While this won’t really work for me, as I just bought a new car, if you’re thinking of getting rid of your car, or switching to an alternate mode of transportation temporarily or permanently, the city of Seattle wants to help you by giving you some incentives.

If you commit to going carless for a month, you can get a $20 voucher towards a bus pass or gear from REI. You can also join Cascade Bicycle Club for $10 off the usual fee. If you commit to getting rid of your car (or going an entire year without driving it), you can get a $200 voucher and free membership at Cascade Bicycle Club and the Bicycle Alliance of Washington.

If you’re planning on doing this, post about it in the comments and keep us posted on how you’re doing!

From Seattle-PI’s Getting There column:

Question: Greg Anderson asks if big trucks should be banned from Interstate 5 express lanes and provided with a new bypass to the freeway to help traffic flow.

“Every day during rush hour, both morning and night, I see semi-trucks in the left lane approaching the entrances to the express lanes,” he said.

“They are of various sizes and haul assorted loads — no doubt some flammable. The immediate effect is the slowing of the traffic in the lane next to the commuter (car pool) lane going south on I-5 and in the lane that is the entrance to the express lanes … . I wonder why the semi-trucks are allowed to use the express lanes at all considering that an accident there might effectively end the use of the express lanes as a whole for the better part of the day.

“Prohibiting the use of the express lanes to truck and tractor traffic would, seemingly, reduce the congestion considerably, in both directions.”

He wonders if “any thought (has) been given to creating a truck bypass lane around the east side of Lake Washington, similar to the one going north through Portland, so that trucks not needing to stop in the Seattle area could use that lane to get through.”

Maybe Greg moved here a short while ago, but I-405 on the Eastside used to do what Greg has proposed. The key phrase there is “used to”. “Originally intended as a bypass to I-5 through Seattle, I-405 has experienced a large increase in traffic volume since its construction. I-405 is now the most congested freeway in Washington State, particularly the segment between State Route 169 and I-90.”

Congestion may be the problem but roads aren’t the answer. If we build more roads, congestion will follow. With the fast growth of the suburbs, any new freeway built will become just as congested as 405 as people move further and further away from the city centers trying to find less congestions, yet still depending on those same urban centers for jobs and entertainment. Easing congestion will require a different frame of mind than most people are willing to adopt, though it’s been shown to work in the not-so-distant past.

The DOT came to the same conclusion. Getting There’s answer to the question posed by Greg:

“Keeping traffic moving is one of WSDOT’s top priorities,” Conrad said, but “adding an additional lane to I-5 for freight traffic would prove to be a very costly venture, and would do little to relieve congestion in the Puget Sound area. Truck traffic is not the reason Puget Sound highways are congested.”

photo by stormyafternoon [flickr] via our open-to-the-public, always hungry for pretty pictures, group pool [#]. join us!

• Gridskipper surveys our farmers’ markets [gridskipper]
• Another Eric Lashes (Howk) benefit — featuring Raz Rez, the Catch, Shane Tutmarc and the Traveling Mercies at Rebar tomorrow. [soundonthesound]
• TR Knight wants to know if George is coming back to Seattle Grace so that he can start playing with his hair. [popsugar]
• Look out water taxi: Ballard to Downtown by boat? [seatrans]
• Flexcar induces a blur into a family’s definition of carlessness. [dailyscore]
• Colman Pool, preparing for weekend opening [wsb]
• Jones Soda scores the soft drink rights at Qwest Field [citizenrain]
• Will the weird charity events never cease? Now, buy Neko Case’s corset to raise money for Greyhounds [reverb]
• Having overloaded Seattlest’s sports quota, Seth takes his sports talk on the road [enjoytheenjoyment]

I’ve been pondering this riddle ever since my wife and I became expectant parents. How does one get around metro Seattle with an infant and no car? If Metro was sufficient, then my riddle would be solved since babies can travel safely and often comfortably without a car seat. But as we all know, Metro can be, how should I put it, lacking. Which leaves, as I can figure, three other options to supplement bus travel - Flexcar, taxi, and car rentals. Let’s tackle the pros and cons.

Flexcar is a great, affordable way to get a car in a pinch. The problem lies in the need for a car seat. Flexcar is hourly, so it’s not likely that anyone will use it for more than a few hours at a time (at least in my case). So to use a Flexcar with a baby would require me to carry a baby and a car seat to the car, install the car seat, install the baby, drive, uninstall the baby, execute the errand, reinstall the baby, drive back, uninstall the baby, uninstall the car seat, carry the baby and the car seat back home. No thanks.

Taxis are a bit of a mystery to me since I don’t use them often. Taxis are cars, so I assume that they are subject to car seat laws but have heard rumor to the contrary. But even if I didn’t have to use a car seat in a taxi, would I want to? If you decide to use a car seat, you have the same installation issues as with a Flexcar.

Rentals are easier since they are typically used for longer periods of time. A rental car can be delivered directly to you and parked in your garage. You can then install the car seat once and use it for the remainder of the rental period (say, a weekend). You can then uninstall the car seat and return the car. No big hassle. Kind of like, well, owning a car. Car ownership definitely has its perks (but at a high cost).

So riddle me this: hypothetically, if you have a baby and no car, how would you get around Seattle? I’ll buy a pint for anyone who can give me an executable solution. Wow, I do sound like a programmer.

It looks like Seattle’s other alt-weekly is getting into the blogging game, too. As far as I can tell, the revolution hit the web today, but items started accumulating late last week with an inaugural post [#] celebrating Seattle Weekly awards from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies.

Where the Stranger has “the Slog” [#] and “LineOut” [#], Seattle Weekly has “Daily Weekly” [#] and “Post Alley” [#]¹.On top of that, the Weekly includes “Mossblog” [#] a very special site for Knute “Mossback” Berger’s musings. Appropriately enough, he kicked things off with a response [#] to his column in which he called the carless a bunch of moochers.

To date, the offerings from Seattle Weekly seem less obsessively updated and lack the ability to comment. But it’s only been running for a few days; so it’s likely that features and frequency will develop with age. (update: Chuck Taylor writes [#] that the omission of comments will be remedied shortly)

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1. Your mileage with these analogies may vary. For instance, LineOut is music-focused and PostAlley seems more general-arts.

We here at Metroblogging tend to like Flexcar–heck, some of us even use it. And if you’ve been thinking about trying it yourself, now would be the time: they’re having a special sign-up deal right now where if you join by April 30th you get your membership fee back in driving credit [#]. Their only caveat is that you have to use a car at least once by the end of May to get the credit, which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I hear that the competitor Zip Car is going to be coming to town soon, which may be what’s getting Flexcar to be making deals, but this one appears to be a pretty good one. Almost good enough to convince me to start driving again.

Tip via the wonderful Manuel.

Although I complained about it last night, the highlights reel episode of Grey’s Anatomy reminded me that some of you might be new to Seattle or new readers of this site. In the spirit of getting everyone caught up and reminiscing about the year that was, you’ll find a month-by-month rundown of 2005 after the jump. It’s a mix of a Seattle timeline and a few posts that might even make your 2006 a little better.

I think this officially concludes the site’s “looking back” portion of the program (even we have a limit to the amount of history we want to learn in order not to repeat it).

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