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"Big Picture" Approach Means Better Solutions
By Dick Falkenbury
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But there are problems that should be understood not as an isolated instance but as part of the whole. City Council and the Mayor should set a policy that will guide them in making specific decisions.
We should have a city policy that says that we do not support building more surface road capacity because widening a freeway or building another bridge just creates more traffic. WashPIRG has done a study that shows that this is the case. Widening I-405 or SR-520 is not going to relieve congestion--it will in fact create more congestion. The city policy should be to oppose any more lane building.
We should have a city policy to put left turn lanes on any arterial that has more than 10,000 vehicles per day. And put left-turn-only lights on the intersections.
We should set our heads to the mundane business of preserving industrial land for industry. There is precious little land zoned for industry. We should not be building superstores, condos and shopping centers in the land that creates the jobs that we need.
We should have a city policy that we do not build anything on our parks. It is fine to change the buildings that are already there--even going up a story or two if you are desperate. No more building in the parks. Every few years, the voters are asked to vote to "save open space," citing how little we actually have of it. But a year later the government is proposing to wipe out the very open space that they told us was in such short supply and so desperately needed.
For those of you that might miss my point: no new buildings in the Arboretum and not even a merry-go-round in Woodland Park Zoo (unless--and this is a great idea--they put it inside the existing concession building and use the ride as a drawing card).
Parks are not building lots.
Talk to Dick: falkenbury@aol.com.
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