
Seattle Is Winning the War on the Car Commute - kevinyen
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/02/seattle-keeps-slashing-its-downtown-driving-rate/553280/
======
aaronbrethorst
Psst, Seattle also has a reliable, free, and open source pair of apps for
knowing where you bus is and when it’ll arrive. These apps are built and
maintained entirely by volunteers. (In the case of iOS, this is basically just
me.)

If you have any background in iOS or Android development and want to help
improve your own commute in Seattle, come check out our projects and pick up a
bug or two. Hundreds of thousands of people will thank you for it.

iOS: [https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-
iphone/](https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-iphone/)

Android: [https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-
android](https://github.com/OneBusAway/onebusaway-android)

Come talk to us on Slack:
[https://onebusaway.herokuapp.com/](https://onebusaway.herokuapp.com/)

~~~
news_to_me
Let me buy you a beer sometime. I can't tell you how valuable OneBusAway has
been to me and my friends — no other transit apps I've seen in any city have
come close to the utility it provides (even if the estimates are sometimes a
bit off).

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Thanks, I appreciate it :)

------
news_to_me
A lot of the anti-transit comments here are simply saying "yeah but it's hard
to get to X place by transit" (particularly Microsoft). This may be true now,
but from my perspective only underscores the need for even better coverage —
for example, ST3 reaching Redmond will help enormously for people getting
between Seattle and Microsoft.

In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart
thing to do — roads are a limited resource, and as the population grows we
have to use them more efficiently. Doing so helps the most people for the
least cost.

I'm sorry if you own a car and things get a little less convenient for you,
but in the end we have to create the most value for the most people,
especially those who don't have the luxury of owning a car.

~~~
chroem-
>In general, focusing on transit at the expense of drivers is simply the smart
thing to do

Light rail will not reach Snohomish County until the mid 2030's. That is not
an acceptable answer.

~~~
news_to_me
So what, we don't invest in light rail at all? That's why we're in the traffic
mess we are now — because voters 30 years ago didn't prioritize long term
improvements.

~~~
chroem-
We are shooting ourselves in the feet by intentionally diminishing road
traffic capacity before the alternative is ready. You are not serving the
underprivileged by making it too expensive to drive, since middle and lower
income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas in the first
place.

~~~
davidw
> middle and lower income people can only afford to live in the outlying areas
> in the first place.

That is a solvable problem: get rid of the zoning that keeps them out.

~~~
chroem-
That's wonderful, but now you're trying to solve mass transit _and_ affordable
housing at the same time. The fact of the matter is that a war on driving is a
war on the working class. You can get a used car for just above $1000, but
that's how much more you would be paying _per month_ to live within transit
distance of your workplace.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Exactly! Making mass transit more feasible as a primary method of commuting
requires more affordable housing near where people work.

~~~
chroem-
If you look at the highly affordable and working class friendly cities in the
midwest and Texas, the one thing that they all share in common is that they
are all highly driveable cities. Rents are driven by supply and demand, so by
allowing people to seek housing away from predetermined transit lines, supply
increases and rents become vastly cheaper.

------
beisner
To add to the points raised in the article, Seattle’s public transit system
and transit policy are just plain _good_. Buses are clean/new, frequent, and
on-time; trains (while they don’t yet extend as far as they need to) are
reliable and have good coverage along frequented routes; HOV lanes are
(finally!!!) present along the entirety of common longer commutes (especially
across the lake).

The bus system is especially critical to this. It doesn’t take billions of
dollars to add a new bus route, or make buses more frequent on a route, so
congestion issues at bus stops are largely addressable. The routes are also
generally being made more convenient, so the added benefit of driving in a car
is diminished.

I live in New York now, and while the subway coverage here is certainly
unbeatable, its unreliability, dirtiness, congestion, and the borderline-
criminal mismanagement of public transit infrastructure in NYC (including
buses) make me really miss living in Seattle.

~~~
andrewguenther
> Seattle’s public transit system and transit policy are just plain good.
> Buses are clean/new, frequent, and on-time; trains (while they don’t yet
> extend as far as they need to) are reliable and have good coverage along
> frequented routes...

Did we live in the same city? This is the exact opposite of my experience with
Seattle transit.

~~~
CarDrone2
We probably don't live in the same place. You see, I live in reality, while
you live in a fantasy world where your ability to drive your car for cheap
matters.

Roads need to be _EXPENSIVE_ to use, Cars need to be expensive to own Transit
needs to be _UBIQUITOUS_ and _CHEAP/FREE_ to use

_ANY_ other combination is insanity. It has been proven time and time again
that any other combination leads to insane amounts of congestion.

~~~
andrewguenther
Did you even reply to the correct comment?

------
mulmen
Public transit in Seattle works for many commuters but the two largest
residential neighborhoods in the city are still poorly served. If you are not
near the main line getting to a bug stop can be very difficult. Local bus
service still seems to be lacking in many areas of the city.

For me it's no problem, both my office and apartment are on the C Line route
but if I lived in North Admiral I would probably just ride my bicycle to work.

Public transit in Seattle is still not convenient or even possible for
actually getting around the city. I still use Uber/Lyft or my own car or
motorcycle to get around other than getting to work and even then I prefer to
ride the motorcycle in traffic over being crammed into the sardine can C-Line.

~~~
news_to_me
Yeah, we could use a lot better coverage in a lot of neighborhoods. Hopefully
expansion of the light rail and bus lines that work with it will help, but I
don't think it can ever ideally serve everyone – which is why we need to make
sure we still adequately serve cyclists and drivers to pick up those who can't
be reached.

But hopefully we can expand transit to where most people choose it over cars.

~~~
mulmen
Yeah we lack a lot of last mile coverage. I'm hoping that with light rail
expansion we keep the same number of buses but move then to more last-mile
service to help people get to light rail stations.

------
loeg
Just anecdotal experience, but I think our increased transit use and decreased
SOV come from a variety of factors:

1\. Geographical limitations (we literally cannot build more freeways) --
we're on an isthmus.

2\. A newfound willingness of the public to vote for transit (ST2, ST3 etc).
Some of this is generational, some is new yuppie residents (i.e., AMZN
employees) (this is not intended as an insult, just a demographic
observation).

3\. As a result of (2), light rail. Light rail is a commuting density godsend
and we're building more of it as fast as we can.

4\. Benefits for HOV carpoolers in the city — access to expressways and HOV
lanes.

5\. Parking lots downtown are too expensive not to sell to developers, and
even if there is a mandatory minimum parking on new construction, it doesn't
seem replace existing supply. So, to put it another way, parking pressure /
increased expense makes driving less appealing.

6\. Rapid ride / BRT ("Bus Rapid Transit")? Some buses are at least supposed
to be very frequent and have fast load/unload. Supposedly they have dedicated
lanes and access, too, although this doesn't always work out in practice.
Still a lot better than the historical Seattle standard of buses every 15-20
minutes that would arrive within +/\- 20 minutes of their scheduled stop time.

------
eksu
How Seattle is winning the war on cars: make driving a car into the city a
living hell, and actively peruse road expansions that make commute times worse
to move people over to mass transit.

Mass transit use up, quality of life down. I've grown up slightly outside of
Seattle and have been working at some startups, but I'm leaving at the end of
this year.

~~~
amsha
Are there any specific actions Seattle has taken to make the driving
experience worse?

~~~
andrewguenther
Yes. Approval of an insane number of construction sites in downtown core has
lead to absolute gridlock, the removal of lanes on arterial roads for wider
bike lanes, and the 405 toll lane are the first which come to mind.

~~~
mulmen
Are you suggesting the city approved building permits to discourage driving?

~~~
throwawaysea
I think what he's saying is that the city has enabled unchecked population
growth, and this has hurt quality of life for those already living here, who
have put down roots, and been paying their taxes. This is plainly true - the
ever increasing height limits in South Lake Union, rezoning of various
neighborhoods, etc. has made it much harder to get around as density increases
and shared resources (e.g. roads, parks, etc.) become vastly over-subscribed.

------
curtis
Cars aren't going away in Seattle. The bus is a good alternative, and maybe
often a superior alternative to driving _if_ you live near a bus line that
also stops near where you are going. If your bus trip involves a transfer, it
is almost always going to be a better choice to drive. Buses are a great, but
they are no panacea.

I guess my real complaint with articles like this is that they assume cars are
a problem and buses are a solution. This is _wrong_. The _problem_ is that I
need to get from point A to point B. Buses are a possible solution, and cars
are a possible solution, bicycling is a possible solution, walking, heck, even
electric skateboards are possible solutions.

The big problem right now in Seattle is that any form of commuting (especially
downtown) sucks. Buses are more popular now and cars less popular now, but
that's largely because for many of us commuting by bus sucks less than
commuting by car. But make no mistake, they both suck.

~~~
loeg
I don't think the authors of the article would really disagree with you.

The problem isn't cars _per se_. It's the percentage of trips made with cars
and the relative low person-density of a SOV (or even a fully occupied car,
relative to fully occupied buses or light rail).

There will always be routes that are not well served by transit compared to
cars. The end goal is not zero trips made with cars. The goal is to make
transit convenient for the majority of trips, so that people choose transit
over cars. The result of higher person-density transit is that travel times do
not become even more unreasonable as the region grows.

------
Ocerge
Here's to hoping Portland's increasingly-awful traffic situation reaches a
similar inflection point where the misery forces people to do something other
than drive.

