As in any moderately sized or larger metropolitan area, Seattle and King County have been waging a war on cars for decades. Bruce L. Nurse, VP of Transportation for the Kemper Development Corporation got to write an Op-Ed on this topic for the Seattle Times.
We Should Stop Waging A War On Cars
A MAJOR change from the political ideology of waging war on the car to accommodating the car would be a huge step toward less traffic congestion in the Seattle area.
For several decades, the politically correct thinking has been that people should ride transit, walk or bike instead of drive a car.
But the car is not the problem.
The car is an innocent and dutiful result of the basic principles of a free society. People want to have mobility. People want to travel in a safe environment where they want to go, when they want to go and with whom they want to go. The individual right to be free is what creates the demand for the car.
The United States is the most mobile society in the history of civilization. Along with freedom and education, mobility has allowed our society to prosper economically.
Limiting parking and road capacity is a failed policy of leaders who believe transit is the solution. Transit is an important but small part of the solution. Transit has lost market share of total trips for the past 50 years.
For more than 70 years, the city of Seattle has followed a de facto isolation policy concerning road capacity. Seattle has opposed or limited every major project to or through the city.
This Op-Ed will be pointed to by the local left as proof positive that the Seattle Times is a right-wing newspaper. They hate the Times with a passion only slightly less warm than the one they reserve for FOX News.
But the reason they hate so hard is the same: They both generally make a decent amount of sense.
Yeah, but it’s soooo much more difficult to control a mobile population….
Of equal insanity is the City policy known as “traffic calming”. That policy is also responsible for congestion, as it, too, restricts traffic flow. “Calming” uses physical barriers to traffic flow, such as center-lane flower beds and curb extensions. The idea that slowing the progress of vehicles will improve the dispositions of those using the vehicles is absurd on it’s face. Driver and passenger pleasure is enhanced by a smooth, rapid ride to destination, and ruined by un-necessary delay and being forced to see more City squalor.
Since cars and car owners have a plurality of votes, why hasn’t traffic FLOW improvement been forced on the governments via initiative, as the ruling policy?
I live 50 miles from NY City and NEVER go there. One of the many reasons is their stringent anti-car policies. After paying $12 to cross the bridge, I would have to navigate a rat-maze of one-way streets before paying $50 to park blocks from my destination.