An email to Tom Rasmussen, candidate for Seattle City Council.
It's time to do some serious thinking about how traffic moves. The engineers at WSDOT are locked into a small box with limited vision and leadership through no fault of their own but because of the financial situation of the State. They are engineering for the sake of engineering.
The State, County and City are spending millions on EIS, preliminary design and public information. How many of those millions from the EIS and etc. could be used for some out of the box, effective and innovative thinking?
The cost of $2.44 billion for Light Rail has just this year increased by $89 million due to inflation. The $500 million that Senator Istook form Oklahoma has put the brakes on will just about cover the cost of inflation for the next 4 years.
As an advocate for Senior Citizens, you must realize that secure, effective public transportation is a primary need of seniors. Whether the Monorail and/or bus is used the need is vital. We don't shop at the Mall, we shop in Seattle.
Understandably commercial traffic needs a route through the city. Boeing would still not be able to move aircraft modules on the Viaduct route. The problem can be solved by innovative problem solving. I don't have the answer but I no longer want shiploads of containers driving through our neighborhoods.
The environmental impact statement is now being determined. How will it be looked at? Will the primary goal be to just move traffic from one bottleneck to another as the proposed solutions allow, or will there be substantial mitigation for esthetics, pedestrians, valuable views and a reduction in noise and transportation pollutants?
These are just a few of the points I think about and I hope will give you food for thought.
10:05:26 PM 
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