Pacific Northwest freeway proposals fuel debate

Supporters of two controversial freeway expansion projects in Seattle and Portland say the widened roadways will decrease traffic congestion and improve highway safety. But critics, including community leaders and environmental activists, say the multi-billion dollar projects will worsen sprawl and pollution and provide outdated solutions to 21st Century transportation challenges.

“There is a persistent but false belief that we have to continue to plan for ever more demand for auto travel,” said Eric de Place, a senior researcher at the Sightline Institute, a Seattle think tank focusing on sustainability issues.

Nationwide, per capita gas consumption and vehicle miles traveled are declining, de Place said. The U.S. auto fleet also dropped by 4 million vehicles last year.

“We have entered a phase shift,” he said. “We should be planning for fewer cars and driving fewer miles.”

Nevertheless, in November, a Washington state legislative working group voted in support of a design to replace the State Route 520 floating bridge, which connects Seattle to the eastside of Lake Washington. The bridge touches down in the suburb of Medina, home of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

The 520 Seattle interchange is considered one of the worst bottlenecks in the city. The bridge is also vulnerable to earthquakes and is closed several times a year during windstorms.

The favored design, which has been years in the making, would widen the bridge from four to six lanes, expand freeway interchanges and add a second drawbridge over the Montlake ship canal, which is adjacent to the bridge landing in Seattle. The total cost is estimated at $4.3 billion.

Although addressing seismic vulnerabilities is one of the main project goals, the freeway expansion has other advantages, said Daniel Babuca, an engineering manager at the Washington State Department of Transportation, which is the lead sponsor on the project.

“The original bridge was somewhat brutally constructed without a lot of attention paid to the communities bisected by the project,” Babuca said. The approved design includes park lids over segments of the freeway that run through neighborhoods, a 14-foot-wide bike lane across the lake and about ten miles of new dedicated car pool lanes,

“There is a lot of opportunity to make positive benefits,” said Babuca.

Opponents beg to differ. Any replacement bridge should focus on improving transit connections, especially between the bus rapid transit now serving the freeway and Seattle’s new light rail system, Sound Transit, said state Representative Jamie Pedersen, (D-Seattle). But the current proposal puts the 520 off ramp and a future neighborhood light rail station on opposite sides of the existing Montlake drawbridge, which is subject to multiple openings during the day and already causes significant traffic delays.

“If we are building a multi-billion dollar bridge and a multi-billion dollar light rail system and they don’t talk to each other, then I think we should be ridiculed for that,” Pedersen said.

In Portland, critics expressed similar concerns about the “Columbia River Crossing,” a joint project of the Washington and Oregon Departments of Transportation to widen a congested five-mile stretch of Interstate-5, including the bridge across the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver, Washington. The current proposal, which clocks in at about $3.6 billion, calls for expanding the freeway to 10 lanes, adding bike and pedestrian facilities and including provisions for light rail.

According to the project sponsors’ own analysis, the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the freeway expansion would increase by about 32 percent, said Mara Gross, policy director for the Coalition for a Livable Future, a Portland non-profit that works on smart growth issues. Gross also said these figures are likely on the low side as the analysis didn’t take into consideration “induced demand,” a phenomenon in which adding freeway lanes encourages more people to drive.

“We need to do things differently than build roads and instead support solutions that stabilize the climate,” Cross said.

Recognized nationwide for their leadership on environmental policy issues, Seattle and Portland recently adopted “climate action plans” calling for dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled. But as de Place puts it, “there is a fundamental disconnect between these terrific aspirations and what is happening on the ground with transportation infrastructure.”

Funding for the Seattle and Portland roadways, which will come from a combination of tolling and federal and state coffers, still falls several billion dollars short for both projects.

Given the budget shortfalls, de Place advocates a more incremental approach to fixing the 520 logjam—including low cost congestion management solutions such as van pools.

Gross supports a similar approach to the Columbia River Crossing. “Before we spend $3 billion, let’s start with tolling, then high capacity transit and bike pedestrian facilities, and then see what else needs doing,” she said.

But Carley Francis, spokesperson for the Columbia River Crossing, rejected the idea of phasing in improvements. “We are looking to provide this as a package deal,” she said. “Otherwise it won’t address the problems and need.”

As the nation’s transportation infrastructure continues to deteriorate--and environmental concerns mount--debates over America’s inadequate freeway corridors will likely increase.

For the Washington state department of transportation, the solution is to focus on “context sensitive design," said Babuca.

But that’s not enough for detractors, who said a better freeway is, nevertheless, still a freeway. “We know that building more roads increases gas consumption and traffic,” said de Place. “It’s not rocket science.”