The titles of two recent Herald articles on Everett traffic congestion (“It’s a crying shame what drivers have to endure,” Aug. 15, and “Hostages to traffic, Day 3,” Aug. 16) unwittingly reinforce a root, attitudinal cause of the problem – that the drivers are solely the victims of such events. In fact, they are also the perpetrators, particularly solitary drivers who represent the bulk of the traffic on our highways. As long as we obfuscate our own responsibility in the problems we have created, it’s not likely we will accept meaningful solutions that encompass our own culpability.
While it is a fact that the bridge closure was the precipitating cause of the Everett gridlock, the real issue in this, and most traffic congestion, is that too few people ride in too many cars. You want the “luxury” of driving alone. So does everyone else. As a result, we all sit in traffic jams. This is luxury?
The solution to this problem is simple: through various monetary, tax and social incentives encourage environmentally friendly transportation systems and vehicles that efficiently carry passengers. In the same fashion, discourage ones that don’t – the more you create the problem, the more you pay. These same, proactive principles should be used to encourage people to live close to where they work.
Meanwhile, the failure of our state legislators to implement the tough, public policy choices needed to solve these problems – in fact, they completely dropped the ball – is nothing short of scandalous. These are “leaders”? I hope you remember to hold them accountable come election time.
Further, it is interesting to note that the recent $1.3 trillion Republican-sponsored tax refund, if applied to transportation issues instead, is estimated to have funded complete rapid transit systems for 10 major cities. Knowing this, I hope people take comfort in the realization that the two- or low three-digit tax refund they received may be enough to cover the gasoline they idle away during the ongoing bridge closure. Unfortunately it won’t begin to cover the cost of gasoline consumption, pollution, lost productivity, stress, and a myriad of other problems resulting from ongoing, daily traffic slowdowns we will continue to face as things get worse in this state. All of this because we have not adopted an effective mass transit system, refuse to deal with the issue of solitary commuters and oversized vehicles (why do we not have a smaller, narrower, more efficient commuter vehicle, such as a tandem seat, single-wide, hybrid-powered automobile?), and allow unrestrained population growth and sprawl to magnify the problem ever larger.
An old axiom comes to mind: We have met the enemy, and it is us.
Everett
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