Seattle's Traffic Problem
August 24, 2004 | 
25 Comments
Summary: Traffic in Seattle sucks. Yeah, that about sums this one up.
Seattle is a great place to visit and live, especially in the summer when it’s usually beautiful. We do have some problems though, just as any other city does. One of the biggest, in my mind, is traffic.
I live on Queen Anne hill, which is just north of Seattle’s downtown area. Getting to and from work is generally pretty easy, although kind of convoluted. I work in North East Seattle, roughly 9 miles away and it takes me 30-40 minutes. That’s not bad for an intracity commute. Driving to the East Side took me around 2 hours most days. You pretty much have to take the bus (as long as you don’t have to transfer—have to transfer and you’re screwed) and hope you’ll save time.
30-40 minutes sounds pretty good, but that is when there are no problems and it’s not usually during peak traffic times. During rush hour, or when I run into problems; that’s I realize how bad Seattle’s traffic can be.
Seattle’s byways just aren’t generally equipped to deal with problems. Sometimes you get literally nowhere. Take just now, the reason for this rant, I just spent exactly 50 minutes trying to get into downtown Seattle from my home on Queen Anne to attend the Mariner’s game. 50 minutes. Trying.
I managed to get about 3/4 of a mile before giving up and turning back. Seattle gets like this when there are problems. There just aren’t any alternate routes or viable methods of transport. You either sit, walk or give up.
You might be wondering about the bus I mentioned earlier. It works alright for long highway commutes, but not so good for short intracity jaunts. You see, the bus travels the same routes, for the most part, the cars do.
Last week I went to a game and ended up walking halfway because I knew I’d get there faster. This is probably the most common option for me. Walk there because it’s faster. I’d have done that today had I know it was going to be so bad. Of course, since it didn’t involve a highway, there was no mention of the snarl on the radio traffic programs.
In any case, I’ve skipped the game and saved myself probably about another hour of crawling through downtown. I guess it’d have taken me almost two hours (no joke) had I driven all the way to the ballpark (which there is no way in hell I would have. I’d have stopped, payed $15 to park and walked at some point), that’s two hours for about a four mile drive.
Ridiculous.
So, anyway, I guess there is this idea to put a rail system in place, but they can’t seem to sort out the planning for it so it doesn’t seem to be on track (pun intended) and in true Washingtonian fashion anyone who doesn’t directly benefit from it doesn’t want a damn thing to do with it.
The monorail might not be the answer, it might cost to much or whatever, I don’t know. I do know something needs to be done, and quick as it seems to get worse and worse as time goes on.
Filed under: Life and Such
Comments
1. Hans said:
Wow. Traffic here in Chicago ain’t so bad. But if it’s truly rush hour, you’re screwed. True “rush hour” only happens near the weekend and/or near major holidays. Oh, and of course the occasional road construction/accident. On the expressway, of course. Not too bad. A trip to O’Hare from downtown can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours.
Going with the flow is key.
Posted on August 24, 2004 06:46 PM | #
2. Justin said:
I had a friend who lived on Queen Anne for a few years and I remember it being essentially impossible to get to via public transportation on weekends (at least from the U district, where I lived during college). I wonder if that’s still the case?
By comparison, Chicago traffic seemed about as bad as Seattle to me, but at least you have more public transportation options there. I lived in the south side (Hyde Park) and Hans is right -going with the flow is key. Leave early for work and traffic was decent. But after 8am or so Lake Shore Blvd was backed up and my commute took twice as long.
And forget trying to take the red line north during a Cubs game.
Posted on August 24, 2004 07:17 PM | #
3. Adam Bramwell said:
Like alot of people where i live (in Newcastle, Australia) i’ve often skipped the fare on trains, because i could. Unmanned train stations put the onus on the user to be honest and pay, and all through my student life I rationalised skipping the fare as the $1.30 I saved would get me a plate of chips n gravy, or a schooner of Stones + ginger ale.
Now I’m a tad more mature I feel kinda guilty about the possible cumulative effect this has had on rail patronage figures. The low patronage figures are now being used to rationalise the removal of the rail line.
Investment in rail infrastructure seems contrary to current management methodologies - it’s a huge up-front cost with a slow payback. Any large project like this needs someone to champion the effort. Historically, it’s been the (mining) industries that have paid for the tracks, in todays world rail needs someone to step up to champion the cause. Can the community fill that void?
Posted on August 24, 2004 07:42 PM | #
4. Nick Finck said:
Keith, as you know I am pretty new to the Seattle area but I have to say it’s certainly not Portland. I really think that Seattle should take a long hard look at the sucess of the Portland lightrail and bus system to see what’s possible. The problem is, as you stated, there’s not enough support from those who really have the bucks (east King County). One idea would to make both a north and south route as well as an east and west route.
Posted on August 24, 2004 08:54 PM | #
5. Manzell B said:
Fifty minutes to Lake City from QA? Ridiculous. A decent route might be to take 15th all the way to 85th NW and head east from there. Or take the Fremont bridge and cruise Pacific to the U-District.
And if your going to the Mariners game, head to the Convention Center and use the bus tunnel. C’mon man.
Posted on August 24, 2004 09:23 PM | #
6. Keith said:
Manzell – You got the numbers a bit mixed up man. I do the Fremont Bridge route, just like you say, and it takes about 30 minutes on average. The 85th (or 65th) way takes longer usually.
Both ways suck during rush hour. Especially if I-5 and 520 are backed up.
As far as your bus tunnel idea goes, yeah, that’s what I often do, BUT, today I couldn’t even get past Denny. It was gridlock. I literally couldn’t get, by car anyway, past Denny going south. I spent 50 minutes trying.
In otherwords I couldn’t get to the damn bus tunnel. Hell, I’d walk from there, no problem.
Posted on August 24, 2004 09:32 PM | #
7. Zelnox said:
I am lucky I guess. I live only 15 minutes-walk away from downtown Montreal. However, our baseball stadium is not downtown. We have a good bus and subway system, although public funding has been decreased constantly and fares going up. There is also the train if one needs to travel farther. There is traffic, but maybe not as bad as Seattle (similar population to Montreal), since many people use public transportation.
I was in a Houston suburb last month, and sheesh, everything is so spread out. It takes 20 mins to drive just to the closest Wal-Mart, and almost 60 mins to Houston. There are so many small cities in between. The highway system is always being expanded (each time I visit, the road is being repaired or expanded).
Posted on August 24, 2004 10:07 PM | #
8. Tommy Olsson said:
Reading stuff like this, I’m glad that I’m living in a rural part of a sparsely populated country. :)
I, too, have a 30-40 minute commute to work. The difference is that I drive 25 miles in the same time that you do 9. It would be a lot quicker for me, but the road standard in this part of Sweden … well, it sucks.
I don’t have to worry about traffic congestion, either. Just moose. :)
Posted on August 24, 2004 10:37 PM | #
9. Shaun said:
I live in Magnolia (just west of Queen Anne) and it took me a painful 50 minutes to travel the 7 miles (6 driving, 1 walking) to the M’s game Tuesday, but I made it.
It was probably the longest trip I have ever taken to Safeco Field, and this was a Tuesday!!
Unfortunately the traffic made me miss the majority of the Jay Buhner Mariner Hall of Fame ceremonies, but at least I found free parking!
Posted on August 24, 2004 11:32 PM | #
10. Mike P. said:
Ha, should of known you lived in Queen Anne!
How is it that you can write about a monorail and nobody references the Simpsons?
Posted on August 25, 2004 12:23 AM | #
11. Graham K said:
Well Mike, we already have a monorail from the World’s Fair. And ours is from 1962! Ha! Take that!
Our monorail is perfectly reliable. It would never break down twice. In the same week. Oh wait…
Anyway, Seattle is badly in need of a good mass transit system. Busses help a little, but they still use the roads. C’mon, Seattle, get your act together!
Posted on August 25, 2004 01:13 AM | #
12. Mike P. said:
Mildly off topicish,
But kinda funny that Vancouver (2 hours drive north of Seattle) is having trouble sorting itself out with some form of light rail transit as well, and that it too had the worlds fair.
The ironic bit is that, if I remember correctly, the theme of the fair in Van was ‘transportation’…
Posted on August 25, 2004 03:27 AM | #
13. Blair said:
Sounds like you need to get yourself a bike or start taking Shank’s Pony.
Posted on August 25, 2004 04:54 AM | #
14. Small Paul said:
Yeah, couldja cycle?
Posted on August 25, 2004 05:22 AM | #
15. RMCox said:
Having just got back from Portland a few weeks ago (after going there for the first time) I’m surprised to hear that Seattle is so far behind in the public transportation category. I’m beginning the preparation to move out to Seattle in March of ‘05 and just this morning was debating bringing my car or selling it and using public transit, so this is very good info for me, thanks! (Oh, and I plan on living downtown near-ish the University, but it’s so early I’m not sure how of much of this is feasible.)
My commute now? A five minute bus ride that’s pretty much a straight shot downtown. It’s nice and short – better than the hour commute I had prior, but it’s almost too short and the transaction between wake-up mode and work-mode gets rushed. But that’s better than it getting annoyed and frustrated.
(even MORE off topic, the traffic problems remind me of my Sim City!)
Posted on August 25, 2004 06:46 AM | #
16. Matt Heerema said:
Funny, I spent a week in Seattle last spring (first and only time i’d ever been there), and marvelled at how wonderful traffic was. People tended toward being laid back, polite, and generally benevolent in their driving.
Perhaps I was mistaken, or just didn’t get a good enough sampling of the city, or hit it on a weird week. Des Moines and Ames, IA on the other hand… worst drivers in the world… not to mention that Des Moines’s streets were laid out by a drunken 6 year old :)
Posted on August 25, 2004 06:56 AM | #
17. Dave P said:
Having moved from Toronto to Vancouver, I can safely say that transportation systems in west coast cities like Van, Seattle, San Fran, LA absolutley suck.
Maybe it’s because they keep looking to each other for examples. Maybe it’s because of the mountains and rivers. Maybe it’s all the weed. I don’t know.
In Vancouver, it takes a good hour to take the sky train in to downtown from the halfway point… about 10 to 15 stops. In Toronto, that same half hour would cover the entire north-south subway line.
Here, we have idiots that actually OBJECT to more mass transit… and they’re the hippies that want us out of our cars!
I don’t know what it is, but we just don’t “get it” out here the way they do back east or in Europe.
Posted on August 25, 2004 08:37 AM | #
18. Kim Siever said:
I lived in Vancouver for nine years and commuted to work in the downtown core from my suburban home in Surrey for three years. I was never crazy enough to drive on my commute. I took the SkyTrain and made it in less than an hour one way. I had a lot less stress and was in walking distance from either end of the line.
We moved to Lethbridge (pop. 75,000) about six years ago, and I must say I enjoy my twenty minute cycling commute much more. On the occasion when I drive, it takes me less than ten minutes. In fact, it takes longer to walk from my locker in the men’s change room to my office than it does to drive to my parking spot.
Last month, we vacationed in Regina (pop. 200,000). Traffic there is a breeze. I tell you, having a six-lane ring road is a life-saver. Even the six lane Lewvan-Pasqua route is easy driving. Someday, I hope to move there.
Back to Vancouver. In June, I went back to take some advanced ColdFusion training. I won’;t go into the details here, but they have made significant changes to the transit system since I was there last. One day, it took me two hours to get from the Justice Institute in New West to my parents’ home in Surrey.
Reminded me as to why exactly I moved.
Posted on August 25, 2004 09:21 AM | #
19. Adrian said:
Man… That’s bad. It makes me glad I live in Phoenix (AZ). My commute to work is about 13 miles one way and I clock it at just under 20 minutes in the morning during rush hour (that includes the time from when I close my house’s front door, to the the time I’m sitting in my seat at work).
The beauty of over here is that for the most part, everything is flat, and all the major streets are laid out in a grid. That and the bulk of the freeway paths are now at least 4 lanes in each direction, and most of the major arterial streets are also at least 2 lanes in each direction (with a dedicated center left turn lane).
The grid layout also makes it very nice. You can pick at least a dozen ways to get anywhere, and almost all of them are without going out of your way.
We aren’t without problems here though… Almost everybody likes to take the loop 202 or I-10 or loop 101 freeway to work in the morning and home after work. Those freeways get really congested during rush hour, but then the surface streets have very little traffic at all, and many times its easier to go that route during rush hour. On off peak hours, those freeways are pretty much wide open, and you can pretty much blast throught there as fast as you want to risk going (the speed limit is generally 65, but on off peak hours, a lot of the traffic is cooking along at 75 to 80).
Posted on August 25, 2004 09:55 AM | #
20. Patrick Huber said:
Someone mentioned cycling. What about switching to a motorcycle or scooter? You can split the traffic and just breeze by all the stuck cars. My wife & I used this method to see the 2002 playoffs and World Series here in Anaheim. We’re approx. 5 miles from the stadium and traffic would have made it 30-60 minutes in the car. Instead, 15 minutes and we were parked. Wear our Angels jackets and people cheer, instead of jeer, as we ride through.
Posted on August 25, 2004 10:10 AM | #
21. gb said:
I guess SLC isn’t so bad. We have traffic, and endless road construction… oh yeah, and our drivers are notoriously inept. But compared to the last time I was in Seattle, I got caught in a Mariners game traffic explosion, and I couldn’t move anywhere.
One nice bit about Salt Lake is the light rail. Runs the length of the valley, and they’re adding spurs so you can get across town as well. But Seattle would do well to emulate Melbourne, Australia. I used to live there, and their mass transit system (The Met) is astonishingly good. I loved taking the train, the trams, the buses. Granted, getting around downtown areas (especially Caulfield) was next to impossible in a car, and hook turns were devised by Satan himself… but who needs a car with a public transit system like that?
Posted on August 26, 2004 07:56 PM | #
22. patrick said:
Just moved to downtown Seattle from Denver, and I noticied one thing right away – even when I-5 is not congested, people are NOT doing the speed limit (60mph). Is this common here? At least in Colorado the speed limit is seen as ‘you better not do less than this or you will get honked at brusquely’.
Is it so bad that people are now conditioned to having to be stuck eventually? So they drive slowly in anticipation? (BTW, roads were dry, skies clear, etc.)
Posted on August 27, 2004 11:03 AM | #
23. Joshua said:
Now here in Tucson, we have no such luxuries as Adrian in Phoenix. We have highway access to I-10, which connects us to Phoenix, provided there’s nothing hindering the whopping 2 lanes of travel (each way). They did build a parkway here several years ago, to assist commuters in getting from one side of town to the other. As Tucson is run by absolute morons, they not only put stoplights on it, it runs parallel to the highway, provided bonafide use to no one really. They’ve talked about a light rail system here, but that is quickly shot down, so that more money can be spent erecting pointless Diamondback bridges that lead pedestrians nowhere.
Having lived in Phoenix for a while, I loved every bit of the traffic. People knew how to drive, and with the exception of the 60 backing up during rush hour, all was smooth. (pre 202/101 era).
Posted on August 30, 2004 03:50 PM | #
24. Elaine said:
Yeah, couldja cycle?
I don’t know where on QA Keith lives, but I’d guess that cycling is out of the question, as QA Ave (the main drag) is essentially vertical. ;)
that, and I just did a bit of cycling downtown Seattle weekend before last, and like most cities (I suppose) it’s not particularly bike-friendly.
Olympia, OTOH, where I live, has pretty craptacular public transit, but is very bike-friendly: bike lanes everywhere! (assuming that one’s in good enough shape to make it back uphill.)
Posted on August 31, 2004 04:56 PM | #
25. Steve Burling said:
I have lived in the Seattle Area all my life. As a native of the Area I have witnessed major changes is the traffic flow. I used to work in North Seattle during the early eighties. Dur ing that time traffic was much better than it is now.
I used to be able to from Seattle to east Everett in 35 minutes. Now that same cummute takes about an hour and ten minutes. Seattle roads has not kept up with the growth. I5 and I405 have about the same number of lanes as they did in the early eighties. All of the highways in the East Everett Area have not been widened in thirty years. It is no wonder we have problem keeping bussiness here.
We have the sixth worst traffic right here in the Seattle Area. If you do not want to deal with Traffic problems do not move here. The State of Washington has not made any effort improve the traffic quality at all!
Posted on November 24, 2004 03:31 PM | #
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