Congestion in the Puget Sound region is terrible and can't get much worse — or can it?

Recent studies estimate another 1.2 million of us will be living here by 2030, and we will each be spending an average of 70 hours more per year sitting in traffic.

The good news is there is something that can be done to accommodate this growth and preserve the quality of life we prize: We can enhance mobility throughout the region.

The Puget Sound region urgently needs to expand and enhance our transportation network with solutions that meet the markets they serve. First and foremost, we need better general capacity for cars and freight (because that is and will continue to be the vastly preferred mode). We also need mass transit to serve commuters; public transportation throughout the region; and options for alternatives such as ferries, bikes and pedestrians.

We have taken a big step in the right direction with the 2005 statewide transportation funding package. No one likes new taxes, but enhancing mobility will cost money, and delays only drive costs higher. This region is going to grow and if we don't address our problems now, congestion will go from very bad to something much worse.

With the new statewide funding plan, we can finally begin to address the congestion resulting from decades of neglecting our freeway and arterial system. The plan includes funding for critically important projects for the Eastside. Interstate 405 will receive $1 billion in investments, on top of the half-billion dollars approved in 2003 — significant progress along a corridor plagued by 12 hours of congestion a day.

And yet, there are those who would have you sign an initiative to undo this progress. Everyone who travels this corridor, from parents who make that frantic day-care dash at the end of the workday to workers and suppliers getting to job sites, knows how important it is to reduce congestion. Everyone using the I-405 corridor should loudly cheer the news that, finally, someone is doing something about it!

The next step is winning approval of the Regional Transportation Investment District (RTID) funding package, likely to be on the ballot in November of 2006. This approval will be needed to keep the resources allocated to road projects in this region from being reallocated along different priorities.

Together with freeway and arterial fixes that will come from the statewide funding plan and the RTID, our region also needs to address mass-transit solutions. Sound Transit has begun airing plans to extend the system approved by voters in 1996, and has recently published several options for extending mass transit to serve East King County, including various alternatives involving bus rapid transit, light rail, and/or monorail.

Extension of the Sound Transit system to the Eastside will succeed at the November 2006 ballot box if Sound Transit leaders establish a solid rationale and strategy that provide voters with the alternative that absorbs the most congestion, is most cost-effective, makes the right connections, and meets the real needs of the markets it serves.

The Bellevue Downtown Association has encouraged the Sound Transit board to continue with its Phase II planning process, while at the same time urging it to do the analysis needed to develop that rationale and strategy and produce simple, clear information that will convince voters that the expenditure of several billion dollars will significantly reduce congestion.

The most important connection an extended Sound Transit system can make is between downtown Seattle and downtown Bellevue, beginning with the I-90 corridor.

Downtown Bellevue is one of four major transportation and economic hubs in the region (along with Seattle, Tacoma and Everett). Any system serving the Eastside must connect directly with downtown Bellevue because it is uniquely positioned on the Eastside as a strategic crossroads of three major corridors. It is both logical and consistent with regional growth management and transportation planning to connect the major urban centers of the region.

Over the next 20 years, 70 percent of Bellevue's growth in jobs and housing will be channeled into our downtown. Concentrating regional transportation infrastructure is part of what will continue to make downtown Bellevue a great place to live, work, shop and play — a critical underpinning to achieving the planning target.

By the same token, concentrating growth in centers like downtown Bellevue protects single-family neighborhoods everywhere by absorbing development. And, by connecting high-capacity traffic to the transportation hub in downtown Bellevue, with direct and convenient access to the regional freeways, we will help to reduce cut-through traffic in adjacent neighborhoods.

In addition to making the best possible connections in downtown Bellevue, any mass-transit system designed to serve the Eastside must preserve mobility for single-occupant and high-occupancy vehicles, with no net reduction in the capacity for either type of vehicle. We must make things better, not worse, for SOV and HOV drivers.

As we focus now on regional strategies, including Sound Transit Phase II, we urge you to support efforts to enhance mobility in our region — in ways that work for all of us.