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Is Microsoft working at cross purposes with company chairman Bill Gates?
Today, a full-page ad in the Seattle Times calls for construction to begin on a new, larger 520 bridge, painting an ominous scenario if we don’t. The ad says “there is finally an agreed-upon design and funding plan for a new bridge, and the state is ready to begin construction”—which is not exactly true.* In the photo, a storm whips up whitecaps on Lake Washington; in the text below, the ad says, “state engineers warn that it could sink in a major storm or earthquake.” (The full text appears after the jump.)
The ad goes on to print the phone number of the mayor’s office, the legislative hotline, and a website advocating to build the bridge without delay.
Below that, the page reads: “This ad paid for by Microsoft.” An ad rep at the Seattle Times couldn’t quote the price that Microsoft paid for the ad, but he said that the standard rate for a full-color, full page weekday ad is $23,055.
This is an odd position for the company to take, considering widely reported recent statements from its leader.
At the annual TED conference (video), Gates said: “Now we put out a lot of carbon dioxide every year—over 26 billion tons. For each American, it’s about 20 tons, for people in poor countries it’s less than one ton. It’s an average about five tons for everyone on the planet. And somehow we have to make changes that will bring that down to zero. It’s been constantly going up, it’s only various economic changes that have even flattened it at all. So we have to go from rapidly rising, to falling and falling all the way to zero.”
Which is it, Microsoft? Your company wants a wider freeway—one that the state estimates will accommodate 500 more cars per hour at peak times than the current bridge does—with a design that allows it to expand to eight lanes of vehicle traffic, further doubling auto capacity. But your chairman publicly lectures on the pursuit of zero carbon emissions. If “somehow we have to make changes,” building a bigger, anti-transit freeway is a terrible way to do it.
* Suburban and rural lawmakers have agreed on a plan, however, much of Seattle’s legislative delegation, the mayor, and the city council (even those council members who think construction can proceed on part of the bridge) say the design must change. That’s not “an agreed-upon design.” Moreover, proponents of a wider bridge that contains no lanes exclusively for transit, or any light rail, keep banging the drum that there have been 13 years of planning. But the planning produced a bad design: one that generates more traffic with nowhere to put it and one that ignores the rail network that’s been in development for years. Bad planning is terrible excuse for a bad design.
It’s Time for Action on the 520 Bridge
Let’s Move!
We’ve known for many years that the aging Highway 520 Floating Bridge must be replaced-to ensure the safety of the public and a reliable transportation system for the region. After 13 years of deliberation and outreach, there is finally an agreed-upon design and funding plan for a new bridge, and the state is ready to begin construction. Contracts are in place to begin building the new bridge pontoons in Grays Harbor County. We commend Governor Gregoire, state legislators, and local leaders who have helped bring this important project closer to reality.
While there are still some final design issues that need to be resolved with the City of Seattle, we should not let last-minute objections undermine the hard-won agreements already in place for the rest of the project. Doing so would cause yet more delay, increase the cost to taxpayers, and put this vital transportation and economic corridor at risk. The current bridge is 47 years old, and state engineers warn that it could sink in a major storm or earthquake.
Microsoft is part of a broad coalition of civic leaders and organizations that is urging decisive action now. Please join us in sending a clear message to our leaders in Olympia and Seattle: It’s time to move forward so we can start construction on the new 520 bridge.
Speaking of storm-tossed waves, what will be the impact of “Astroturf Green” Microsoft having us build a 520 floating bridge that has DOUBLE the global warming emissions of the current one for both construction and operation, and for which there is no funding for expanded arterials in Seattle to handle the doubled traffic?
heck, even I-5 can’t absorb that much extra traffic – it’s already at a crawl.
Making all the lanes past the original four lanes be transit-only doesn’t delay the construction of the bridge itself. Bridges are built in stages, and the first stage is the pontoons.
Those who propose we embed rails in two of the lanes might be jumping the gun – just separate them into transit-only lanes and when the design is complete, switch them from BRT and bus/vanpool usage to light rail.
I mean, remember when they said the Bus Tunnel had to operate as Light Rail Only? We phased that in, and it’s working fine, quite frankly. Gave people time to adapt.
@ 1) You mean the thing we wrote about in October?
I think there were some SLOG items on that too, actually.
Glad to see the Seattle papers competing. Too bad the suburban Times can’t keep up.
@4: OH SNAP!
I just want to note that Bill Gates’ comments as you printed didn’t state anything about reducing carbon emissions having to take the form of people not using cars. He may well have something else up his sleeve or be more interested in electric/solar/hydrogen and other ways to power vehicles.
(disclosure, I work for MS) yes, they are advocating more roads. but MS also has amazing commuter benefits from company-funded shuttles to fully subsidized bus passes (which a LOT of employees use, not just getting to and from work but anywhere) and lots of benefits to help bikers.
so – yes, begging for a bigger bridge is counter to the spirit of what Gates was saying, but let’s keep in mind that the bigger 520 is not the sum total of MS tranportation/transit strategy or philosophy.
Let Microsoft pay for the bridge they want. If they use perma-temps, it’ll cost about 1/3rd what union guys could do it for.
Hmm MS has amazing commuter benefits? Vendors/contractors are not allowed to use them (admitedly this is allegedly one of those things legally required to separate temp and permanent worker status). A full timer told me he is usually one of very few people on one of those large buses.
I would suggest that Bill Gates’ opinion does not necessarily represent Microsoft’s opinion and in any case they might have been for more progressive options but are now advocating getting on with the project.
Dude, you come up with the cash for the extra arterials and make sure that all the new cars added are plug-in electric vehicles using non-coal-fired electricity (hint: Puget Energy has 30 percent coal-fired, Seattle City Light has 99 percent renewable) ….
Then Microsoft can tell us what to do.
Until then, there’s a giant tax exemption for Microsoft that’s busting the budget.
Nice of ol’ Bill to come out and say that stuff NOW. After all, he’s the one who decided to put the Microsoft campus in the suburbs (exurbs, almost, back when he put them there). Microsoft has created more sprawl in this region than anyone. And no, @8, a couple of shuttles don’t make any difference.
Bill Gates is the leading cause of depression in the NASDAQ.
His “weekly withdrawls” of 60 to 100 million on options (granted more than 2 decades ago) haunts the financial public and are a bigger drain than 100 Madoffs stapled together.
Of course Microsoft, a company of relatively tiny low paid nerds who just want to do some AJAX and c#, are at odds with the Antediluvian Gates!
I do not understand why Microsoft’s positions even have to jive perfectly with its chairman’s personal/philanthropic positions and vice versa. Cute gotcha there and all, but who cares?
This should just be a story about Microsoft’s dismal position on the 520 bridge, not anything to do with Bill Gates.
If you actually watched the rest of that talk, he talked about using new sources of power that didn’t emit CO2. Its within reason that cars can be converted into electrical sources drawing power from non CO2 power plants. You’re making a lot out of nothing.
Microsoft should just move into a skyscraper in downtown Seattle. Problem solved. And a lot cheaper than these bridge schemes.
@16 But only a portion of MSFT’s workforce actually lives in Seattle. IIRC, it’s only 25% or so. The rest are all East siders. So, you’d still have the bridge problem, and it would be even worse b/c 3x the number of people would use the bridges.
Dominic shut the hell up. Bill Gates was speaking about C02 omissions. This doesn’t necessarily mean he is for less cars. What if every car that drove across the 520 was a hybrid or electric? Seattle has a large amount of both. But that is besides the point. The fact that Microsoft supports a bigger bridge that facilitates more cars should be a sign for car hating liberal hipsters such as your self. Microsoft cares about the economy. Fuck the environment. I would rather have people getting to work on time, than appease a bunch of never going to be happy with the way anything is Seattle residents. This state runs on the tax dollars of companies like Microsoft and their employees, not hipster wannabe New York Times reporter.
@18 right on the money, except Dominic isn’t exactly a “car hating liberal hipster”. He doesn’t want people to be able to choose for themselves; he wants to force people to follow his half-baked agenda. That makes him more of a “car hating fascist hipster”.
@16, exactly.
It’s pointless to tie this to Bill Gates, as he does not deal with day-to-day affairs of the company. This is a boneheaded move by Microsoft, and Steve Ballmer and the rest of the active executives are the ones that should be held responsible.
I’m sure Bill Gates has the same love of the automobile as the average Eastsider. And his global warming efforts are focused on reducing carbon emissions to zero (mostly through breakthroughs in nuclear and solar energy), not reducing driving. Criticize him for that, but not for hypocrisy for something he had nothing to do with.
I’m down with leaving space on the bridge for light rail. The constant harping about wanting a lane dedicated entirely to buses doesn’t make any sense though. Why would it be so bad to have a traditional carpool + bus HOV lane?
A bus-only lane would help so few people because bus service between the Eastside and Westside is so horribly sparse and un-reliable. It takes 3 buses and 90 minutes to get anywhere.
According to Slog logic, the proponents of the bus-only lane should bring a plan to the table for better bus service BEFORE they start advocating for changes to the bridge design. It would be awesome to see some constructive proposals about that instead of the same repetitive posts.
So somehow having shoulders on the bridge now is equivalent to “a design that allows it to expand to eight lanes of vehicle traffic”? So Dominic, are you saying that the new bridge should have no shoulders? And Dominic, in the previous post of yours you linked to, you used only one source–and one with a very narrow, vested interest at that–the Coalition for a Sustainable 520. No response from WSDOT or anyone else with some knowledge of the project to what’s a really serious charge.
I have no problem with advocacy journalism that takes sides. But that’s no license for shoddy journalism.
Oh, and speaking as someone who’s a hard-core transit/density activist who practices what he preaches, one has to follow some pretty tortured logic with a whole lot of hand-waving to come to the conclusion that the alternative offered by the so-called Coalition for a Sustainable 520 is somehow better for transit than the current plans.
Kinda like the strained reaching Dominic has to do to get from Bill Gates’s carbon emissions statement at TED to Bill Gates actually believing we should drive less.
Dominic, really, I’m on your side on these things. But dude, you’re not helping. (And feel free to blast away at me. I’m a big kid just like you.)
P.S. I’m starting to get the feeling that Dominic is catching on to the Erica C. Barnett school of journalistic perverse incentives. The sloppier and more incendiary the work, the more hits you get.
Truthiest post of the day.
Actually, Microsoft is scarfing up lots of office tower space.
In Bellevue.
Let me put it this way: The existing SR 520 bridge is like Windows XP. Nobody would design it that way today, it takes a long time to recover from crashes, it has idiosyncrasies and missing features, and it’s way past time to replace it, but it was paid for a long time ago and it’s familiar.
The so-called Plan “A+” the state currently wants to build is like the Windows Vista of SR 520 plans. It took too many years to make, there was a point in the middle of development where ambitions got reset, and when it finally came out, there was a lot of glossy marketing behind it, but it didn’t perform all that well for a lot of people, and it introduced some new annoying features, and it got bad press.
What we need is the Windows 7 of SR 520 plans. We need something that’s efficient and built for the future and works for a variety of people on the go, something that runs quickly and reliably, something that you can count on when you need to get to work. Shouldn’t a real high capacity transit system on 520 be part of that future? And shouldn’t that future happen in same decade as we build the new bridge, i.e. before 2020? Are future workers still going to be commuting by bus across the Montlake drawbridge in the year 2028, when a child born today will be of voting age?
That’s why I am so disappointed with Microsoft today.
@11 dude your seattle light is 99% renewable is based upon them using hydropower, which kills fishies, in guess fish are renewable however. and some of the energy comes from capturing methane from refuse trucked by rail car to oregon. yea, i am sure that rail car is running on 99% renewable energy.
yawn
`KM
To paint MS as the baddie here means you probably either don’t have a car or don’t understand the importance of 520 for the local economy.
As for the 520 replacement plans, well, that’s a clusterfuck. Any replacement must include transit and pedestrian/bike traffic. Adding more lanes ain’t gonna fix anything in the LONG TERM.
Here is Bill Gates’ article
http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Thinking/Ar…
Among other things, he says”You are going to have to reduce emissions from transportation to near zero” and “Innovations in transportation and electricity will be the key factors.”
I sure see a conflict between this and Microsoft’s push to build a big highway that could have been designed in 1950!
And Bill Gates is still chairman of the board at Microsoft. Yes, his opinions should matter.
And why should we build for light rail from the start? Because we in Seattle have a history of promising light rail, building something else, and then ripping up what we built and doing it over. Think 3rd Avenue tunnel. Think I-90 Very expensive. Not with my tax dollars please?
SO… Without improved highways where do you plan to drive the carbon neutral cars of the future? Or do you assume they will be hoover crafts? Or will you continue to hate cars and drivers even when cars no longer produce carbon?
You people are IDIOTS.
Do you know what the worst thing a car can do for emissions? Sit idling.
Cars get MUCH better mileage when they are allowed to move freely.
Stop being so stupid: people are going to drive their cars. Give them some roads to do it on.
And it seems extremely disingenuous to imply that you assume that a man with a 10,000 square foot garage wants smaller roads with fewer cars on them…
Just what is Bill’s personal carbon foot print anyway?…
J-Dub @27, please stop trying to greenwash you and your fellow Montlakers’ parochial interests as some brave stand for transit.
You know as well as anyone else does that there’s no money, no plan, no place to put light rail–that there’s now way in hell that we’re going to be able to build light rail across 520 from the get-go. And I say this as someone who’s a hard-core supporter of light rail.
Frankly, J-Dub, I don’t think you have the slightest interest in seeing light rail get built. Instead, it’s just a smokescreen for your real agenda, which is to get the state to spend the extra billion or so to bypass your neighborhood.