Women of Washington
Communicating America’s Founding Principles
Women of Washington is an educational organization with a focus on understanding local, national, and global issues that are critical to our world today.
Transportation: Volume 1, Issue 4
Transportation Discussions
The Seattle Times sponsored a Livewire discussion on transportation at the University of Washington on Thursday, Oct 29 called Gridlocked – Driving Solutions to our Region’s Traffic Jams. The video of the discussion can be found at http://www.seattlechannel.org/explore-videos?videoid=x59920. Brian Mistele, CEO of Inrix and former speaker at ETA was on the panel. This is an hour and a half video. See Brain at the following minute markers on the video: 14:06; 29:11; 42:55; 55:11; and 1:12:47. Brian spoke some truth into the Seattle centric, transit dominated discussion.
The Puget Sound Region is expected to grow by about one million people by 2040. About 200,000 of that growth will likely be in the City of Seattle, leaving about 800,000 new residents for Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett and the other 30 +/- cities within the Urban Growth Boundaries (UGB) of King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap Counties.
Whenever the Seattle interests talk about gridlock and solutions for traffic jams, the discussion revolves around transit access to the 9% of the region’s employment base that is in the Central Business District of Seattle. Access to the other 91% of the region’s jobs is left out. Clearly, job access to Downtown Seattle is important, but it is not the only, nor, dare I say, the most important issue for the vast majority of the taxpayers in the region.
This is a common theme for taxpayers and transportation advocates in most large metropolitan areas of our great country. This week an organization called The American Dream Coalition is having its annual conference in Austin, TX; see http://americandreamcoalition.org/?page_id=4003. This is a coalition of light rail plan fighters and property rights enthusiasts. The Eastside Transportation Association will be well represented in Austin. Favorite authors and primary speakers at the conference include:
The Seattle Times sponsored a Livewire discussion on transportation at the University of Washington on Thursday, Oct 29 called Gridlocked – Driving Solutions to our Region’s Traffic Jams. The video of the discussion can be found at http://www.seattlechannel.org/explore-videos?videoid=x59920. Brian Mistele, CEO of Inrix and former speaker at ETA was on the panel. This is an hour and a half video. See Brain at the following minute markers on the video: 14:06; 29:11; 42:55; 55:11; and 1:12:47. Brian spoke some truth into the Seattle centric, transit dominated discussion.
The Puget Sound Region is expected to grow by about one million people by 2040. About 200,000 of that growth will likely be in the City of Seattle, leaving about 800,000 new residents for Bellevue, Tacoma, Everett and the other 30 +/- cities within the Urban Growth Boundaries (UGB) of King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap Counties.
Whenever the Seattle interests talk about gridlock and solutions for traffic jams, the discussion revolves around transit access to the 9% of the region’s employment base that is in the Central Business District of Seattle. Access to the other 91% of the region’s jobs is left out. Clearly, job access to Downtown Seattle is important, but it is not the only, nor, dare I say, the most important issue for the vast majority of the taxpayers in the region.
This is a common theme for taxpayers and transportation advocates in most large metropolitan areas of our great country. This week an organization called The American Dream Coalition is having its annual conference in Austin, TX; see http://americandreamcoalition.org/?page_id=4003. This is a coalition of light rail plan fighters and property rights enthusiasts. The Eastside Transportation Association will be well represented in Austin. Favorite authors and primary speakers at the conference include:
- Wendell Cox, Demographia, http://www.demographia.com/dwc-sketch.htm.
- Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute, The Anti-planner, http://www.cato.org/people/randal-otoole.
- Dr. Ronald Utt, The Heritage Foundation, http://www.heritage.org/about/staff/u/ronald-utt.
- Tom Rubin, Transportation Accountant, http://americandreamcoalition.org/?page_id=3979.
- Baruch Feigenbaum, The Reason Foundation, http://reason.org/experts/outofcontrol/1171.html.
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