North-South Nightmare
May 19, 2010 
9 Comments
Close your eyes. Picture the transportation advancements in the last sixty years. Bike lanes. Light rail. Maybe you even thought of space travel. But before Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier, Spokane focused on simpler plans. In 1946, the city released a study in response to an obvious prediction for the future: increased North-South traffic.
After decades of discussions and proposals, nothing happened until last summer when a ribbon cutting ceremony for the first drivable link of the North Spokane Corridor confused drivers. Was the North-South Corridor (NSC) finally here? Currently, the finished stretch between Francis/Freya and Farwell Road is used by roughly 4,000 vehicles a day, equivalent to only a third of the traffic on the busiest portion of Garland Avenue, one of the city’s designated “centers and corridors.”
Do the benefits justify the cost? According to the most recent figures available from the Washington Department of Transportation, the NSC has an estimated price tag of $1.6 billion over a 20-year build out plan. With estimated risk and inflation variables included, the cost could reach $3.0 billion for just 10.5 miles. The money, however, simply isn’t there. This is the very definition of an “unfunded mandate,” the same complaintive catch-all that is often applied to more energy efficient modes of transit. To residents in East Central, the freeway is real enough. The Spokesman-Review did a good job reporting on the community displacement where freeway lanes will triple at the NSC’s “trumpet”:
Still, the loss of more than 400 homes will put a crunch on affordable housing in the community even if the state succeeds in finding new residences for individuals displaced by the freeway, said Chris Venne, development finance manager at Community Frameworks, a nonprofit organization that develops low-income housing.
“We’re having a hard time keeping up with the need for affordable housing without losing units,” Venne said. “It would take significant production of new housing units to make up the shortfall.”
East Central neighbors now complain that vacant homes haven’t been secured adequately and have attracted squatters – another hallmark of “progress.” But sprawl is really what we’re upgrading to. Urban planner Bill Grimes examined the effects I-90 had on developments in the Spokane Valley, believing the rural communities in the north would see auto-centric development like what’s currently viewable in Post Falls and the Rathdrum Prairie. On this front, there was strangely zero dialogue about the NSC impact on growth management; our elected officials simply rolled over for the freeway and let it eat the land.
Citizens for Sensible Transportation are fighting an uphill battle in federal court to stop construction of the NSC, alleging that a $35 million TIGER grant to help build the freeway should not have been awarded without proper environmental testing.
Other opponents assert the project is a monument to bloat. The NSC is designed to handle 150,000 vehicles a day. The vehicle flow on Interstate 90, where the ramps will eventually connect to the North Spokane Corridor, currently averages 95,000 vehicles a day. After an estimate of north-south traffic, an architect asserted 50,400 vehicles a day for the NSC, or just over one-third of its design capacity.
Building a freeway as a curative to congestion is like feeding Twinkies to a diabetic. Their appetite may be quelled in the short-term, but over the long haul the symptoms get much worse. Focusing on the case for pulling freight off Division rather than supporting initiatives to make us commute more efficiently is working backwards. Where’s the dialogue on light rail which concentrates development, leading to the growth of urban centers around main stops?
Several years ago, Washington State University’s Social and Economic Sciences Research Center conducted a survey showing 73 percent of Spokane residents favored construction of light rail with estimated costs at $600 million, one fifth of the cost of the NSC. Consider this while the NSC pollutes, divides neighborhoods and bypasses local business, all for the purpose of accelerating truck traffic through Castlegar.
Here’s to looking at the future.
About the Author
I have had the opportunity to use the light rail in Seattle and Portland. Since then I have thought our community very much needs one. Talking with my step dad (a transportation planner for Idaho) I mentioned Spokane would benefit greatly from this but didn’t think we could afford it. His comment was very insightful in that we cannot afford not to have light rail as it becomes one of the new standards for attracting businesses to an area.
I continue to be excited about what a north/south freeway could do for the area. However, I am on board with you on this one; the money would have been far better spent on light rail. Ultimately, I think transportation infrastructure would cost less if we focused on mass transit. And more mass transit would eventually create the opportunity to tighten standards for getting a driver’s license (making the roads safer and less congested).
For the demand/supply folks on here, each time I have used the light rail in the larger cities the trains are always full. The Seattle light rail has an odd route structure to many residents I speak with, but it too is heavily used. I understand that homes near the light rail (mainly in Portland) command premium prices.
Light rail is a fine thing, but it doesn’t move goods and services, only people. The need for the NSC is to capitalize on the only available industrial land within the City of Spokane (East Hillyard) to bring better, higher paying, more stable jobs. It’s a big step towards increasing manufacturing and related industries in the region. We can’t thrive on service jobs alone. You don’t need to move people via light rail if there are no jobs to move them to. Every light-rail argument I’ve heard has been from people who “don’t get it.” They are light-rail fans, they don’t understand the reality of this situation.
I’m not a fan of the trumpet, I’ve seen first hand how those areas in E. Central are being torn up, which is ironic since it is they who suffered when I-90 was built. I wish there was a better way, but it’s too late.
I’m a fan of the light rail, but I guess the reality is we have NSC. On a positive note: Maybe Division could go back to two way directional traffic after the NSC connects to I-90 and maybe pull a lane and put in a center planting strip with trees. Then projects like the Burgans Block and the Kennedy Apartments aren’t cut off by this anti pedestrian street(s). With a lot of the traffic being diverted you’d think it could be reduced.
All your arguments are sound and valid. Only one problem. The article is not forward looking. As one who was in
S. Calif. before most of the big freeways, I have to say its a good thing they built them when they did. Costs(the many) would have been more insane by an insane factor had they needed to build them today. The population here will only grow. Its sad, but inevitable . The costs will never be lower either.
This freeway won’t benefit your normal old commuters at all. I’ve lived on the north side for 5 years, and worked downtown, and the location of the “NSC” is inconvenient for anyone trying to get to work downtown.
I suppose it’s extremely beneficial for getting big rigs off Division and Market – which is why the funding was pocketed under NAFTA.
BUT – ultimatley there needs to be a light rail system (or a major STA overhaul), because let’s face it – pedestrians, people who can’t afford cars and folks who just want to drive less are basically at the bottom of any of Spokane’s transportation plans.
“However, I am on board with you on this one; the money would have been far better spent on light rail.”
Sure — and it would carry 5% of commuters, as it does in all other cities except New York, 0% of the freight, and users would pay less than 10% of its costs, with taxpayers eating the rest.
Good plan.
Contrarian- I would like to see the stats you are pulling from for 5% of commuters in other cities. Not that this is wrong, just want to look into it.
Much of my outlook comes from working in the airline industry. And that outlook has shown me the potential cost efficiencies with having a hub and spoke system. In this case I can’t help but think that having a hub of light rail with the supporting spokes of buses would make a more connected/convenient system. A system where synergies could be realized. Granted, this is far different than the hub/spoke system the airlines use. But as fuel costs once again climb the demand for transportation modes will likely shift. If we could meet that demand with more convenience maybe our local mass transit system could actually start paying for itself with increased, less price-sensitive, ridership.
As to not carrying freight, isn’t light rail basically a train? I don’t know too much about the technical details of the system, but if carrying freight is a large concern could a dedicated freight train run with less frequency?
I would think a light rail or freeway would be more of a regional issue. Within our region we have more than one industrial area.
I fully agree that service related jobs are not the way to go. I am not a protectionist though and do think that as our world economy continues towards globalization, that our local manufacturing will have an extremely difficult time competing with the current emerging markets. Would our efforts be better spent encouraging growth in other realms? Maybe take advantage of the incredible fiber-optic connections our city already has.
I think the big question with all this is where do we want to encourage economic growth. And then shaping our infrastructure to best support/encourage that growth.
Greg,
Actually, my 5% was for all transit modes. Breakdown is:
Auto: 87.89%.
Bus: 2.52%
All rail: 2.01%
This is for all US commuter travel (only). Of the rail figure, almost half (1.45%) represents subway commutes, mostly in New York.
http://www.slideshare.net/marcus.bowman.slides/us-commuting-statistical-analysis
(Click forward to the table).
In Portland — oft cited as some kind of transpo paragon, transit in all forms carries 6.5% of commuters — down from 9.8% in 1980.
I might be less opposed to the North-South freeway if I understood what it exactly it it is connecting. I understand freeways as being primarily facilitators of trade. Commuting is a secondary benefit. I-90 between Seattle and Spokane (and eventually to Boston) meets that criteria.
The NSC doesn’t seem to facilitate anything except commuters between the developments north of Spokane and 1-90. I understand traffic often sucks between Deer Park and Spokane but $1,000,0000,000+ to make a slightly shorter commute for those folks who chose to build homes up there seems steep.
While the current and potential industry in Hillyard would certainly benefit from less congestion I don’t know that it is worth the price-tag. Perhaps a less ambitious conversion of another N-S Street to a toll road would provide greater relative benefit to Spokane and allow people to chose whether or not a shorter commute is worth a few bucks.
We could even get the FBC folks and the Tea-partiers together on something. Ideologically, The tea-partiers should be down with toll roads and we could use a portion of tolls to fund a parallel North-South spur of the Centennial trail.