Washington Policy Center recently participated in the KING TV special program, “Fighting Traffic,” which aired last week. Even as a panelist, I was anxious to see what plans public officials had in mind to reduce traffic congestion and make trips quicker around the Puget Sound Region, but elation soon turned to disappointment. Even though the program was geared around fighting traffic jams, many panelists’ “solutions” were more about spending billions to avoid traffic.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray and other leaders called for increasing urban density and removing lanes of traffic to make room for larger sidewalks, bike paths and transit lanes. His plan would cost $930 million. Sound Transit Board Chair and King County Executive Dow Constantine and Sound Transit Boardmember and Bellevue Mayor Claudia Balducci shared their plans to impose an additional $15 billion in regressive taxes to build light rail to avoid congestion.

Their plans are an expensive way to get people to give up their car keys. For example, the $2.8 billion East Link light rail extension is expected to carry 50,000 riders by 2030. But only 10,000 of those riders would be “new to transit.” The remaining 80% would be transit riders whether or not the project is built. That’s $280,000 per new rider to transit, or to put it another way, the median value of a condominium in increasingly-unaffordable King County.

Traffic congestion would continue to get worse despite the massive spending. Even transit boosters acknowledge that more transit does not effectively reduce congestion. Sound Transit’s $1.5 billion expansion to Lynnwood, for example, would only reduce the amount people drive in 2030 by 0.28%.

I wish KING TV, who did a great job by the way, would have asked the panelists, “So how much will the Move Seattle plan or light rail expansion reduce traffic congestion?” because the answer would likely be, “They wouldn’t.”