Hank,

How are you at arithmetic? Your suggestion is to put additional freeways back on the drawing boards. OK, that's a bit like Click and Clack's "pave it all" option. However, just where do you suggest they put these additional freeways? Not to mention additional arterials and supporting collector/distributor streets? There's only so much space, i.e., land, as Woody Guthrie said back in the 1930s, and God ain't making any more of it. Since downtown areas are already built up and otherwise developed, you would have to buy extremely expensive developed land and raze whatever's there to build these new freeways and supporting roads. And in that process you would be removing existing commercial and business development that is the very reason more people want access to central downtown areas. No offense Hank, but your suggestion smacks of trying to fit 10 pounds of sh!t in a 5 pound bag. Can't be done. Physically impossible. I thought you understood elementary physics. Traffic planners already figured out some time ago that we cannot build our way out of gridlock. As the driving population increases, roads and freeways can only get so large before gridlock becomes the unavoidable norm. In order to make a 4 to 6-lane freeway traffic flow smoothly, you have to DELETE on and off ramps. Access interchanges become the bottleneck limiting factor.

If the human population of urban areas like Portland and Seattle continue to increase, and they are, then the only way to physically efficiently (as opposed to $$ efficiency) accommodate all those people is by transportation alternatives to single occupant motor vehicles operating on conventional streets and freeways.

Do the math Hank.

Sg