How about establishing a green belt encircling downtown, large enough to accommodate all cars that would ordinarily head downtown? Have electric golf carts or equivalent available at no charge. This is just a vague vision, details such as maintenance, etc., etc., would have to be worked out. At least it is an idea.

— Jim Brinkley
Seattle

Get going with rail

I read in The Seattle Times that the replacement of an overpass in Bellevue will cost $16 to $20 million and that additions to the 520 bridge will cost between $9.4 and $4.9 billion, an average $7 billion. At the present time when Bellevue has the Arts and Crafts Fair buses have to run from park-and-rides and church parking lots to Bellevue Square because there is not enough parking. Also consider the traffic and parking problems for the sport facilities at the UW, Safeco Field, Key Arena and this fall the Seahawks Stadium. For an average of $7 billion the 520 bridge would cost, approximately 70 miles of monorail could be built. I believe it is a far better choice. Seattle Elevated Transit estimates its monorail will cost less than $100 million per mile.

Other suggestions:

• Boeing has loaned skilled employees to various agencies, so why couldn't they provide some people with system management and technical skills to work on a proposal? If Boeing came up with a viable proposal, maybe the cities and counties would give them a contract to develop a detailed plan for a rapid-transit system. Also, if this monorail system was built, Boeing and other industries could add spurs to their facilities and have a monorail train with flat cars that they use to transport light-weight containers at night.

There are other routes such as South Sammamish Plateau to Issaquah to Factoria or I-90 to Seattle; Redmond to Microsoft to Crossroads to Bellevue Community College and Bellevue Transit Center. Also in the Seattle area: West Seattle to Fourth Avenue monorail and University to Ballard to Seattle Center.

• Utilize the Burke-Gilman Trail and surface streets to provide service from Redmond to Tacoma. Supports for the monorail can straddle the trail. Service would start east of Redmond on the Redmond-Fall City Road at a new park-and-ride . . . onto the trail through the Redmond industrial complex, at Woodinville leave the trail and go to the south end of the technology corridor . . . Next go to Bothell and back to the trail and at the University of Washington go via Pacific Avenue to Roosevelt then over a new bridge that clears boat traffic to Harvard Avenue to Roanoke to 10th Avenue to Broadway to Yesler to . . . the bus tunnel. From there . . . on to East Marginal Way to the Southcenter Mall then to the airport. From the airport to Highway 99 and to the Tacoma Dome and downtown Tacoma.

• To serve Kirkland, Bellevue and Renton, install a monorail over the existing railroad starting at Woodinville then to existing park-and-rides in Kirkland, then go off the rail line to Bellevue Transit Center. From there go via Richards Road to Factoria Mall then on to the rail line through Renton and south of Highway 405 through the industrial corridor and connect to the other monorail line at Tukwila or Southcenter.

• To serve Everett to Seattle start at the Boeing Everett plan, which has large parking lots and go the Alderwood Mall then either on the old Interurban Trail as far as it goes then Highway 99 or stay on Highway 99, which has more businesses to 105th then to Northgate Mall and Northgate Transit Center. From the center go on Roosevelt Avenue to join the monorail line near University Bridge.

Funding: Raise the gas tax 6 cents per gallon for King, Snohomish and Pierce counties and designate 3 cents for monorail construction. Change laws if necessary to do it. Raise the gas tax 3 cents per gallon for the rest of the state. In addition, tax studded tires to pay for the damage they do: $10 per new tire and $5 to reinstall a used one. Cancel Sounder rail construction and use the funds for monorail. Also impose a pollution tax: At the time of license renewal tax vehicles as follows: "zero" emission, zero; four-cylinder or less, $20; six-cylinder, $30; eight or above, $40; trucks with one set of dual wheels, $50; two sets of dual wheels, $60; trailers 20 feet or less, $20; trailers from 20 feet to 30 feet, $30; trailers 30 to 40 feet, $40; trailers over 40 feet and motor homes, $50, and commercial semi-trailers, $80. These taxes would be for owners in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties. The money would go for construction and operation of the monorail system and would have a 10-year limit.

If people commuting in autos want to get rid of gridlock they will have to subsidize rapid transit. Once people start riding the monorail system some of the parking lots at shopping malls, Boeing plants and sports facilities would have open spaces for park-and-ride commuters.

— Glen A. Carey
Seattle

C'mon downtown

The best future for Seattle:

1.) Let traffic choke on itself.

2.) That will force folks in outlying areas to use common sense and move downtown.

3.) To accommodate that hoped-for influx, the city should allow higher residential buildings and increased density.

4.) But at the same time (how's that for the famed Seattle process?) encourage preservation and increase of low-income housing by increased issuing of local tax credits and tradeoffs for such efforts.

5.) Support the obtaining of a downtown supermarket by the same process or at least by the relaxing of building requirements.

The smartest thing that my wife and I ever did, 16 years ago, was to move downtown. It's a safe and exciting lifestyle. We walk, day and night, to SAM, Benaroya, numerous stage and film theaters, the city's most interesting restaurants and have great bus service to everywhere. I believe that if more suburbanites were to be more aware of this situation, the spread into rural areas would thankfully abate. C'mon downtown!

— Martin Paup
Seattle

Look at Clustered Low-Rises

Your conclusion that Seattle must build "up" (i.e., air is free) and not "out" (i.e., land is prohibitively expensive) is correct. I reached this same conclusion in a "futures study" I did in 1998. (See Family Low-Rise Cluster Homes flyer presented at a forum on affordable housing by Rep. Velma Veloria, Jan. 30, 1999 at the Jefferson Center, stemming from Mayor Paul Schell's citywide conference March 28, 1998.)

Seventy-five percent of the land in Seattle is zoned for single-family use. Most of this housing is getting old, and land owners have only two choices: 1) remodel an existing home or 2) tear down the present home and build a new one. Both options are prohibitively expensive and usually well beyond a young or middle-income family looking to buy a home near work where they can build equity instead of renting — with equity at least they will have a roof over their head when they get old.

The solution to affordable housing and the alleviation of traffic congestion is political and not technical or economic. I believe with the stroke of voters' pens, Seattle and King County could create a third option that would provide a profit to any landowner who wished to do so to either pay off an existing mortgage and/or augment an existing pension — both positive attributes for the common good. Furthermore, "free enterprise" financing required would be from private sources and not require government funding or taxes.

The proposal suggested for consideration is to allow a third choice: Build 2, 3 or 4 Family Low-Rise Cluster (FLRC) homes on an average 50 x 100-foot lot with vertical orientation rather than horizontal as at present. That is, basically people will walk up and down stairs in their three-story homes (healthier), instead of across in hallways in one- or two-story homes as at present. With the land cost divided into more home sites and no costs for existing streets, sidewalks, sewers, utilities, police, metro services, libraries etc., overall costs are reduced significantly both for the land owner and for governments involved. Homes can range from 750 to over 2,000 square feet with common easements for ingress and egress with only one spot allowed for parking. (John Malmfeld, retired Kirkland architect, has designed the concept, which has been proposed by Donna Shirey, second-vice president-elect of the Seattle Master Builders Association.) Seattle does not yet need to build row housing wall to wall as now often is done in San Francisco, Boston and elsewhere. I believe Seattle and King County can provide equity affordable housing, significantly alleviate traffic congestion, more than double the density (without reduction of light and air) all for the common good.

— Dick Spady
President, Forum Foundation
Seattle

Control population

"What happened?" After 20 years of business and political leaders saying "Growth is Good" you ask "What happened?" These are two sound bites we never hear, "Economic Equilibrium" and "Population Stabilization." If we have this level of congestion with a population of 285 million, just think what it will be like in 2050 with a projected population of 400 million. Action is required now. HR5013 may not be the complete solution but it would be a positive start. Contact your congressional representative today.

— Bill Wampler
Seattle

Crowd us to save us

I completely agree that the only way our city is going to survive as a city and our environment survives as a wilderness is to manage growth through acknowledging that "congestion is our friend." This is the reason I voted against Referendum 51. We don't need money for more roads as this would encourage even more traffic and more sprawl. We need congestion to reach a boiling point so folks realize that we need to live differently before it's too late, before we destroy the reason we all live here: our environment.

We need to change our mindset to one where we jump on a train to get to work rather than hop in our cars to trek up or down I-5. Accordingly, we need to build those trains or monorails (or whatever — just build it!) to accommodate the new commute plans. We're living very close to many people in the Seattle area, and we need to start acting like it. To our TBD city planners: Build up our downtown areas with business AND condos/apartments, and provide bike trails and public transportation so we can navigate the new metropolis.

— Greg "I Hate my Commute" Lewerenz
Snohomish

Circle the freeways

I am a bus person. I love the time to read, sleep or listen to the radio.

Since I started work in Kent five years ago, I have not been able to commute by bus from Kirkland without the expectation of driving to the park-and-ride and having two or three bus transfers plus taking up to 2 hours one way, not to mention I probably couldn't make it to work by 6 a.m.

I was very thrilled to notice a few months ago that a bus went from Kent on 405 past Kirkland to Everett. Unfortunately, it's for Boeing people and goes only north in the morning and south in the evening. Exactly opposite of what I need.

I know buses can't go and get us from and to everywhere in one trip, but this is madness.

So, get the monorail or light rail to go in a circle on the freeways around Lake Washington both ways. Have tons of buses radiate out from there. Make it fast and predictable.

I agree. There has been no vision, just "Let's not step on toes," just "Let them like me so they will elect me next time."

— Shelley George
Seattle

Immigration and migration ignored

The article on the congestion question lists a number of relative and coherent reasons for the increasingly congested automobile/transportation problem in the Seattle area. However, it failed to mention the two major contributing factors, evidently viewing them as inevitable and not susceptible to remedy or solution.

These two major contributing factors consist, first, of the national failure to control the growing influx of unskilled illegal immigrants into this nation. Second, the continuing flight of many citizens from the interior part of the nation to the Southwest and West Coast states.

Most citizens appear ignorant or indifferent to the long-term national basic-resource policies and programs that led to the gradual departure of many farmers and ranchers from the agricultural farm and mountain states. That the suicide rate among ranchers and farmers is three times the national average also appears to evoke little public interest.

— William R. Greutman
Seattle

Bah to the bunch of boxes

I could not agree with you more how Seattle has changed. When I shop downtown, I feel sad that all we have are big, boxy buildings, and more are being built. Even when Nordstrom remodeled the old Frederick & Nelson building, it is just like a box inside with ugly ceiling lights on the main floor, all the nice façade is gone.

The Bon is the only building that, when you walk inside, it is like going back in time. I realize that things and time change, but unfortunately we have not had any leaders in this city since before the 1962 World's Fair.

The only mayor who did a few good things for Seattle was Wes Uhlman. The rest of the pack have made Seattle what it is today — a mess. We also haven't had a directional governor in this state for years.

I have worked in the Ballard area for 40 years, and unfortunately the people of Ballard and the Chamber of Commerce have let all these ugly apartments and condos be built, and they have really taken away the unique community it once was.

We were like you and moved to Shoreline because of the terrible Seattle School District. Our children graduated with good educations.

For personal reasons we had to move back to Ballard to be close to doctors. And, like you mentioned, the awful inflated prices on these old homes are terrible. I feel sorry for young people who can't afford to buy a house because of the prices.

I know when Shoreline was in the stages of becoming a city, I went to several meetings and put my input on not becoming another Ballard with apartments and businesses all over, but try to keep them in defined areas. I think Shoreline so far has done a good job.

— Anice King
Seattle

Each one must make choices

Author William Dietrich's "fourth idea," the "enviro option," does seem to be where we are headed. Given the apparent lack of appetite among voters for substantial transportation projects for roads/bridges, I cannot see any other option. Voters who are unwilling to make hard, costly decisions about transportation — with the exception of the monorail — surely do not expect elected officials to resolve this mess without new funding.

I live in a West Seattle condo, built in 1980, with Fauntleroy ferry traffic flowing by, along with other city noises. I have come to enjoy deck gardening, and my cat has become accustomed to the deck as her only regular access to being outdoors. There is a park within easy walking distance, good bus connections and the Junction business district just up a hill. I have lived without a car for more than two years now, using Metro Vanpool and occasional rental cars, even though I work in Bellevue and have friends spread out from Kent to Fremont. It can be done.

However, if I had a child, or if my work schedule didn't allow that "overtime" be via dial-up connections from home, I think I would have to have a car. The monorail, if it is actually built, will be a help to me, but we also need east-west connections, and for the trains that run through Kent and south to run hours other than just rush hours.

These additional transportation options, though, are only feasible if we have more density. There have to be enough of us who are willing to get out of our cars and get into the bus or train or monorail. As traffic worsens, there will be more.

And we all need to think realistically about how to proceed. We need to think of "perfect world" options, then look at what can practically be done, given the tightness of governmental budgets, of voters' hesitation in providing new funds, the land-use issues that come into play in expanding or siting roads/bridges/rail lines. For example, I would like to see HOV lanes both directions on I-90, as I know more people would carpool or vanpool or bus as traffic worsens. However, I understand that local drivers will not tolerate losing general-purpose lanes to HOV. Given that, I would only consider HOV options on I-90 that do not cost general-purpose lanes. Also, I know that the tolerance for budgeting major construction projects is very limited, so I look for a solution that involves the minimum in capital outlay. Perhaps restriping or rethinking the two-lane, one-directional HOV lanes are options. The point is that I do not want to waste time or energy on ideas, even when there is a good idea, on options that for practical, political or budgetary reasons simply are not reasonable.

I know that as a 1994 arrival I have contributed to traffic and housing problems. For my part, I try to be reasonable, to cooperate. I was active in the neighborhood-planning process. I have slowly weaned myself from my car. I shop in my neighborhood and downtown, and I get around via public transit. I chose Seattle after, literally, considering cities coast-to-coast across the United States. I am here, and I intend to stay. I am confident that we will find our way through our housing crunch and our transit woes, and I am reasonably certain that we will do this in a way that supports a healthy mix of population — income, race, and, I hope, even political affiliation.

— Sarah McCaghren
Seattle

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