solarbird | (Reply)

From:

Adding a lane to I-5 through Seattle was estimated to be well over a billion dollars a mile per lane, and that was back in 1998 or so. I imagine it's only gotten worse since then, given property values and such.

That said, my concern here isn't with telling Portland to go back and try again. I have no problems believing a regional transportation agency is sucking, believe me. I have no problems with them saying, "your plan is b0rken, try again." But I do have an issue with a response being "change your intent completely in such a way that makes you do something completely unlike your desired goals and increases dependency on oil." Just because most of the country is Cars Uber Allies doesn't mean everywhere is, or should be.

I mean, there's pretty much a consensus up here that we aren't going to road-build our way out of transportation problems. Even the car-heavy eastside has been asking (and voting for) more transit these days, and they're going to get a chance to vote on rail expansion to the eastside this fall. Is the FHA going to come try to tell us to fuck off and start building 18-lane highways like in Houston instead? I mean, if that's what Texas wants to do, I might think it's a bad idea, but I'm not going to tell them to fuck off and start building monorails.