The Flip Flop Girl

Random Nation, Part 4

You know that tired old phrase, "Think Globally, Act Locally"? Yeah, well, Seattle is just the sort of overly-polite ostentatiously-progressive community that embracing such pap. Seattle is front and center on the Flip Flop Girl radar at the moment. So, I will take my Random Nation rambling onto local concerns, namely Seattle's ongoing growing pains as it struggles to become the "big city" it may never have been meant to be. I mean, of all the West Coast cities, Seattle still retains much of its quaint and backward ways which actually can be attractive. It's by no means a sleepy nowhere town but it does lack the infrastructure of better planned cities. The main problem? A backward and limited public transit system. We have buses, of course. It's an aging fleet of buses and, depending on the bus route, you'd have to wonder how a city like Seattle gets away with it. We have no rapid transit system and who knows when we will. We've had numerous voter referendums which have led to voters asking for both an elevated and a light rail system (we want it all!) but the details are still very murky as to how all this will come about.

Currently, the big issue has been what to do about replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct which is a long stretch of elevated freeway overlooking the Seattle harbor and which provides something of a backup for the main interstate highway. Since our last big earthquake in 2001, the concern has been growing about replacing this entire rickety structure. The mayor, who is in the hip pocket of developers with the classic "big city" dreams for Seattle, had been strongly pushing for a "big city" concept, a tunnel. The state wanted a new viaduct structure similar to the old one. Hybrids of the two were considered. And then there was talk of a third way: getting rid of the viaduct and creating more surface traffic, basically adding more lanes for cars. Supposedly this would open up the view for everyone of our beautiful Puget Sound. This whole debate finally came to a head and the matter was put up to the voters to decide and they decided they liked this "third way" option. Little is known about how this third way would be implemented since it came in late to the debate but this is typical about how things get done in Seattle.

As I was waiting for my daily buzz of java, I overheard a couple discussing another less flashy but very relevant aspect of our traffic problems. They were saying that it's sad that Seattle, a software capital of the world, should have such an antiquated traffic light system. And I think they're spot on about this. They think it hasn't changed any since World War II. I wouldn't be surprised. One guy was telling the other, "It's a very simple electrical system, not much different from the on and off technology used to turn on your light in your home. I mean, why can't Seattle have a computerized system like cities in Europe have been using for decades?" That's a good question.

Don't get me wrong about Seattle. It's a very pleasant place to be but you have so many interests bent on exploiting it from investors and developers to all the creepy marketing people trying to suck out the soul of everything they touch.

Labels: blogs, buzz, marketing, politics, pop culture, random, Seattle, trends, viaduct, Writing