By Ken Robinson

Managing Editor

I have had a fantasy for years when traveling on the freeway in the middle of the day (newspaper types have to do that sometimes) about setting up roadblocks where travelers are asked why they are driving around in the middle of the day and not at work. Or home. 

This fantasy has blossomed over time and after reading that 20,000 more people have moved to the the Seattle area in the last two years, the idea about the roadblock is stronger than ever.

Do you really have to go someplace? 

Last week, heading north on I-5, traffic was slowed to a crawl. A few miles later at NMPH (No Miles Per Hour), motorist in the northbound lane could see some forlorn drivers in the Southbound lanes standing outside their mangled vehicles. I think people should be issued blinders of the type race horses wear to keep them from rubbernecking. That could speed up traffic.

Carping about traffic levels does not good when you realize that YOU ARE the traffic. 

I invited one of my brothers to join me in visiting a mutual friend. My brother said he considers everything now on a time spent/benefit ration. If the time spent going somewhere in a car has an appropriate benefit (e.g. you leave your house to get a pizza a few miles away) he would do it. But it if means grinding it out in traffic, he won’t. He’s smart. But there is something missing in this posture that swarming with the other rats provides. 

There is a rich irony to the irksome factor the crowded highways give us. Everybody wants to own the road but nobody wants to pay. I think Wolfgang Goethe said that first, but in German.

Okay. He didn’t say that. But he did say this: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.

So where is the grand plan by our leaders to alleviate the maddening traffic problems we live with now? Is it in light rail? Is it a tunnel under the city? Is it more busses?

We are beginning to believe some of the high-paid consultants who have advised us about traffic woes are not forward thinking to the degree needed. This view comes from learning that Sound Transit has used some sleight of hand calculations to strip tax money from people in the Puget Sound region and have allowed a cost overrun of $500 million to settle on us. 

Riding the bus or the train is not for everyone. There is too much habit and ego tied up in burning gas while riding along the freeway in your own private carriage, talking on the phone, finishing your makeup and digging down the side your seat for the French fry you dropped. Our bus system is pretty great in the Puget Sound region. You can really begin to appreciate it if you used if a few times. It is clean, reliable and inexpensive. And safe. And it runs often, in some areas with an interval as short as fifteen minutes until the next bus shows up. This is darn good service. If you are going to town, try the bus. You won’t have to look for parking or pay for it.  You might have to walk a bit. But that’s good you. 

Goethe also said: “The hardest walk is walking alone, but it’s also the walk that makes you strongest.”