Konstantin Ignatyev
Computer 'whisperer'
I have attended Transportation Summit event at the Impact Hub Seattle and wrote on FB about it
... It looks like I was one of handful of citizen (I mean one of 3 or 5) and the rest were various politicians and representatives of Sound Transit and King County metro. Among many frustrating things this lack of participation from citizens is discouraging - it looks like Washingtonians and Seattleites in particular are OK with traffic congestion.
- I am big supporter of improvements in public transportation system but listening to all those folks I got very disappointed: goals are not set in people oriented term: it would make sense to set goals like improve commuting speed to 25/30 mph from current 12 mph average, instead it was about milking taxpayers for money to support infrastructure and expand little bit;
- there is no courage to position public transportation as competitor to cars as it should be to make transportation viable and profitable, instead they seem to OK with continuing positioning transit as something for poor people that is not profitable to operate. We the people must demand change: we must require government to invest in efficient transportation with goal to reduce time people spend commuting in absolute terms. That would have multiple benefits: -less stress and road rage, people spend more time with families, less CO and other toxins released by idling cars, etc.
- there is will to move away from gas tax to fair use taxation: driver pay proportionally to weight of vehicle and miles travelled, instead they want to increase gas tax more. Guess what: people driving Leaf-s and Tesla-s are not going to pay a dime, event they wear the road and infrastructure the same :). Could of bean done simply by collecting money annually as people pay for tabs and mileage reported checked every few years as vehicle is inspected for emissions, instead they explore some ways to put some /unreliable and expensive/ electronic at the pumps and in the cars to track mileage...
I encourage everybody attend those events and demand action: we all benefit from less congestion and healthier region.
Here I want to expand on that with few images to illustrate my points. Cars were better means of transportation in US for awhile because they allowed people (who can afford them to get where they need to be faster). But that was when there were not that many people concentrated in urban areas.
Now it has changed, population dencity has increased and we simply do not have enough space on the road to fit all the people and move them efficiently.
There are few fundamental things we need to focus on:
- We should demand shorter commute by any means possible
- Fuel tax should not be used to fund road construction and transportation to avoid conflict of interest: vehicles should be taxed according to weight, miles travelled, and surface area they occupy.
- Transit should focus on increasing commuting speed to compete with cars and mean of transportation for middle class.
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Whenever possible transit should be put on separate grade to avoid interference with common traffic.
There are some wonderful and cheap ideas out there:
