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Eric dP: Joel Connelly deserves many kudos for being the first to draw attention to the fact that Tim Eyman’s proposed latest “two-third majority” anti-tax ballot measure is really just a stalking horse for Big Oil. You can tell, as Connelly points out, because oil refiners have already thrown a staggering $350,000 behind his initiative. I really think it’s worth being clear about this: tax policy in Washington State is...

If you want proof of the staying power of a genuinely bad idea, look no further than the primary ballot in Jackson County, Oregon. Voters there will decide on two county charter amendments. One is bizarre, one is both bizarre and pernicious, and both are backed by a Tea Party organization with national reach. The amendments are an attempt to reanimate the corpse of Measure 37, an ill-conceived ballot initiative...

After a topsy-turvy first couple of months—first vacations, then snow—traffic on the newly-tolled SR-520 bridge across Lake Washington seems to have stabilized at about 67,000 cars per day.  That’s down by about a third from last fall’s level, just before the tolls were first levied. But data from the Washington State Department of Transportation shows most of the trips that “disappeared” from SR-520 simply migrated to other routes.

Via Sightline pal Joe Cortright, a graphic depiction of what happens when you toll a formerly free stretch of highway:  the congestion migrates to a nearby, untolled route. For those not familiar with Seattle traffic, SR-520 is the northern Lake Washington crossing on the map above. The bridge has been the bane of commuters for quite some time: state traffic figures suggest that it’s been full during rush hour for over...

Permeable pavement can make old-school road engineers and pavement builders anxious. To them, the idea of water seeping through roads like they’re made of Swiss cheese just doesn’t seem right. Water runs off roads, not through them. Or at least it used to. In the Northwest, there’s a growing acceptance of the use of pervious concrete and porous asphalt for roads, sidewalks, parking lots, and driveways. The unconventional pavement does...

The bad news: nearly 33,000 people in the US died in car crashes last year. The good news: that was the lowest number of collision fatalities since 1949!! Take a look at the chart, from the US Department of Transportation: the black lines represent the number of fatalities each year, and the green line represent fatality rates per 100 million vehicle miles. Total fatalities are at their lowest level since...

Stormwater has been kicking the Northwest’s butt. Armed with back-to-back deluges, the region’s polluted runoff has shown no mercy. For weeks it has soaked us to our socks with deceptively deep and oily puddles. It’s sent icy trickles of rain snaking off awnings and splatting our cheeks and foreheads. It has forced us to leap, not always so nimbly, its muddy mini rapids just to reach the safety of the...

Hey gang!  We’ve got a new report out today: a literature review on the accuracy of tolling revenue forecasts. In a nutshell, both national and international experience shows that official tolling forecasts tend to overestimate real-world toll road revenue—particularly where drivers can choose alternative, toll-free routes. If the research holds true for our part of the world, there could be lots of implications for highway finance.  Read on for more… It...

Alan: Guess which mode of transportation flourished after the East Coast earthquake, as it did in Japan? Cycling. Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare had record ridership during the two hours after the quake. David Alpert described the bike rush in the Washington Post. Mark Hinshaw has an insightful piece in Crosscut. (We put it in Sightline Daily, but you might have missed it.) It documents the way sprawl and foreclosures coincide...

Four of our friends and environmental colleagues recently made a case for tunneling under downtown Seattle to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. They, along with many of our friends in the labor and business communities, have concluded that the tunnel is the only viable path forward. It pains us to disagree, because we respect them and value the relationships and accomplishments that our work together has brought. As a citywide...