Do We Want to Pave Over Whatcom County?

Daniel Remsen is a member of Bellingham’s Bicycle/Pedestrian Advisory Committee.

Tremendous public input during Bellingham’s Comprehensive Plan process produced a vision for a vibrant downtown, surrounded by a livable city with lots of green space, and cohesive and connected neighborhoods. What was envisioned was virtually the opposite of what we continue to build.

A critical component of keeping Bellingham livable, and its downtown vital, will be to eliminate the transportation subsidy to its fiercest economic, cultural and environmental competitor. Namely: sprawl. We need to get off the treadmill of public expenditures that fuel the outward progression of land development. Endless expansion across the landscape will destroy much of what makes living here great.

The primary determinant of land use is access. The old adage “location, location, location,” might just as well read “access, access, access.” Inaccessible land isn’t worth very much in terms of development for human use. Bring in a road and the value starts to climb quickly.

From Bellis Fair Mall to hiking in the Cascades, virtually every American’s destination is afforded automotive access. Generally, those roads are built at public expense, while the land they reach is developed for private gain. Thus, the costs are socialized and the profits privatized. Those costs are not only in dollars, but also in personal and community health, time, safety, and environmental degradation.

Bellingham has sprawled considerably for some time now. Countless millions of dollars have been made from the development of land gained cheaply at the fringe of transportation infrastructure, or where road capacity is still low. And with each passing year public dollars drive the development outward, paying for transportation “improvements” and increased road capacity to the new development, while existing infrastructure, and the land it serves, languishes.

The strangest thing about all of these increases in road capacity is that it often results in people having to spend more time in their cars getting to fewer places. Consider the human-scale downtown landscape versus that of the car-scale, Sunset Square landscape. At Sunset: fight with traffic to get there, park, shop, drive to the post office, fight with traffic, park, buy a stamp, drive through at the bank, gas up with your ATM card and drive through the fast food joint.

Alternatively one might drive, or ride a bike or bus, to downtown, park your wheels and walk easily from store to restaurant to post office to bank. It takes no less time to perform the same tasks over about an equal area. But aren’t cars faster than walking? No. Not when the development pattern is designed to serve cars rather than people.

Cars save time over a given distance, but the development patterns that serve them are more expansive. People lose time. Vast parking lots separate sidewalks and streets from storefronts. Streets get too wide to cross safely, and traffic is too intimidating to walk amongst.

So, we must drive, even to cross the street. Land uses change, too. Smaller, locally owned stores that we once walked to go out of business, resulting in fewer choices. Downtown was laid out when people counted more than cars. Now, in response to traffic counts, we build for traffic flow, and that’s what we get—lots of traffic.

Consider the city’s 2001-2007, Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan. Of the forty million dollars slated for that plan, less than 1.5 million will be spent west of I-5. That is, nearly all of it will be spent to increase road and intersection capacity for cars in the parts of the city where traffic is growing most quickly, where the most development is occurring.

Well, that sounds sensible enough on the surface; but, only in the short term. When access is improved, development intensifies. More traffic will soon follow. Have capacity increases on the Sunset or Samish bridges reduced congestion? Yes, but only briefly. With a bunch of homes and a church removed to make way for a new Big Box (Lowes), there is more traffic yet to come.

Has a bigger Bakerview improved traffic flow? Yes, but that Big Box (Fred Meyer) isn’t built yet. Nor are all the smaller businesses that will inevitably surround it. The I-5 interchange at Bakerview will soon be like those at Sunset, Lakeway and the Guide, badly congested seas of pavement, devoid of any local character, and demanding still more public dollars for further improvement for private profit.

Another excellent example is the fabled Lake Whatcom Connector. A common argument for its construction is to alleviate congestion on Lakeway Drive. This is patently absurd, a convenient bait to gain some support from those living along Lakeway.

Whatever gain in capacity might be derived would quickly be overrun by the new traffic generated from development on the newly accessible view properties of Galbraith Mountain. Then both roads will be congested and green space pushed further from town by subdivisions named for the qualities of the place they consumed.

So, what is to be done to prevent western Whatcom County from looking like just another paved-over, gridlocked suburb? The solutions range from public policy to personal habits.

On the policy end, one way to bring this process in line with the Comp Plan vision might be to increase the role of the Planning Department in the Six-Year Transportation Improvement Plan, currently under Public Works. Let the city’s transportation investment reflect where it wants to encourage or discourage development.

Downtown redevelopment could be aided by increased funding for bicycle and pedestrian improvements, as it is people, not cars, that work, shop, and go out to eat. Pedestrian improvements also help those who drive and take the bus to the city center, by letting them walk among the storefronts and restaurants. It makes no sense to work for improvements to downtown while we also perpetuate the process that led to its current state.

On the personal end: opportunities range from very simple, short-term choices to some major lifestyle changes. Some easy ones include combining trips, walking, riding a bike or the bus, car and vanpooling, car sharing, shopping closer to home, and accepting a little increase in residential density in our neighborhoods.

A bigger decision might be to choose to live in a location that allows for less time and effort spent getting around. Do you work downtown? Living anywhere within the city limits means a bike ride of twenty minutes tops.

Maybe it won’t happen every day, but if we all left the car at home just one work day per week, rush hour traffic would drop by 20 percent. We would have more money in our personal and civic budgets, healthier and saner commutes, and cleaner air and water.

Originally, this was supposed to be an article about alternative transportation, which received only brief mention. However, in places built exclusively for the car, nothing but the car works. So, attention to our development patterns must come first.

I hope to expand on this idea and its connections to health, community, and economy in future articles. With wonderful renewed focus on downtown revitalization, and considerable investment there in the works, isn’t it time to stall the sprawl?

Exciting things are happening downtown and in many neighborhoods. Turning things around will take time and it will take real commitment from elected officials, city staff and, most importantly, citizens by showing their support for the difficult decisions that are necessary to guide our growth wisely.

Next Month —

Shorter Trips vs. Longer Roads