10 MOST PROMINENT TRANSPORTATION INITIATIVES IN PUGET SOUND

Seattle's growth comes with a price for commuters, which will test our patience and potentially change where and how we live.

In 1907, when Seattle annexed Ballard, Ravenna and West Seattle, transportation meant nothing more than sailing routes, roads, bridges and sometimes cow paths. Today, transportation networks are technological systems whose scopes range from international airport instruments to GPS-enabled devices on your dashboard or in your pocket. New applications are transforming every mode and aspect of transportation, integrating it ever more closely with our daily activities. Meanwhile, governments struggle to keep the public infrastructure aligned with this all-encompassing transformation.

The FutureCast Forum notes more than 1,000 new residents are descending upon the Seattle metro area each week and somedays it seems like all of them are on the arterials. As our population grows, so does the demand on our infrastructure, with the needs compounding much more quickly than the solutions.

"Seattle suffers from relatively small town planning, but is digesting global city expansion," suggests Dean Jones, President and CEO of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty and a Founding Member of the FutureCast Forum. "Major initiatives like Sound Transit 2 and 3 are certainly a step in the right direction, but it will be another decade before we realize the benefits – until then I fear the traffic will get much worse, and for some, change how and where we live."

Jones points back to a missed opportunity of Thrust Forward to create a Seattle subway system in the late 1960s and again in the early 1970s when the feds earmarked nearly $900 million in funding. It was voted down locally and instead funded Atlanta’s MARTA system. As a result, Seattle has been dubbed a world-class city for traffic congestion and ranks No. 20 worldwide and No. 10 in the United States, according to research by INTRIX Traffic Scorecard.

"It can be frustrating to see where you are trying to get to, but gridlock and construction disruption constricts the flow – it’s taken me more than an hour to get from Belltown to I-5 before, not to mention trying to get from downtown Seattle to exurban destinations," adds Jones. "For some, avoiding the commute means living in the city and giving up the automobile all together – the prevailing trends appearing to grow up and not out."

Here are some of the signal themes in transportation systems and policy, as surveyed by the FutureCast Forum, highlighting their potential effects on real estate values around Puget Sound: SEE FULL ARTICLE AND VIDEO