APRIL 2001
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MAKING TRAFFIC BETTER. Destination 2030 is about making traffic far better in one of the most notoriously congested parts of the nation.
The region's elected leadership has guided development of a comprehensive plan that puts all the pieces together and describes what's needed to get beyond study, fighting, searching, and talk. Months of citizen engagement, regional coordination and careful research have culminated in a bold and comprehensive plan that will make a real difference in our lives -- if we find the regional will to make it happen.
Better Roads, Bridges, Buses, Rails and Ferries
Destination 2030 includes better roads, better transit, better ferry service and much more. The specifics are detailed throughout the plan, but it's important to highlight some of the actions up front:
- Over 2,000 new miles of road to fix the region's clogged traffic arteries -- targeting today's worst choke-points, finishing what's been started, and anticipating future snarls. More than 1,000 lanes of new road could be open to traffic within the next 10 years, along with 27 new interchanges, 15 new overpasses and 185 upgrades to intersections.
- The first 21 miles of light rail through the region's most heavily traveled corridor would be running within the next 10 years, when local bus service would also increase by 40 percent. Bus service would increase 80 percent region-wide by 2030.
- Ten new passenger ferries and four new auto ferries added to the fleet to provide faster and more frequent trips across Puget Sound from far better terminals. Within 20 years, the total people-carrying capacity of ferries would increase 57 percent, and car capacity would be up 55 percent.
- In addition to new roads, rails, buses and ferries, Destination 2030 also includes more frequent rush hour rail service from Everett to Lakewood and faster and more frequent train service between major cities from Portland to Vancouver, BC; over 25,000 new park-and-ride stalls; 800 more vanpools; traffic signal upgrades on over 1,000 miles of road; and about 2,000 miles of new walkways and bikeways that connect to communities and transit.
By 2030 the region will support nearly 4.7 million people -- about 1.5 million more people and 800,000 more jobs. These additional people and jobs are expected to increase travel by 60 percent.
By comparing current trends to changes identified in Destination 2030, it's possible to use computer models to glimpse the future 30 years from now. Here are some of the results:
In order to get the best deal for taxpayers, transportation planners and elected leadership within the region have assessed the region's options based on the total costs to all of us, listened to people, and have advanced a plan that strives to provide the best value.
Destination 2030 identifies ways to reduce and control costs. Early action is one cost-effective tool. With delay, costs spiral. Traffic management tools are identified to get more out of each investment. Pricing incentives are called for in future years to help better manage transportation resources and reduce the need for ever more expensive infrastructure.
For central Puget Sound residents, reducing costs also means keeping more of the tax dollars collected here. Destination 2030 supports state and federal policies to assure the region a fair rate of return on every state and federal transportation tax. It also promotes new regional sources of funding that raise money here, and invest all of it here, on regional priorities, period.
Are We Willing to Make Traffic Better?
If the region's residents had one message in development of this plan, it was this: There's been quite enough talk and fighting. Get on with it.
Destination 2030 challenges the region to take action. A first step is to recognize that lack of agreement about the best ways to fix traffic is the fundamental barrier to traffic relief. It stops progress and drives up costs. It reduces public confidence. It has pulled the region's plans in different dead-end directions for decades.
Some of the strategies contained in the plan are controversial. Many of the over 2,200 specific projects identified within Destination 2030 will invite howls and opposition.
No single action will smooth the region's traffic jams.
Breaking gridlock will ultimately require a coordinated regional resolve to do far better than before. Success will depend on sustained community-spirited regional action at every level of government joined hand-in-hand with the private sector and the bulk of the region's citizens. It will require sound local decisions made at the county courthouse, city hall and within neighborhoods. It will also depend on enhancing the ability of more people to make personal choices about where they live and work, and the ways they get from place-to-place, now and in the future.
Destination 2030 supports planning efforts in every part of the region. It's the result of extensive coordination between federal, state, regional, and local transportation agencies, tribes and ports. But it's not just the government's plan. The specifics have been developed with broad input and the help of the region's many private sector engineering and planning resources, and business, labor and environmental interests. The plan has benefited from advice from thousands of real people motivated to help make their region an even better place to live.
The plan was also coordinated extensively with the Blue Ribbon Commission on Transportation, which spent over two years studying the transportation needs of the entire state of Washington. The Commission's recommendations support what's in Destination 2030 and urge action. Commission reforms that don't require action by the state legislature, or voters, have already been included in Destination 2030.
Destination 2030 includes a commitment to develop benchmarks to track the region's progress toward key goals like: making travel faster, keeping the air clean and healthy, making roads and buses more safe, providing more access to transit, adequately maintaining roads and bridges, and making growth management work. Monitoring performance will allow the region to make adjustments if things aren't working. The plan is not set in stone. It is updated every two years.
Destination 2030 supports growth in ways most people who live here say they want to grow. The Puget Sound region's enviable cultural environment, outstanding natural setting and economic vitality have combined to produce tremendous civic pride, a strong sense of citizen ownership, and significant region-wide consensus about the future. That vision, detailed in a pioneering strategy called VISION 2020, is designed to keep and enhance the things people treasure.
In support of that vision, Destination 2030 focuses first on maintaining, preserving and managing the existing multi-billion dollar public investment in the transportation system. New roads designed to support planned growth don't get built until old roads are fixed and made safer. Ferry routes don't get expanded until workhorse routes are safely sustained. New bus service doesn't get deployed until existing productive routes are adequately maintained.
The plan supports the diverse and coordinated ambitions of the region's counties, cities, towns and neighborhoods. This includes focusing more growth in lively urban environments connected by swifter and safer roads, buses, fast ferries and rails. This connection between land use and transportation is intended to reduce infrastructure costs and provide better links between home and work, and all the other things that are part of life.
For the first time, all of the region's growth management plans are in-sync with a long-range transportation plan to support them.
| THE PER PERSON PRICE TAG
$35/month
$67.50/month |
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| TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM PERFORMANCE | ||
| Performance Indicator | 2030 Trend | Destination 2030 |
| Daily Vehicle Miles Traveled on Arterial/Freeway Network Trips
| ||
| Total Daily Vehicle Miles Traveled | 97,968,509 | 93,562,322 |
| Daily Vehicle Miles Traveled Per Capita | 20 | 19 |
Total Daily Person Trips | ||
| SOV | 9,244,296 | 9,088,504 |
| Carpool | 6,331,287 | 6,459,464 |
| Transit | 773,625 | 839,049 |
| All Motorized Modes | 16,349,208 | 16,387,017 |
| AVERAGE DAILY VEHICLE DELAY | ||||
| Subarea | 2030 Trend | Destination 2030 | ||
| Hours of delay | Min. of Delay Per Household | Hours of Delay | Min. of Delay Per Household | |
| Region | 999,998 | 29.8 | 239,731 | 7.2 |
| Northwest King County | 65,407 | 9.3 | 31,640 | 4.5 |
| East King County | 69,032 | 14.8 | 41,912 | 9.0 |
| South King County | 122,091 | 19.5 | 63,929 | 10.2 |
| King County | 256,531 | 14.3 | 137,481 | 7.7 |
| Kitsap County | 23,649 | 8.3 | 3,827 | 1.3 |
| Pierce County | 650,514 | 97.2 | 54,145 | 8.1 |
| Snohomish County | 69,235 | 11.5 | 44,278 | 7.4 |
Click here to view a PDF version of the Destination 2030 map
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DESTINATION 2030 TIMELINE
The Regional Council's Transportation and Growth Management Policy Boards have released the draft Destination 2030 for public review.
Copies of the plan have been mailed to all Regional Council members. You can download the plan from the Web at psrc.org, or call the Regional Council's Information Center, (206) 464-7532, to have a copy mailed to you.
Learn More and Tell Us What You Think
New Book Lauds Central Puget Sound Region as "Regional City"
In late 1980s the Puget Sound region was under siege -- growth pressures threatened to gobble up our countryside while some feared urban neighborhoods would founder as new communities cropped up on the edge of the metropolitan area.
Today the region is hailed as a national model for its success in curbing sprawl, reviving city neighborhoods, and re-energizing older suburbs such as Kirkland, Bellevue and Renton. Through a coordinated regional approach to land and transportation -- VISION 2020 -- we're holding on to what makes central Puget Sound such a great place to live.
A new book by Peter Calthorpe and William Fulton, The Regional City, Planning for End of Sprawl, tells the story of Puget Sound's emergence as a regional city:
"In less than a decade, the Seattle region has used the policies contained in VISION 2020 and the power contained in the Washington Growth Management Act to transform itself into a Regional City much faster than almost anyone could have imagined at the end of the 1980s. It has done so by focusing on implementation of several important regional policies and on linking local policies to the regional strategy laid out in VISION 2020."
Elements of a regional city, according to the authors, include transit, fairly distributed affordable housing, environmental preserves, walkable communities, urban reinvestments and infill development.
Central Puget Sound and two other regions -- Portland and Salt Lake City -- are identified as exemplary in their approaches to developing integrated regional plans and as "important models for a nationwide discussion of the Regional City."
Fulton and Calthorpe note that Puget Sound's experiment in regionalism has been different than that of Salt Lake or Portland. With more than three million people, the central Puget Sound region is the largest metropolitan area in the West outside of California. A galloping regional economy has fueled intense growth pressures. And Puget Sound's approach to regionalism is more locally driven, balancing the goals of local communities with the goals of the region as a whole.
The authors reinforce many of the concepts central Puget Sound leaders have embraced and which form the basis for growth and transportation planning in this region. These include the idea that regional cooperation is now essential to the success of every town and city, and that a diverse regional transportation network is necessary to give people options for getting from place to place. Puget Sound's strategy to define an urban growth area, focus new growth in urban centers, and connect those centers with a high-quality transit system are all hallmarks of a regional city, according to the authors.
Summing up the central Puget Sound region's progress over the last decade, Calthorpe and Fulton note that our region is becoming "more compact, livable and manageable -- a place where sprawl is receding -- because both its people and its government agencies have been willing to shed the traditional metropolitan growth model and move in the direction of the Regional City."
Mark Your Calendars
The state Office of Community Development and Puget Sound Regional Council are co-sponsoring a Transportation Concurrency Workshop on April 30, from 8:30 a.m. - 4 p.m., in SeaTac. The one-day workshop will provide an overview of the Growth Management Act's transportation concurrency requirements. Guest speakers will provide insights on concurrency issues, including legal requirements, level-of-service measurement, and a session on non-transportation facilities and services.
The workshop is designed for local government officials, planning and development professionals, and citizens involved in transportation planning. The registration fee is $25 (includes continental breakfast & lunch). The workshop will be held at the Sea-Tac Airport Marriott Hotel, 3201 South 176th Street, SeaTac. For registration information, contact Michelle Velez of the state Office of Community Development at (360) 725-3001, or via e-mail: michelle@cted.wa.gov.
PUGET SOUND REGIONAL COUNCIL
The Puget Sound Regional Council is the designated regional and metropolitan transportation planning organization under state and federal laws. The Regional Council develops policies and coordinates decisions about regional growth and transportation planning in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap counties.
The Council is composed of over 80 county, city, port, transit, tribal and state agencies serving the region. It receives about $100 million in federal transportation funds each year and coordinates, sets priorities and evaluates the most efficient ways to target those tax dollars to improve the region's transportation systems and keep pace with growth.
After extensive analysis, public comment and discussion, the draft Destination 2030 plan is ready to move forward. The timeline shows important actions and events related to the plan.
Where to Get Copies of Destination 2030
Web Site ........... psrc.org Info Line ........... (206) 464-7532 TDD/TYY ........... (206) 464-5409 E-mail ........... destination2030@psrc.org Mail ........... Destination 2030
Puget Sound Regional Council
1011 Western Avenue, Suite 500
Seattle, Washington 98104
"Most Americans today do not live in towns -- or even in cities -- in the traditional sense that we think of those terms. Instead, most of us are citizens of a region -- a large and multifaceted metropolitan area encompassing hundreds of places that we would traditionally think of as distinct and separate 'communities.'" -- The Regional City, Planning for the End of Sprawl
Transportation Concurrency Workshop Set for April 30
CENTRAL PUGET SOUND REGION
King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties
Current Population 3.2 million
2030 Population 4.7 million
M - F - 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. - Other times by appointment - 206-464-7532
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