Well, it’s been a while since anyone tried to non-jokingly cry “War on cars!” in Seattle. We declared the meme dead 15 years ago, and a very popular podcast has been operating tongue-in-cheek using the term for more than seven years. An in-person event featuring the hosts of the War on Cars podcast recently sold out Town Hall Seattle, which is where I took this photo:
But now that Katie Wilson has been elected Seattle Mayor, KIRO Radio host Charlie Harger tried this week to revive the term because Wilson had the gall to follow through with a campaign promise to speed up King County’s least reliable bus route by painting bus lanes on Denny Way. It didn’t go well.
It’s been a while since I’ve done a response-style post, but this story is a real gem that accidentally does a fantastic job of pointing out many of the reasons why the phrase “war on cars” has always been ridiculous.
The story starts by acknowledging that King County Metro’s Route 8 “arrived on time just 31% of the time” and then quotes Fix the L8 organizer Nick Sattele saying, “There are turtles that go faster.” Harger says, “something should change,” but then things go sideways fast.
Wilson called Wednesday’s announcement “probably one of my favorite moments so far as Mayor.” Then she volunteered something worth noting.
“I am one of the 20% and growing proportion of Seattle households that do not own a car,” she said. “I’ve never owned a car.”
The mayor of Seattle, making transportation policy for a corridor carrying 30,000 vehicles a day, has never once sat behind the wheel as the person responsible for getting somewhere on time in traffic. She lives on Capitol Hill. She rides the 8 to Seattle Center with her daughter. That’s a lovely life. It is nothing like the commute from Auburn, Lynnwood, or Kent.
So were all those previous mayors we had who drove everywhere and never took the bus were right to make street design decisions that affect people who are “responsible for getting somewhere on time” via transit (thus allowing the 8 to travel at turtle speeds)? Making transportation decisions is part of a mayor’s duty, and owning a car is not a requirement to be mayor. Also, a person’s time is not worth more if they’re in a car rather than waiting for a bus. These points should be obvious.
For years, Seattle leaders have assured us there’s no war on cars. The city just doesn’t have the capacity for so many single-occupant vehicles. We need to be realistic about space. We need alternatives. Fair enough. Most of us accepted that.
Great! I’m glad you get it. Cars cause traffic because they take up a lot of space, and there is nothing a growing city can do to cram more of them into streets that are already full. The Denny Way bus lane project will not change how many cars can enter I-5 during rush hour. A lot of traffic in Seattle is just people waiting their turn for the freeway ramp, and our current system has them wait in the path of the Route 8 bus. That doesn’t make much sense, does it?
But at what point do we stop taking that at face value? The mayor has never owned a car. She built her career advocating for Seattle bus lanes. Her first executive order targeted drivers on one of the city’s busiest corridors. Rinck is celebrating that new residents aren’t buying cars. Li told the press conference crowd that the RapidRide G project on Madison Street “convinced drivers to leave their cars at home.” We saw the same philosophy on Eastlake Avenue with the RapidRide J Line. Take road space. Remove options. Squeeze cars into fewer lanes. Then point at the bus.
Is it fair to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the war on cars is real? And the people waging it are now running the city?
Huh? Harger’s argument is that because Mayor Wilson does not own a car, we should stop being “realistic about space” and start being … unrealistic? Somehow, the mayor not owning a car means the previous laws of physics about cars taking up lots of space may no longer apply. That’s trippy.
Nobody at that podium spoke for the driver. Not one person represented the commuter sitting on Denny at 5:30 p.m. trying to get home. The entire event was transit advocates talking to transit advocates, celebrating a policy that makes their commute better by making yours worse.
Won’t somebody please think of the car drivers?!? They are always so overlooked, forced to receive nearly all federal and state transportation funding and occupy nearly every inch of road space and use freeways that destroy neighborhoods and store their cars for free on public roadways. They don’t have it nice like all those selfish people waiting in the rain for the Route 8 bus that’s running 13 minutes late because it’s stuck in car traffic.
But here’s my favorite part of the whole story:
And where do the rest of those 30,000 vehicles go when Denny loses a lane? Mercer? Have you driven Mercer lately? There is no relief valve. You’re just squeezing traffic harder and hoping people give up.
Yeah, what are they supposed to do? Use the seven-lane street the city spent $237 million building just a decade ago that basically only serves people in cars trying to get to the highway? How could anyone even suggest such a horrid idea?
A place that is waging a war on cars does not spend $237 million building a mammoth street with zero transit service and the bare minimum for walking and biking. They also do not dig $2 billion highway tunnels so people can drive past downtown entirely (the north portal is near Denny Way) or build a huge new surface roadway on top of it. They also wouldn’t spend upwards of $6 billion on replacing and expanding the 520 Bridge, which is still ongoing. Voters approved a transportation levy in 2024 that will spend about $770 million over eight years on road paving, bridge maintenance, traffic signals and operations, and freight improvements. As the leader of the Transit Riders Union at the time, Wilson pushed the city to add more funding for walking, biking and transit to the package, then endorsed the measure and helped get out the vote to pass it. That does not sound like a war on cars to me, it sounds like compromise and working together.
This place has spent and continues to spend an absolutely enormous sum of money on car infrastructure, but none of it will fix car traffic because car traffic cannot be fixed. However, we can give more people more options that are more efficient and lower cost. Some people will still need to drive, and driving will continue to suck. But it is in everyone’s best interest, car drivers included, if more people are able to drive less, and that’s what a reliable Route 8 bus can help accomplish.
We are all in this beautiful, messy city (and region) together. We need to get our buses out of traffic, and we need to end traffic deaths and injuries on our city streets. These are both achievable goals that will require a lot of work and a lot of roadway changes. Sometimes, those changes will require people to switch their habits, and that can be a frustrating experience. Some changes will make driving better (for example, adding turn lanes as part of a safety redesign), and some changes will add time to drives. But the goals are immensely worthwhile. We can save the lives of our loved ones and our neighbors while also creating a transportation system that is efficient, reliable and capable of growing with our city. None of this has anything in common with a war. If anything, it’s the exact opposite.