Related Content
More About
HAS INTERSTATE 405 gotten too big for its britches? That's a question voters will have to answer this November, when they cast their ballots on Referendum 51, the statewide proposal to increase the gas tax. If the measure passes, nearly $1.8 billion of the proposed $7.7 billion in new taxes will start flowing toward I-405, making it the largest highway expansion project in recent memory.
I-405 is by far the largest single component of the statewide proposal. It's also the most controversial, both for its impressive size—the $1.77 billion is just a down payment on this $10 billion project —and for its dubious claim as the solution to the Eastside's traffic problems.
Ostensibly, the Washington Department of Transportation (WSDOT) considered different options for I-405 before settling on its "preferred alternative." At one end was the requisite "do nothing" option; at the other, a massive road expansion that would have added six lanes, increased bus service, and widened connecting arterials like state Route 167. Little wonder, then, that WSDOT ultimately settled on what seemed the most moderate of the four alternatives: expanding I-405 for two (and sometimes three) lanes in each direction, adding some bus and vanpool service, and improving freeway interchanges.
But for a road expansion that's supposed to reduce congestion and improve travel times, I-405 promises to do neither. Instead, it's likely to foster new development on the rural fringe, create more traffic on I-405 and arterial streets, and accelerate the demise of salmon and other threatened species. Here are four good reasons to oppose this highway from hell and push for a plan that supports alternatives like toll lanes, trip reduction, and transit.
1. It won't reduce congestion.
Proponents of I-405 expansion, such as Sen. Dan McDonald, R-Bellevue, insist that the project will bring traffic on the highway back to "the way congestion was in 1985"—you know, when Renton was a cow pasture. "Your life is going to be better," McDonald vows. WSDOT has also been quick to tout the expansion as a congestion cure-all. In its preferred alternative, the transportation agency claims the expanded roadway will "reduce congestion [and] fix choke points" in places like SR-167 in Renton, where congestion (defined as average travel speeds of less than 45 mph, according to I-405 project manager Craig Stone) can last up to 12 hours a day.
But decades of research into the effects of road expansion show quite the opposite: Far from solving the problem of congestion, new capacity actually generates new traffic, causing people to change their driving behaviors—by driving at rush hour, taking longer or more frequent trips, or routing trips onto newly expanded freeways—and producing sprawl in suburban cities on the fringes of the expanded highway. Conversely, congestion can actually help prevent more congestion by encouraging people to time their trips around peak periods, drive alternative routes, or find ways of getting to work besides driving alone.
"People see that initial capacity and are willing to take more trips and longer trips in the first several years," says Peter Hurley, director of the Transportation Choices Coalition. But pressure on the system builds, and after about five years, sprawl—office parks, cul-de-sac communities, and big-box retail stores like Kmart and Home Depot—starts to sprout in formerly rural areas, and roads that were once wide open become conduits for gridlock. "It's cheap and easy for developers to buy land on the edge and ask the public to build the wide roads to get there," Hurley says. Which makes it easier for people who work in Bothell to buy houses on the eastern edge of Bellevue—and drive alone to their office parks in their SUVs. WSDOT, by the way, is not unaware of this paradox—the agency's own figures reveal that expanding I-405 by four lanes will only increase the average speed in the corridor by about 1 mph.
Eleven years ago, the state of Washington adopted the Growth Management Act, which required the state's fastest-growing counties to develop their infrastructure in a way that controls sprawl, protects the environment, and concentrates growth in urban areas. Now, with sprawl threatening to overwhelm road capacity on the Eastside, we're at a do-or-die moment. Our options: Give in to the road warriors who say congestion can only be fixed with more concrete, or find other solutions that will make a difference in the long term.
2. It's too expensive.
Whatever I-405's merits as a congestion reliever, the cost is sure to be jaw dropping. Transportation Choices' Hurley calls I-405 "the gold-plated Yugo of transportation plans—it's gold-plated because it's very expensive, and it's a Yugo because it doesn't deliver much." At $10 billion, I-405 would cost five times as much as Sound Transit's light rail, which has been maligned by critics for its expense. "When all this is said and done," says Transportation Choices' Kevin Shively, "Sound Transit's going to be chump change compared to I-405."
That's a bitter irony for folks like King County Council member Dwight Pelz, D-Seattle, who's spent years battling light-rail critics who say Sound Transit is pledging too much money for a system that does too little. "For someone to say that $2 billion spent on light rail is a waste of money and that $10 billion on I-405 is a good investment is just wacko," Pelz says.
