So, Seattle's commutes are getting longer and longer every year. Every street is used by more and more cars and traffic is getting worse throughout the region. There has been a constant growth in Seattle and with that has come a constant stream of more and more cars onto the same roads that we are already dealing with traffic on. We can't keep building more roads. We can't expand our highways until they are sprawling 10-lane+ "superhighways" to accomodate more cars. These would just become larger "parking lots" for the increasing numbers of cars that are filling the roads every day. Seattle needs to look at other options to find better solutions to the problem.
Our bus systems are adequate for some people, but you really need to coordinate and plan things out very well. If you're out too late, you may not have that "ride" home. If you need to be there early, you may be out of luck. You may have to arrive at your meeting either an hour early or 15 minutes late. Bus travel is also unfortunately a slow process of travel. Metro (as well as Community Transit and other transit) does a decent job of maintaining frequent service in highly-trafficked areas, but it's clearly not enough. It's unfortunate that our area didn't invest in a more sophisticated mass transit program in the earlier years. Now, we are left with a region that really has inadequate (I remember that I called it adequate above) public transit services, overall. We need to work on a system that will be convenient, one that would convert drivers into riders. If we can implement a system that would greatly reduce the number of cars on the road, we'll all be winners in the end. Traffic would be lighter and hopefully everyone could travel easier. Pollution from vehicle exhaust would be decreased as well. It would also help to make it more appealing to carpool as the great majority of cars on the road are single-occupant vehicles. Creating a greater incentive for carpooling would also aid in reducing the cars on the road.
At this point in the game, it's tough to say what form of mass transit would work the best for Seattle. I thought that the monorail project was an excellent idea for a transport system that would be above street level (so not blocking traffic as it travels), quiet and safe (especially with good "durability" through earthquakes). It was a clean efficient method of transport which is definitely what we need to develop. Whatever we do implement, it's going to be very expensive, but we have to pay for it sometime. We can't keep pushing it off further as it's not going to get any cheaper and traffic is getting worse and worse no matter what. The worse traffic gets, the worse it will be during construction of any systems and that really means it's just not getting any easier. There's no time like the present to keep pushing so we can push our region forward.
