|
|
|
 |
|
Home / Washington Business - May/June 2005 / Q&A with Kemper Freeman: Puget Sound Needs Better Roads |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Q&A with Kemper Freeman: Puget Sound Needs Better Roads |
|
|
|
Written On: May/June 2005 |
|
|
|
Kemper Freeman, Jr. is chairman and CEO of Kemper Development Co. Through funding and research, he is actively seeking a solution to traffic congestion in the Puget Sound region.
Editor’s Note: In our last issue, Bellevue businessman Kemper Freeman, Jr. described how transportation dollars being spent on the east side of Puget Sound would be better used to upgrade the highway system instead of adding to a little-used light-rail system. Freeman also has strong views on other high-dollar projects under consideration.
Q What are some of the findings of the transportation study you commissioned?
A One of the shocks we found is that no public agency in the State of Washington—and there are hundreds of them that are charged with transportation—has any plan to make congestion better tomorrow than it is today or to make transportation work better. That’s not even a goal of anybody we can find. The plan we’ve put together with private dollars is one of the least-expensive transportation plans being proposed, and it’s the only one that makes anything better than it is today.
This study is real; this is a study we could implement. If we’re going to maintain quality of life in the Northwest, this is what we’re going to need to do in order to have that happen.
Q If the Legislature came up to you and said, “Kemper, here’s a blank check,” how much would you need to execute this plan?
A This plan over 30 years in today’s dollars would cost less than $30 billion.
Q So that’s less than two-thirds of the Sound Transit plan?
A Less than 30…in fact it could be closer to 20. The only reason I’m fudging a little bit is that our state seems to be in love with process and unnecessary costs are added to these projects with endless process.
Put that in perspective. The Washington Research Council did a study a couple of years ago that showed congestion was costing us in Puget Sound about $9.4 billion a year. If we just continue to do nothing and congestion gets no worse it would, in today’s dollars, cost us $282 billion—$9.4 billion times 30 years. Doing nothing over the next 30 years will cost 10 times what our plan would cost.
Another way I’m looking at it is the quality of life. Currently you and I, and all of us on Puget Sound, are stuck in traffic 65 hours a year, and it appears that if we follow the metropolitan transportation plan of the moment that goes up to around 120, 130 hours per year. That’s intolerable.
Q Who have you tried to interest in your plan?
A We’ve gone to the DOT, the House and Senate Transportation Committees. We’ve talked to the King County Council; we’ve talked to the City of Bellevue. I’ve gone out and given this talk over 150 times in the last four years everywhere from Vancouver, Wash. to Spokane, to Bellingham, and all over the Eastside. I haven’t been in a single place where people haven’t been very receptive to this plan and wonder why we are not doing it.
It’s our little idea up against the machinery of pro-transit, which employs more lobbyists in Olympia than any business. They have more lobbyists in Washington, D.C., than Boeing does.
Q How did congestion become so bad on Eastside roads?
A In the past if we were going to build a transportation system, a road or a bridge or something like that, the government traditionally would ask what is the estimated demand from users at opening and then project that out 20 years. That’s how they sized the project.
That stopped in 1970. And to make that point, the transportation system until 1970 contemplated demand plus 20 years of growth. And we really haven’t had a major road project since 1970. That takes us to 1990.
Now we’re 15 years past that. Since 1970 we haven’t been building capacity…we’re not even meeting demand. Let’s take plans for the 520 bridge, one of the busiest freeways in Seattle. They are not planning to meet current demands; they’re not planning any growth in it at all. The environmental impact statement offers no plan for the public to choose that meets expected demand the day it opens, much less 20 years out. It doesn’t even discuss meeting demands at opening, much less in the future.
Q Has anyone in authority made any judgment on current transportation plans for Puget Sound?
A Congressman Hal Rogers, R-Ky., [member of House Transportation Committee] told us that Sound Transit was the poster child for the worst transit project in the country. He also knew that there was tremendous political pressure on him to make sure that it got moved along. Ultimately he was unable to stop it.
Q There’s been a lot of media coverage on plans to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel? Is this a worthwhile project?
A Here’s another classic… Others in this region start with the answer and they come up with a plan that has no footing under it. The Alaskan Way Viaduct is one of these. This is where a political decision has been made to replace the viaduct.
One of the things we learned in our study was more than half the people using the Alaskan Way Viaduct aren’t there because they want to be. They’re there because I-5 is broken. We also found that I-5 through Seattle is number one out of 27 projects needed to reduce congestion. And while you’re fixing I-5, if you add some capacity for far less money than you can fix or replace the viaduct, you could tear down the viaduct and make a nice boulevard, all that’s needed if I-5 is handling the load.
It’s political, and I’m not sure where that’s coming from. If I was from Seattle and I knew there was a better alternative for less money, an alternative that actually solves more transportation problems than rebuilding the viaduct, I’d want to know about it. The public is not being allowed to hear what I just said.
Q Obviously fixing I-5 is part of your plan. Wrap the whole thing up for us.
A What’s unique about the study we have done is that we haven’t done it for political reasons, we’ve done it to solve this problem. We started with the problem of too much congestion and [road] trips increasing from 11 million to 16 million per day in the next 30 years. Those are the two key components of Seattle’s transportation problem.
So when we do our study, we ask how do we reduce congestion and accommodate the needed new trips. That’s the old-fashioned way of transportation engineering—identifying and solving problems. Everything else that you’re hearing about is politics—fooling around at great expense with no footing underneath it, just politics. Nobody before us has identified what the problem is; nobody’s even trying to solve the problem. None of them are even bothering with how do we reduce congestion. Opinion surveys we’ve seen show that two-thirds to three-quarters of the people in Puget Sound think congestion is the worst problem, worse than the economy, worse than land use, worse than education.
Q If you solve congestion, then you’re saying that you’ve gone far toward solving the economic problem.
A Exactly. We need a sea change here in how we deal with transportation in this region. I come off seemingly real hard on transit, and I don’t mean to other than to say it has been oversold. It is a very valuable, small part of transportation, about 2.8 percent, growing, in our dreams, to 5 percent 30 years from now. That’s a small piece.
When we present something like this at DOT, their public transit advocate comes up to me and says, “Why are you so hard on public transit? Why are you so mean to public transit?” If speaking the fiscal truth sounds mean, then I guess I’m guilty.
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
