On March 5th, Governor Jay Inslee stood in front of the I-5 Ship Canal Bridge in Seattle and urged the state legislature to pass a transportation package this session. Just what should be in the package is less certain, but we at The Urbanist wanted to join the clarion call led by the Disability Mobility Initiative and the Front and Centered Coalition: Washington State must cease spending on new highways. No excuses.
The more pressing needs are around making our roads safe for people walking, rolling, and biking and boosting transit service to lower climate emissions. We’re not doing enough on climate; Washington state’s emissions have continued to climb, with transportation the leading sector. While climate was mentioned, King County Councilmember Girmay Zahilay was the only speaker at the press conference to focus on transit, which, unlike highway widening, actually represents a way out of our climate death spiral.
Different proposals at the state legislature have varied in how much they emphasize highway expansion versus transit, road safety, and climate action. None completely nail it, but the Forward Washington package in particular represents the wrong approach. The project list is heavily weighted toward highway widening.
Governor Inslee emphasized a maintenance-first approach, but he also highlighted the need for highway expansion projects like the I-5 Columbia River Crossing and US-2 Trestle.
“I’m confident when we pass a package we will have maintenance all across the state of Washington, and obviously maintenance is not the only thing we need,” Inslee said. “We are a growing state. We are a robust state, and we are a building state. We need to build projects. We need to rebuild the bridge and have a new bridge on the I-5 over Columbia. We know the US-2 Trestle, a favorite project of Senator Hobbs who is now galvanizing some transportation efforts in the Senate… So we need to build.”
Likewise, when we hosted Roger Millar, who heads the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT), at our monthly meetup this month, he defended some of his agency’s planned expansion projects (notably the Puget Sound Gateway project extending SR-167 and SR-509) while also stressing maintenance first and acknowledging the need for action on safety.
But what does maintenance first mean if billions and billions more dollars are invested in highway expansion? It’s time for Washington state to quit highway widening cold turkey rather than continue to feed its addiction while talking a big game about getting sober around climate and road safety.
