component of that plan) would carry more than an additional 50K cars/day/ (Remember, only cars count the in metric under consideration, not people moved in busses.)
Look, I’m not really trying to argue here that, under the right metrics, the tunnel would win. (For example, I find the jobs metric ridiculous. We should prefer plans that require fewer workers.) I am just trying to argue that the are metrics under which the tunnel wins, and some of them are listed in the very paragraph that Goldy uses to imply that WA isn’t using a metrics-based decision process.
@12: “FIVE key policy goals”
WHO’s key policy goals? The ‘leadership team’ that brought us modern America to where we are? The highly scientific PEEEYOOO organization whose key metrics boil down to ‘Leading the way’ and ‘Trailing behind’??
If I was in charge, the person who wrote that report would be ‘Trailing behind’ to the unemployment office.