What Is The Sound Of A Habit Changing?

So far as we know, the great "rubber county tube" debate has not been resolved. Is daily traffic on the Viaduct seriously 75,000 rather than 110,000 cars (or "autos" as you'll read in more upscale news provisioners)? The major daily papers haven't responded to the Stranger's claim that the much lower number is reality.

Or does it even matter? What if people just don't want to imagine an alternative to driving when they don't have to?

We take you now to Sightline's blog, where wonko di tutti wonki Clark Williams-Derry reports on the city of Seoul, Korea, tearing down a waterfront highway that carried 160,000 cars per day. You can imagine the apocalyptic result. Many in Seoul did. Yet, like Y2K, the apocalypse never took place:

"As soon as we destroyed the road, the cars just disappeared and drivers changed their habits. A lot of people just gave up their cars. Others found a different way of driving. In some cases, they kept using their cars but changed their routes."

The city had beefed up its bus service and given people options to avoid the motorway, and the effect on the environment was remarkable...

What's noteworthy about this is how many drivers "changed their habits." Neither WSDOT nor SDOT have reliable figures for exactly that, but it is the single most important number in the viaduct discussion. People who sneer at a surface-street/transit option tend to imagine traffic capacity as a line heading up-and-to-the-right. Gridlock ensues if capacity doesn't increase. But the gridlock may be in their heads.

We'll leave you with a little nyah-nyah from Clark to the "Seattle is different" naysayers:

Now, just because it worked in Seoul, San Francisco, and Portland, OR, and Milwaukee, WI, etc., doesn't mean it'll work in other cities. But it certainly makes me think that Northwesterners who think that urban highways are indispensable should think again.

For another take on the news (and pics) from Seoul, we refer you back to the Slog, for a post written in apparent synchronicity this one (we scheduled ours to post this morning, so people could brandish their coffee mugs while responding).

Photo: San Francisco's hideous 4-lane waterfront boulevard (with streetcar) at night. Practically scars your eyes to see it.

Contact the author of this article or email tips@seattlest.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By MvB in News on November 21, 2006 9:30 AM

Comments [rss]

MvB

Ian: I think it's important to temper various cities' "traffic just vanished" PR, especially when I haven't been to Seoul, so I dragooned your timely and on-topic email into service.

Again, this post is about evidence of a basic assumption being made that affects how a problem is defined: in various instances, when confronted with tearing down an existing freeway or highway, a sizable segment of people in those cities have claimed that only a new highway or freeway will work as a replacement, and have marshaled reasonable-sounding evidence to support their case. Evidence not supported, from the reports we have, by what actually happens.

But while I'm dubious of this claim, I'm absolutely convinced a new tunnel or viaduct is a bad idea for another reason entirely. People will say, If only we had rapid transit, it would be different. But this is a Catch-22: we do not have rapid transit because we continue to channel billions of dollars into 2.2-mile road projects. If maintaining traffic capacity road by road is our primary criterion, we can rule out ever having regional rapid transit right now.

Jason claims that I think people shouldn't drive and that I'm arrogant and elitist. But what I actually think is that refusing to offer people in-city, rapid transportation options besides car ownership (demanding they shoulder the burden of car payments, insurance, maintenance, parking) is punitive and unfair.

Ian

As the "friend" whose email was quoted above, I'd just like to clarify that my comment was not a response to Michael's observation that "significant changes in road infrastructure resulted in significant changes in usage", but rather a reaction to the Slog post.

The traffic I encountered in Seoul was beyond anything I'd ever experienced before (and yes, I'd visited Moscow previously) and so reading that a project there was being praised, I couldn't help but choke on my morning coffee.

Thank God my hosts in Seoul had a DVD player in their car, is all I can say...

jason

are you being deliberately obtuse? i'm trying to understand how you can read what i wrote and only parrot your woefully inadequate thesis in response. these other cities already had a mix of other highways AND mass transit. we have neither and we're not going to get the latter anytime soon. our situation is legitimately different because of that fact. you've yet to prove how it would be otherwise.

sadly, for your argument, the only city with a close comparison for geography (chunks of land connected by bridges) is san francisco. between the muni, bart, cal train, and the dozens of freeways criss-crossing the city, they're also far beyond us.

please explain why we should tear down an existing highway without offering anything else up as an alternative for people to move N-S through the city. buses don't count. i know it sucks for reality to intrude into a conversation on regional planning, but i really insist we talk about the ramifications.

this isn't whether or not we should build a new highway. it's whether the existing capacity needs to be maintained. judging from the current conditions on both I5 & 99 mornings and evenings, i don't see how anyone could argue differently with a straight face. we already have some of the nation's worst traffic. even taking into account the people who will always choose to drive regardless of traffic conditions, some people will always have to drive places. making those conditions purposely worse because you think people shouldn't drive so is arrogant and elitist.

Justin

Wow...as someone who rails on Seattleites for not having a sense of humor...I have realized I completely missed that the tag was dripping with sarcasm. DOH! I'm sick? My brain has already started it's vacation for Thanksgiving? I got nothing.

MvB

Jason, let me respond to: "destroying highways without offering alternatives isn't feasible" and "none of the cities offered up as comparison are similar in the effect that will be caused by cutting ours down to one(!) N-S artery."

Not feasible, except, of course, in Seoul, San Francisco, and Portland, OR, and Milwaukee, WI. The point of my post is that in every case, a vocal group said EXACTLY what you're saying: "It's not feasible; our case is different." Did they not know they had subways?

jason

wow, all it took me was 30 seconds of googling to find out that Seoul also has a subway! just like san francisco (and their waterfront highway wasn't much of a choice for transit, anyway), residents of seoul have more than buses to rely on to get through their city. also, as described above, their traffic already sucks. whether or not the highway destruction seemed to affect them is irrelevant.

destroying highways without offering alternatives isn't feasible... and just buses doesn't count. none of the cities offered up as comparison are similar in the effect that will be caused by cutting ours down to one(!) N-S artery. unless it's paired with true rapid transit, the surface option is a non-starter.

never mind cutting off west seattle from the rest of the city, or the folly of dumping potentially up to 110,000 vehicles (pessimism makes sense in considering potential effect) onto our downtown streets & an already clogged I5, is this really what we want our city to look like in 20 years? 50? population is only going to increase. all of the people are not going to magically stop driving just because we make it harder. relying on the state's emergency plans (the hallmark of the PWC idiocy) for long-range traffic planning is a horrendously bad idea.

forcing the square peg facts of other cities' transportation into the round holes of seattle's needs & issues doesn't help the debate.

paul beard

Jane Jacobs makes this point in both the Death and Life of Great American Cities and Dark Age Ahead -- the fact that these books were published 40 years apart and still contained the same argument might suggest something. You can manage traffic by removing options, rather than expanding them. And as anyone who has lived through a freeway expansion project can relate, roads can create congestion, as people flock to what is advertised as a solution, thereby negating its benefits and begetting another expansion . . .

Much as I love the view from the top deck of the viaduct, it is a ugly as mud fence for those who live and work near it and it's a blight on what could be a beautiful downtown waterfront. Convenient, yes: essential. not so much.

MvB

Justin, I left out the tag on the photo caption. I used to live in SF, too, and the Embarcadero is great. It's pedestrian friendly (I walked its length many times), it integrates trolley cars, and it's a beautiful sight from almost any angle. When people talk about how hideous a 4-lane boulevard would be, it just makes me shake my head.

Justin

As a former resident of San Francisco, I personally think the embarcadero area is pretty nice. Subby showed one the least appealing parts of the embarcardero, which is now largely park area. The poster also neglects that this area used to be hideous! It was the site of the Embarcadero Freeway before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. This is a HUGE aesthetic upgrade. See the link below for what it used to look like: http://www.boston.com/beyond_bigdig/cases/sanfrancisco/index.shtml

Jake of 8bitjoystick.com

I had a chat with my state representative who is on the state transpiration committee last night and I thanked her for her public opposition to Gridlock Greg Big Dig.

MvB

Since we're always striving for a fair and balanced comments section, here's an excerpt from a friend's email:

I recall a 20 kilometer car trip in Seoul that took three hours. After 90 minutes stuck in a tunnel, we finally got out & walked the rest of the way. The city was a mesh of cars, intertwined & going nowhere. You might as well bring up some great transportation project they pulled off in Moscow, with pictures taken during low-traffic periods to "prove" your point.

Our response is still that the Seoul example isn't the sole example -- what we have is a list of different cases where significant changes in road infrastructure resulted in significant changes in usage.