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  (This post is part of a series.) As Joel Connelly points out in today’s P-I, there’s no guarantee that I-912—the Washington State initiative that would roll back the most recent hike in state gas taxes—will pass.  That said, repeal of the gas tax looks pretty likely, in no small part because of the surprisingly tepid response from the state’s business community, which had previously been outspoken in its support...

If you want an example of what sets greater Vancouver apart from the cities south of the US-Canadian border, look no farther than this Vancouver Sun headline: Council votes to turn two of six lanes on Burrard Bridge into dedicated bike lanes. Just for context—the Burrard Bridge is one of just a few main access points to downtown Vancouver, and carries a significant amount of car traffic into downtown from...

First, London started charging cars a fee to enter the city center—a move widely credited with easing congestion and making it easier to get around in the crowded downtown. Now, the British government is considering instituting congestion pricing for the entire nation. Says this BBC article: The London scheme brought in two years ago is reckoned a success in reducing traffic congestion, despite the fears voiced in advance. The daily...

Seattle’s monorail project has smashed into the biggest bump in its bumpy history. This is hardly news anymore: the $2 billion 14-mile line will end up costing $11 billion, with $9 billion in interest payments, and the tax to fund it will extend until 2053. City hall and Olympia are, in short, freaking out. Read about it here, here, and here. There’s good reason to freak out. The monorail financing...

(This post is part of a series.) I haven’t had much new to say about Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct saga, despite the fact that there have been a bunch of significant developments of late: Late last month, Governor Gregoire signed off on a 9.5 cents per gallon gas tax increase, which would provide (among other things) $2 billion to replace the Viaduct.  But the Viaduct only gets that money if...

I’ve been putting off commenting on Washington State’s recently-passed $8 billion transportationpackage—funded by a 9.5 cent per gallon increase and new weight-based vehicle fees—until I could figure out exactly how I feel about it. I still can’t. It’s complicated. In general, I like taxes on gasoline.  Gasoline carries many costs—security, air and water pollution, climate-warming emissions, and the like—that aren’t captured by the market price.  Which means that, no matter...

Via Planetizen, some depressing news:  an international study has found that transportation planners regularly get their traffic and rail ridership forecasts wrong.  And not just by a little.  Half of all road traffic forecasts are wrong by at least 20 percent (though road projects tend to get a little more traffic than forecasted).  Rail ridership, on the other hand, is typically less than half (ouch!!) of what the planners forecast. ...

  (This post is part of a series.) For a couple years now I’ve been obsessed, on and off, with the fate of the Alaskan Way Viaduct:  its history (Seattle’s first major urban highway), its present (a seismically unstable eyesore that cuts off development options on Seattle’s downtown waterfront), and its future (still a conundrum—the city and the state want to replace it with a $4 billion tunnel, but nobody...

Earlier this week I grumped that this Seattle Times editorial misled readers about the finances behind a four-cent per gallon statewide gas tax.  Among other problems, the editorial overstates how much a four-cent per gallon gas tax could accomplish.  Over 30 years, it would finance less than $2 billion in infrastructure projects, which would only begin to pay for the highway projects—such as rebuilding the Alaskan Way Viaduct (expected to...

 (This post is part of a series.) The Seattle Times editorializes today in favor of a four cent per gallon hike in the Washington state gas tax. Now, I’m typically in favor of higher gas taxes, on the grounds that the fuel’s massive externalities—ranging from overseas defense costs, to government subsidies to oil companies, to infrastructure costs for roads and highways, to global warming and air pollution—aren’t reflected in the...