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You're Welcome

Thank you for a brilliant issue [Sep 28, 2006]. Maria Tomchick's cover story was particularly good. It is so important to repeat the crimes and lies of this administration over and over. Only when we get tired of hearing it, do we know that it is beginning to sink in to the rest of America. I appreciated the other articles as well--the strike in Oaxaca (I was there in February this year), Hugo Chavez's speech, and Hanford. I even wrote my legislators about one item I found in the "shorts," and I shopped one of your advertisers yesterday. Great job. Keep it up.

My subscription check is going in the mail today. I prefer to read a paper newspaper with my coffee at Victrola on Saturday mornings, even though it is available on line.

Thanks!

--Janice Van Cleve, Seattle

Transportation Solutions, Sort Of

Eight billion dollars! That's a lot of money to spend, especially when we need to spend it on other things. What we need are cost effective solutions meeting the needs of the common working Joe ... not the rich who need to drive around four-wheel living rooms the size of an SUV!

There are two ideas not receiving due attention: 1) Simply take the top deck off the Alaskan Way Viaduct and reinforce the bottom deck. 2) Replace the 520 Bridge with a ferry boat.

By eliminating the top deck, it will eliminate the "crush hazard." It makes the Viaduct more stable in an earthquake. The bottom deck would be reinforced. The Viaduct then would become a two lane HOV (High Vehicle Occupancy). During non-rush hours, the Viaduct could be open to truck traffic. And late at night, it would be open to general traffic.

Replacing the 520 Bridge with a ferry boat system drastically reduces the capital cost. Again, during rush hours the ferry boats would carry just buses, vanpools, and 4 passenger carpools. During non-rush hours it would be open to truck traffic. And during late night hours, it would be open to general traffic.

Not only do both of these ideas cost only 10% of the cost of the present grandiose schemes, these could be built within a few short years, not ten. It is time that the City Council, Governor, and Mayor faced reality ... we just don't got eight billion dollars.

--Martin Nix, Seattle

G.P. replies: Martin, I empathize with the impulse you and many others have to invest solely in public transit and attempt to choke off the usefulness of the private automobile. However, it's not quite as cheap as you suggest. If we don't have eight billion, we surely don't have the tens of billions (or more) necessary to reconfigure both our entire transportation system and Seattle's geography.

Eliminating SR99 as a traffic arterial has a lot of problems, but let's set that aside for now. With respect, eliminating the Evergreen Point Bridge entirely, and replacing it with a transit ferry, would be a transportation catastrophe. There's reasons why the Eastside has a million residents, and Bremerton and Bainbridge Island don't. Lack of a bridge across Puget Sound (one occasionally gets proposed that would connect West Seattle, Vashon, and Southworth, but mercifully it's never been built) would be a transportation catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands commute daily from Seattle to Microsoft and other Eastside employers, and from the Eastside to downtown and the University District. SR520, even in its present, often gridlocked capacity, carries far more of them than a transit ferry ever would. Result: commuters would do what I do now when I go to KBCS in Bellevue 2-3 times a week, and go miles out of their way to cross at the six-lane I-90. Result: that crossing would frequently become gridlocked and useless, too. That should especially thrill Mercer Island residents. And unlike the Alaskan Way Viaduct, there are no other ways to cross Lake Washington. In other words, your proposal would effectively sever Seattle from the Eastside for much of the day. Unless you want to go via Renton or Bothell, and those would become traffic nightmares, too.

To me, given that many folks won't be dragged kicking or screaming into public transit, given that the urban geography of all but a few bigger US cities is now based on the automobile, and given the science Colin Wright outlines this issue, it makes far more sense to urgently focus on conversion to alternative fuels (including biodiesel and electric, which already exist) than to rely largely on local strategies to force people out of cars. The latter won't work, and is impractical (and, speaking as a sick guy, more than a little elitist) besides. Curb sprawl? Absolutely. Make it impossible to drive? Ain't gonna happen.

Picky, Picky

Thanks for running "Checking the Ingredients of Private Health Insurance" (9/14/06). I apologize for one confusing, maybe non-fatal, editing error in the last paragraph. The line about calling for insurers that only invest in organics and other benign things should not have ended with "...to be permitted anywhere near the compulsory system." That was confusing. That should have said that insurers invested only in benign things ought be the only ones permitted in the system. Insurers that invest in health-damaging industries are the ones that ought not be allowed anywhere near the system.

--John Jonik, Philadelphia