The Commute

Dave Ryan has finished his masterpiece. It’s hanging in Der Blokken Brewery in Manette.

A bill that passed the State House today would let cities and towns cut speed limits to 20 mph on non-arterial streets. It passed unanimously and now the so-called “Neighborhood Safe Speeds Bill” moves on to the Senate.

Bill proponents say it’s too much hassle now to reduce speed limits, so cities don’t do it. It entails an enginieering and traffic study, which requires staff time and money. The bill would let cities skip that step. It doesn’t mandate that any speed limits be lowered, but gives cities local control to do so if they choose.

Proponents say the bill would make it safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, especially children and old people. I can’t think of any places that around here that would benefit from dropping to 20 mph. Can cars even built to go that slow? Do speedometers work at that speed?

House Republican leaders are expected Tuesday to introduce their version of a transportation bill. It won’t go anywhere and they know it because they’ve loaded it up with a bunch of non-transportation stuff they know the Dems won’t go for.

The bill would mandate new offshore drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; divert oil revenues to pay for transportation projects and require passage of the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  By insisting on these unrelated items, the House GOP is preventing passage of badly needed transportation legislation.

That violates my idea of fairness, no matter which party is doing it. These people are supposed to be grownups and yet they play these silly games with our country.

The ferry media study I wrote about last week wasn’t the one handed in to the Legislature’s Joint Transportation Committee. I was one draft behind, and there are some differences.

What the study doesn’t do, unlike I wrote earlier, is recommend separating car fares from driver fares, eliminating fees that generate little income, and consolidate fares among routes, Kathy Scanlan of consultant Cedar River Group informed me.

It suggests charging the same fare for Southworth-Fauntleroy, Southworth-Vashon and Vashon-Fauntleroy, but not for the Point Defiance-Tahlequah boat, as proposed earlier.

The next step would be for the Legislature to allocate $1.2 million this session to start putting it into play. Of that, $900,000 would go toward automatic vehicle measuring devices and $300,000 to add the stored-ride feature of ORCA for multi-ride cards.

Transportation funds over the next decade will be tied to jobs, jobs, jobs, County Commissioner Charlotte Garrido says, relaying a message from Gov. Gregoire.
Garrido was one of 31 people Gregoire selected to her Connecting Washington Task Force to develop a 10-year funding strategy for the state’s transportation system and present it to the 2012 Legislature.
“The whole time through, we talked about economic development — maintaining jobs and strengthening the economy,” Garrido said of the group’s five meetings.
The other consistent theme was preserving what we have, Garrido said last week.
The task force had to choose whether it thought the state needed $10 billion, $20 billion or $30 billion to get through the decade. It went with $20 million, and developed a menu of options to raise it.
Transportation Secretary Paula Hammond handed out a state map to the group with job clusters shown as yellow dots. The transportation money will be going to connect the dots    and improve freight corridors. There weren’t many dots on this side of Puget Sound.
At a local forum Garrido sponsored Thursday, the group agreed Kitsap must work with neighbors Mason, Jefferson and Clallam counties. What are the region’s industries? Tourism? Boat manufacturing? Ecology? Where do we put our yellow dots.
Garrido said we weren’t supposed to be thinking about individual projects or focusing on our own area. It was hard not to. You wonder what we’re going to get out of the deal. Because our traffic’s not as bad as the east side, will we get our fair share? Of the projects mentioned in the $20 million package, none were in Kitsap, though there was $175 million for a 144-car ferry that would probably benefit us. The ferry is considered preservation because it would replace a really old one.
We have a perfect example of what we don’t want our area to be. Unlike the I-5 corridor, we have to stay ahead of growth.
Gas tax revenues are dwindling. Most of it goes to specific projects. Any that’s left I would use to maintain our existing transportation system. I doubt that it’d be enough. Then if people want to add capacity or go faster, they can pay a toll. That’s the ultimate user fee, even more than the gas tax because it’s tied to a particular project. I hated the toll when they put it on the Narrows Bridge. It costs my family nearly $2,000 a year, and it’s only going to go up. But it beats sitting in traffic a half hour or more each way, not knowing when you’re going to get somewhere, wasting time, polluting.
The state is studying just about every major road east of Puget Sound for tolls — the I-5 express lanes, 405, 509, 167 extension. It’s going to happen. One transponder will work for them all.
Over here, when they widen Hood Canal Bridge to four lanes, there’ll be a toll. The Belfair Bypass is the deemed one of the most important if not the most important project in our area. It’d be new capacity, so should be tolled. There’s not enough traffic to pay for it, though, so I don’t know how you’d handle those situations.
Garrido said the governor was interested in the idea of paying for transportation maintenance and operation with a monthly fee, like a water bill.
“It’s a new world out there,” Garrido said, “and we’re helping the public understand that right now. The public’s going to have to recognize we have to make choices. Things are changing, now we have to change.”

A Washington State Transportation Commission survey released Tuesday shows residents would raise taxes and fees to maintain a good transportation system. Considering the mood of the recession-weary, anti-government populace these days, that’s hard to believe.

Fifty-nine percent said they’d generally support raising some transportation and fees, but only three of nine potential funding sources got a majority. Sixty-one percent would support a vehicle emissions fee, 60 percent a special license fee for electric cars and 52 percent tolls.

The money should first got to maintaining and repairing the existing transportation system, they said, followed by increasing capacity and expanding travel options.

Fifty-nine percent support tolling as a way to pay for major projects, 62 percent support express HOV lanes that single-occupant vehicles can use for a price, 51 percent think toll money should be available for improvements in a traffic corridor instead of just for the project, 63 percent support more state funding for public transit and passenger rail, and 57 percent support using state funds to operate and maintain the state ferry system.

The Transportation Commission invited 100,000 Washington residents to participate in the online survey, with a goal of 5,000 actually taking it. There were 5,518 total responses.

There’s now a survey online for the broader public. It can be taken until the end of the year at www.voiceofwashingtonsurvey.org.

The governor’s Connecting Washington Task Force can use the survey insight into what tax and fees the public will tolerate in making recommendations for a 10-year transportation investment plan.

Well, it’s true, but nothing to get excited about unless you need to get from Wilbur to Keller. Problem is, Lake Roosevelt cuts between the Eastern Washington communities, and residents, school kids, freight haulers and emergency reponders rely on the 63-year-old Martha S. to make the 1.25-mile connection.

On Thursday, the state awarded the contract for a new 20-car ferry to Foss Maritime Co. of Seattle. It’ll build the all-aluminum boat in pieces at it’s Rainier, Ore. plant and ship them to the site for assembly.

Foss’ bid was $9,557,178, about $250,000 less than the state’s estimate. It’s supposed to deliver the ferry in May 2013.

Despite travel-related costs jumping from a year ago, more people are expected to hit the road for Thanksgiving, according to AAA forecasts. The recession has kept them pent up for so long, they can’t take it anymore. They haven’t seen Grandma in a couple years so they’re taking a trip, cost be damned.

People haven’t been traveling the last couple years. In 2007, there were 50.6 million Thanksgiving weekend travelers. That dropped to 37.8 in 2008, 37.7 in 2009 and came back a little to 40.9 million last year. Last year’s trend is expected to continue with 42.5 million travelers next weekend, despite the average cost of unleaded rising 63 cents from a year ago, to $3.74 a gallon.

Thanksgiving will buck the trend so far this year, with travel flat for Memorial Day and down for Independence Day and Labor Day.

Air fares are about 20 percent higher than last year, but AAA expects 1.8 percent more fliers. Hotels are up 6 percent. About the only thing to get a deal on is weekend car rental, at $37 a day.

Travelers will be staying closer to home this year, averaging 706 miles instead of last year’s 816. I’ll be driving 23 miles to work and 23 miles back home, probably somewhere to cover an event and to the sheriff’s office to read reports. You folks be good so I’m not having to write up a bunch of police items, and have a great Thanksgiving.

A stretch of Interstate 5 north of Seattle is the seventh-most jammed-up highway in the country, according to information released by the Weather Channel, Texas Transportation Institute and INRX on Tuesday. It’s a section going south from 145th Street to Union Street in downtown Seattle.

At 145th, commuters from the east side going around the north end of Lake Washington merge onto I-5 with those from the northern suburbs. Then they all combine with commuters coming across the lake on the 520 floating bridge. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when they start collecting tolls on the bridge in a couple months.

California dominated the official top 10 list, so researches chose to look at the list regionally and highlight some of the worst traffic trouble spots for each area. It’s hard to find an open stretch of highway anywhere from San Diego to San Francisco, but the worst stretch in America is the Harbor Freeway/California 110 Northbound route, they say.

Rob McKenna, our state’s attorney general, sent out a press release today warning of the dangers of texting and driving, and announcing a public service advertising campaign to try to curb it. I have to applaud the effort, but I don’t know how they came up with some of the stats they threw in there.

Here’s the best one. “Research has shown that using a cell phone delays a driver’s reactions as much as having a blood alcohol concentration at the legal limit of .08 percent.” That’s from Peggy Conlon, president and CEO of the Ad Council, which is also in on the campaign. That would be some interesting research. You could have a drunk guy driving one car and a person on a phone driving the other, then run out in front of them and see who stops the fastest. I suppose it would hurt about the same no matter who hit you. If drunk driving and cell phone driving are equally dangerous, I would think texting and driving would be worse than drunk driving.

Here are some more stats from the press release. Eighty-two percent of young adult drivers have read a text message while driving. They consider young to be 16 to 24 years old. Seventy-five percent have sent a text message while driving and 49 percent have done it many times.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is also participating in the campaign, says distracted driving is the No. 1 killer of American teens. Sixteen percent of drivers younger than 20 involved in fatal crashes were reported to have been distracted while driving.

Here’s another one I wonder how they figured out. A texting driver, according to the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, is 23 times more likely to be in a crash than a non-texting driver. Their message is clear: “Stop the tests and stop the wrecks.”

They have set up a website at www.stoptextsstopwrecks.org where teens can find facts about the impact of texting while driving, see tips for how to curb the behavior and share their thoughts.